THE MOTHER OF THE CHURCH

MARY, MOTHER OF THE CHURCH

Gen 3:9-15,20; Ps 87; Jn 19:25-34

Behold Your Mother

The Church, in her wisdom, celebrates today as the memorial of Mary, the Mother of the Church. It is appropriate to celebrate this memorial after Pentecost, when we believe God formally inaugurated the Church. The celebration highlights the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Pentecost event. The scripture says she was with the apostles and disciples of Jesus Christ in the Upper Room, where they were praying for the coming of the Holy Spirit. The role of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a mother is evident in the intercessory prayer for the Pentecost. Her maternal intercession to God for the birth of the Church, was the continuation or extension of her loving desire that enabled her to conceive Jesus Christ our Lord. The Holy Spirit, through whom she conceived the Son of Man, the Head of the Church, was already in her to give birth to the mystical body of her Son, Jesus Christ. As Saint Luis de Montfort explained, it would be unnatural and monstrous if the body of Christ were conceived by a mother or woman different from the mother of Jesus Christ. Hence, we must believe that the mystical order obeys the law of nature, for the two are from the same God the Father. Therefore, Mary’s presence in the Upper Room on the day of Pentecost was never accidental but designed by God for his good purposes. The head and the body of the mystical Christ are the same; they are conceived by the power and working of the Holy and born of the Virgin Mary.

The good purposes of God the Father were foretold in the beginning as we read in Genesis. “Then the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, be accursed beyond all cattle, all wild beasts. You shall crawl on your belly and eat dust every day of your life. I will make you enemies of each other: you and the woman, your offspring and her offspring. It will crush your head and you will strike its heel.’” The mystical Jesus Christ is of course the offspring of the woman, and not just the Son of Man, for the victory of Jesus Christ over sin and evil has made us his members through the Holy Spirit we have received. Through the Holy Spirit, we share one life with the Son of Man and we call God Father. As Saint Paul reminded us in his letter to the Romans, which we read yesterday, anyone without the Holy Spirit is not a child of God. Anyone without the Holy Spirit is not a child of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the woman of prophecy. She conceives all the children of God and brings them to birth. “It is he, the Lord Most High, who gives each his place. In his register of peoples he writes: ‘These are her children,’ and while they dance, they will sing: ‘In you all find their home.’

The Blessed Virgin Mary’s motherhood is what Jesus Christ demonstrated and reminded us during his death throes. Not minding his pains and agony on the cross, he presented Mary to us as our mother, using the beloved apostle, John, to represent all his own. “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.” The mystery Jesus revealed here is beyond our complete comprehension. Why would Jesus refer to his mother, who was in grief at the agony and the impending death of her son, as ‘Woman’, if not to reveal the mystery of her motherhood foretold in the beginning? If this is not the case, his entrusting his beloved apostle, John, to her would contradict his intention to treat her as any other woman. John, the beloved apostle, understood the Lord’s gesture and the depth of its mystical meaning, and he reverently and lovingly took Mary to his home and cared for her thenceforth. The Lord was not just speaking to John, but to all who are dear to him, whom he redeemed with his precious blood, we are to take Mary into our homes and hearts and love and cherish her as our mother. We celebrate the fact that she is our mother and the mother of the Church today. Let us thank and praise God that we also are born in her.

Let us pray: O God, Father of mercies, whose Only Begotten Son, as he hung upon the Cross, chose the Blessed Virgin Mary, his Mother, to be our Mother also; grant, we pray, that with her loving help, your Church may be more fruitful day by day, and exulting in the holiness of her children, may draw to her embrace all the families of the peoples. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.