The greatness and holiness of her life has prompted many to research and occupy themselves with her life. So allow me to write about something little known, and a small personal experience connected with devotion to St Mother Teresa.
Although I myself am a mother of many children, I want to reflect on the theme of motherhood — on her example and on my own experience.
While they were dying, their mother could not be near them".
Lucia Pisapia Apicella
"O wind from the Tyrrhenian Sea, you who know my name,
kiss my mother, who is far away, in my place".
This is the story of Lucia Pisapia Apicella, from the town of Cava de' Tirreni, not far from Naples in Italy. She was called the "mother of the dead" soldiers, whose bodies she sought out, identified and buried with dignity, or arranged to have returned to their families. Although a mother herself, she found the time and the means to carry out this extraordinary work of mercy. She found and gave a dignified burial to more than 700 bodies of dead soldiers, all with her own bare hands. The hands of a mother who loved unknown sons, mostly of the enemy army, as her own. That is why she was called "Die Mutter der Toten - Mother of the Dead".
"Thank you, women who are mothers! You have sheltered human beings within yourselves in a unique experience of joy and travail."
With this message, addressed to women throughout the world as a sign of his gratitude and solidarity, St John Paul II expressed three fundamental truths about motherhood: Every woman is called to be a mother, a mother is one who shelters human beings, motherhood is joy and travail.
Mother's Day is, in a wider sense, dedicated to all women, because every woman carries within her a unique capacity for motherly love and complete self-giving, which she is called to live out in her relationships with others.
