Today, many parts of the world celebrate a special occasion, Mother’s Day, in honor of the woman and the lady who, in the words of poet Anne Taylor, “ fed me from her gentle breast, and hushed me in her arms to rest, and on my cheek sweet kisses prest.”

There is something divine about mothers that they deserve such celebration today. That divine thought was expressed by American poet Oliver Wendell Holmes who said that real religion of the world comes “from women much more than from men - from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.” Another writer, English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, put the mother’s role even more profoundly: “Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.” And a Jewish proverb went further, saying: “God could not be everywhere and therefore he made mothers.”

The mother’s multi-faceted role in society was aptly described by Helen Hunt Jackson, who advocated the cause of native Americans and began writing about her thoughts and feelings after her tragic losses of her husband and two children. “Motherhood is priced of God, at price no man may dare to lessen or misunderstand.

Preacher T. DeWitt Talmage paid tribute to mothers when he presented an expanded role they play in our lives. “Mother - that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries,” he wrote. An even more encompassing role was described by an unknown bard: “A man’s work is from sun to sun, but a mother’s work is never done.”

On the lighter side, a Chinese writer penned: “There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it.” Words, indeed, are hardly enough when we think of what mothers have done to their respective families.

And so this week, we highlight two occasions – Mother’s Day and International Day of Families – through our cover story on a champion mother, Maria Delfin De Oro — who in her humble way, has raised two daughters – both winners – in the arduous competition called life.

Trite, this expression may be – “you never realize the value of a thing until you lose it – but this is true, more than ever, to me today as we celebrate Mother’s Day. A little more than a month ago, I lost my dear mother. While she had joined Dad in Christ’s Bosom, and while we still nurse the nagging thoughts that we miss them both, we their children, can feel their presence in every child who smiles along the way, every hurting person who gets touched and healed, every bloom that dances in glee on a rainy day and on strokes of humanity, compassion, kindness and service to others as well as the need for a spirit-filled and soulful moments that they have taught us so well in their lifetime.

In William Goldsmith Brown’s words, we find solace: “The sweetest sounds to mortals given are heard in Mother, Home, and Heaven.” Our fondest thought and wishes to all mothers today and always!