Mothering Sunday always falls on the Fourth Sunday in Lent , 21 days before Easter Sunday.

Mothering Sunday is a day honouring mothers and visiting the local mother churches—the church in which they received the sacrament of baptism or Cathedral of the area . Centuries ago it was considered important for people to return to their home or ‘mother’ church once a year. So each year in the middle of Lent, everyone would visit their ‘mother’ church.

Mothering Sunday coincides with Laetare Sunday, also called Mid-Lent Sunday or Refreshment Sunday, a day of respite from fasting halfway through the penitential season of Lent.

The traditional epistle for the fourth Sunday in Lent states that the heavenly Jerusalem “is the mother of us all” (Gal 4:26).