MARY, MOTHER OF THE CHURCH
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MARY, MOTHER OF THE CHURCH
Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP
Gen 3:9-15,20; Ps 87; Jn 19:25-34
Woman, behold your Son
We celebrate the memorial of
Mary as the mother of the Church. The readings chosen by the Church for this
celebration point to the mystery of the motherhood of Mary. She is
the mother of all the redeemed. As the first reading from the book of Genesis
shows, she entered the picture at the
fall of Adam and Eve, our first parents. The tragedy
of the fall gave the evil one opportunity to enslave our nature to sin, which
gave birth to death. God, to whom nothing can happen as a surprise,
immediately unveiled his plan of salvation for the human race. As we
have noted many times in our reflections, whatever God utters by his word is
already in existence, for the word of God creates reality. The delay
in the materialisation of the entities brought to existence by the word of God
is due to the faith of the people. Thus, the
Woman and her Seed was already existence in God and given to us as the sign of
our salvation. “I will make you enemies of each other: you and the
woman, your offspring and her offspring. He will crush your head and you will strike his
heel.” This is the
passage the Church refers to as the ‘Proto
Evagelium,’ that is, the first
Gospel.
It is the first Gospel because it is the first divine expression of
salvation for man. It was not just a plan but a spiritual reality
that started operating immediately for the
salvation of man. The word of God calls things into existence, as we
already mentioned, but their physical appearance awaits the faith of the people.
Hence, in the
expression of human salvation above, the woman and her seed form an integral
whole. The divinely created enmity is first between the
Woman and Satan, and then between the offspring of the Woman
and that of Satan. The offspring of the evil one is sin he planted
in Adam and Eve and subsequently found in all their seeds. Since Jesus
Christ is the only man without sin, the Church, following the authority of this
scriptural passage, posits that Mary was
conceived without sin. This is a reasonable conclusion given the enmity
God put in place by his divine word. The cosmic struggle between light and darkness in
the salvation of mankind has Mary and her Son Jesus Christ at the
centre on one side, and Satan—the primeval serpent—and sin his offspring at the centre on
the other side. Each human person takes a side depending on his choices
and allegiance. Nobody is
allowed to sit on the fence.
The gospel reading chosen for the celebration brings the decisive
point of victory over darkness and evil into focus. We see
the realisation or materialisation of the promise of salvation given by the
word of God at the fall. “Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother and his
mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. Seeing his
mother and the disciple he loved standing near her, Jesus said to his mother,
‘Woman, this is your son.’ Then to the disciple he said, ‘This is your mother.’
And from that moment the disciple made a place for her in his home.” From the way the Evangelist presented this
passage, it is obvious that it was
meant to show the fulfilment of
the Genesis passage; the two figures are
clearly outlined, Mary standing with
her Son to crush the head of the serpent through her profound humility, the
sacrifice of herself and her Son Jesus Christ; and the evil one striking the
heel of her Son by the death he inflicted on his human nature. The humanity
of Jesus Christ is, as it were, the foot with which the eternal Word crushed
the head of the serpent and trampled upon sin and death. A gesture
of great ecclesial importance is that of Jesus Christ handing his mother to his
beloved apostle John, who represents the Church at the foot of the cross and
handing John to his mother. This gesture gave rise to today’s celebration; Mary
is the mother of the Church.
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