X Mystery: Mary, Mother of the Church at Pentecost

When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.  Acts 1:13-14

The Church or the Kingdom of God?
"Jesus announced the coming of the Kingdom of God, but what came was the Church." -- Alfred Loisy (1857-1940)

There is a discontinuity between Jesus of Nazareth and the Church; in fact, whereas the word "Ekklesia" appears only twice in the gospels, and only in the Gospel of St. Matthew, (16:18) and (18:1), in two very debatable texts, the expression Kingdom of God, or Kingdom of Heaven as Matthew prefers, appears 127 times.

There is, therefore, a striking contrast in the New Testament between the word CHURCH, which appears 112 times and almost only in the Acts of the Apostles and the Letters, and the word KINGDOM which appears 162 times, and of these, only 35 times in the book of Acts and in the Letters while the remaining 127 times are found in the gospels. This demonstrates how important the Kingdom of God was for Jesus and how of little importance this same Kingdom was for the nascent Church founded by Christ.

The Church, as the mystical body of Christ, can have no other purpose than to continue the work of Christ. Therefore, the purpose of its existence is not to implant itself in every corner of this earth, but to take the Good News of the Kingdom to every corner of the earth.

The main objective is not to produce more and more Christians, to increase the number of its members, but rather to unite all men and women of good will, whether they are from other religions, or atheists or agnostics, so that together they work towards the building of a better world, a more just and fraternal society, where justice, peace, harmony and love reign among all peoples. If this had been the true objective of the Church from the very beginning, as it was of its founder, there would have been no fundamentalism such as the Inquisition, nor holy wars such as the ones driven by the Crusades.

The Church, the leaven of the Kingdom of God
The Church is the way that Christ prepared to be with us in the here and now, in all the "here(s)" and "now(s)" of human history. Christ could have only one human life, but his Word is eternal for all times and all cultures; He himself was not only the Way, the Truth and the Life for the people of his time, but also for the whole human race till the end of time; for this to be so, he had to leave someone to continue his work.

It makes no sense for the eternal Word of God to become incarnate, that is, the only begotten son of God to acquire human nature, the creator to become a creature, just to save those who lived during his time on earth.

It is true that the word Church, as we have said, appears only twice or even just once in all the gospels, but the fact that Jesus chose, from the very beginning, his own collaborators for the work of the Kingdom shows that Jesus wanted to leave a structure that could and would continue his work. Already in his lifetime, Jesus sent his disciples to cities and towns where He himself thought to go, (Luke 10:1), and then sent them out into the whole world (Mark 16:15-18).

The proof that these disciples of his would be his representatives on earth is the fact that he equipped them with the same powers and faculties that he had, (Matthew 21:21; John 14:12). In this last text from John, Jesus also tells the reasons why he passes all his powers and faculties to his disciples: "because I going to the Father".

Furthermore, although he was leaving, he also assured his disciples that he would be with them until the end of time (Matthew 28:20). In fact, when Saul was persecuting Christians, Jesus did not ask him "why do you persecute my disciples?", but rather, "why do you persecute me?" (Acts 9:4). Finally, in his priestly prayer, Jesus prays not only for his disciples, but also for those who would believe in his testimony (John 17:20).

The Church does not exist for itself nor should it preach itself, because its Master and founder did not preach himself: the Church exists for the Mission, that is, to continue the work of its founder and the purpose of the Mission which is the Kingdom. The Church is what we are, it is our identity, the Kingdom is our mission, what we do. The Church is the yeast that leavens the world until the world becomes the Kingdom of God.

Mary and the Kingdom of God
He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.  Luke 1:51-53

Almost all the images of Mary, represented both in statues and paintings, show a woman reserved in words and actions, humble and even submissive, serene, peaceful and sad... they do not reflect this facet of Mary, the Mary of the Magnificat, or at least the part of the Magnificat that I quoted above.

Whenever I read, recite or meditate on this part of the Magnificat, the image of Mary that comes to mind is that of the bare-chested woman waving the flag of the republic in her hand, at the command post, leading the people in the French Revolution. This image does more justice to the content of the prayer of the Magnificat.

It does not seem plausible that the woman in the images representing Mary could have said that God is going to overthrow the powerful from their thrones, and that he will take from the rich and give to the poor. But whoever said this seems to be truly the mother of the one who did just that: Jesus of Nazareth. "De tal palo tal astilla" says a Castilian proverb, "Offspring of fish knows how to swim" says its Portuguese counterpart, or in English “Like father like son” which in this case is more appropriate to say “Like mother like son”. Mary seems to announce in these sentences the kingdom that was to come with her son; a kingdom of Justice and Peace.

Ecclesiae Mater
"Mother of the Church, that is to say of all Christian people, the faithful as well as the pastors, who call her the most loving Mother" and established that "the Mother of God should be further honoured and invoked by the entire Christian people by this tenderest of titles".  Paul VI on 21 November 1964 at the end of the Second Vatican Council

Mary is the mother of the Church because she is the mother of each and every one of her son's disciples (John 19:25-27). Since each of her son's disciples is "ipso facto" a member of the Church as well, therefore Mary is the mother of the Church.

Mary is the mother of the Church because she is the mother of its founder, because as a disciple of her son, she followed in his footsteps along with other women, and did not abandon the company of his disciples after the death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven of her son.

Christ is the head of his mystical body which is the Church; and the birth of the Head is also the birth of the Body, which indicates that Mary is, at the same time, the mother of Christ, the Son of God, and the mother of all the members of his mystical Body, that is, the Church. Mary's divine motherhood did not end with the birth of Jesus; she was throughout her life on earth, and now in Heaven, intimately united to the redemptive work of her son.

Mary is the mother of the Church because as she assisted in the birth of her son, she also assisted in the birth of the Church, for she, like the other female disciples of Jesus, was with her son's male disciples on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended upon them in the form of tongues of fire.

More than mother of the Church, she is "Mater ed Magistral" ("Mother and Teacher", the title of John XXIII’s encyclical) because she was already a teacher in the things of the Holy Spirit, she had already conceived by the work and grace of the third person of the Holy Trinity, so she more than anyone else could instruct the apostles on how to prepare themselves to receive Him. More than mother, she was a catechist, as she prepared the apostles to receive Confirmation. We can say that she was the Godmother at the Confirmation of each of her son's disciples.

Conclusion: Mary is the mother of the Church because she is the mother of the one who founded it, and by the will of the son expressed from the top of the cross, she is the mother of each of his disciples, members of the Church, who together form the mystical body of Christ. If Mary is the mother of Christ, the head of the mystical body that is the Church, then she is also the mother of the body.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

 

IX Mystery: At the Foot of the Cross of Her Son, Mary Becomes our Mother

Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.  John 19:25-27

Solidarity despite the pain
There is nothing that makes you more aware of yourself, more self-conscious, than pain. Provoking pain is really one of the best ways to call yourself to attention, even if it is brought on by biting your own lip or digging a fingernail into a nailbed.

Jesus suffered in his body from exhaustion on his way to the cross, from the lack of food and sleep, from the feeling of asphyxiation caused by being nailed to a cross, from the loss of much blood caused by the scourging and the crown of thorns driven into his head, and from the nails that were hammered into his wrists and ankles.

Jesus suffered in his heart because he had been handed over to the high priests and the Romans by one of his own, one who ate, slept and accompanied him everywhere; he suffered because the rest of the disciples had abandoned him, he suffered because the ungrateful people, the same people who had benefited from his miracles and who had previously acclaimed him as ‘Hosanna, the Son of David!’, are now shouting, "Crucify Him!", putting pressure on Pilate to do their will.

He suffered in his soul because God His Father who during his life was so close to Him and to whom he often turned, with whom he communicated before the most important moments and miracles, this omnipresent Father was now distant or Jesus felt this way when he said, "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34).

Even though he was suffering this triple forms of pain – in his body, heart, and soul – Jesus still thought more of others than of Himself. Pain absorbs us, makes us focus on ourselves, and we easily forget about others. Think about the times when we suffered a strong pain, like a toothache: it seems that everything and everyone disappears around us, only we exist, only we matter.

Jesus, despite his personal suffering, was able to empathize with his poor mother who, like the widow of Nain, was going to be left alone in the world. And even on the cross without much he could do, he entrusted her to his beloved disciple. He who had already given us everything, who had given himself, now gives us his beloved mother as an inheritance. We inherit so many things from Jesus, even his own mother.

Before Jesus, we were only creatures made in the image and likeness of God; with Jesus we are adopted by God as His children, and as Jesus entrusted his mother to the beloved disciple, to the extent that we too are disciples of Jesus, we are adopted by Mary his mother as her children as well.

The only son of his mother who was already a widow
As we contemplate Mary at the foot of her son's cross, we cannot fail to recall the episode of the widow of Nain who was about to bury her only son, being already a widow and thus alone in the world. This suffering was also destined for Mary and prophesied by Simeon.

"In hunting, love and war, for one pleasure comes one hundred sorrows", or "Those whose objective is to love, will meet suffering on the way ". There is no love without suffering, and Mary's love for God's plan and the only begotten Son of God, also her son, brought her more pain than pleasure, more suffering than joy. And this ultimate suffering was the worst of all...

"I'm not going to bury my son, my son is going to bury me," said a father who hijacked a hospital operating room and forced the doctor to operate on his son because he did not have the money for the lifesaving surgery. There can be no greater psychological pain than to watch one’s child suffer and die, while unable to do anything...

In the natural order of events, first the parents die, then the children. Therefore, to watch a child die goes against the natural order of things disabling the lives of the parents, as they leave this world without being able to leave their inheritance to their child, be it genetic or material.

Mary, our mother in heaven
In Heaven, in Heaven, in Heaven, /One day I will see her, (Mary)/
O pure Virgin, thy tenderness /Comes to soothe my pain; /Day and night shall I sing/ Of the beauty of Mary!

Before the apparitions of Fatima, little Lucia who never missed the rosary with her family or in the church, had as her favourite Marian canticle what is cited above. "To heaven, there shall I see her " referring to Mary; little did she know that she was going to see her here on earth, because to see her in heaven she would still have to wait almost one hundred years.

With my mother I will be /in holy glory one day/Together with the Virgin Mary /in heaven I will triumph.
In heaven, in heaven, with my mother I will be /In heaven, in heaven, with my mother I will be.

This other canticle also shows the affection the Portuguese people have for Mary. The songs before and after the apparitions of Fatima demonstrate how much the Portuguese people love their heavenly Mother.

The second part of the Hail Mary prayer lacks this detail, this affirmation that she is our mother. It should be like this: Holy Mary mother of God and our mother, pray for us, your sinful children, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.

Like Abraham was to the people of Sodom and Moses to God's people, Mary was already our intercessor. Now with much more reason, she intercedes for us because in interceding for us, she is interceding for her children. As Abraham is our father in faith, Mary is our mother in faith; it was her faith, her "fiat", that brought salvation to all of us.

Mary, the feminine face of God
Some Jewish woman once asked another Jewish woman, that happened to be a university professor, who was in her opinion the most famous Jewish woman. And they did not like to hear from the lips of this Jewish professor by ethnicity and religion that, whether they liked it or not, Mary is certainly the most famous Jewess in the world, and I would even say of all humanity, because she is the mother of the incarnate Word, of the only begotten Son of God.

Within our vision of God which will always be somewhat anthropomorphic, if Jesus represents the masculine face of God, then Mary represents the feminine face of God. Our love for Mary reminds us of the times of old, when humanity, still in a primitive state of evolution, understood that God was a mother.

To do justice to those times, Pope John Paul I said that God, more than a Father, is a Mother. In Rembrandt's painting of the prodigal son, we see in fact that the father of the prodigal son has one feminine hand, the one over his son's heart, and the other a masculine hand.

Eve, our progenitor, Mary, our mother
Eve was not our mother, but our progenitor: she only gave birth to us, but she did not educate and raise us. The mother who educates, raises and feeds is called in Ethiopia "Injera enat", that is, the "bread mother" which often does not coincide with the one who gave birth to the child.

During my novitiate, I had as a colleague and student of theology, a young man who called his aunt his mother and his mother his aunt. The one who had given birth to him, he called his aunt, and the one who had raised him as a mother and who was biologically his aunt, he called his mother.

They were two sisters: one had my colleague by accident, but later met the man of her life, who did not accept her son, so her sister, who was not thinking of ever getting married, stayed with him so that the sister who gave birth would be free to start a new life with her fiance.

My colleague had no filial feelings toward his biological mother whom he called aunt, and yet it was she who had given birth to him; he had filial feelings only for the one who had raised him with much love, educated and guided him through life, dedicating herself exclusively to him, because she had never wanted to get married. And yet, at a biological level, she was only his aunt.

In human beings, biology counts for little. We call her Mother Teresa of Calcutta and I suppose no one would dare to deny her the title of mother. However, as we all know, she was never a mother biologically, although she behaved as such to many orphaned children and even adults, who saw in her the mother they never had.
 
The devotion of the Christian people, at least of the Catholics and the Orthodox, to Mary is part of the closeness we have with our own mother on earth. She is closer to us than our father, and often, we make her the intermediary between us and him, because we share more confidence with our mother than with our father.

She is always by our side and accompanies us more than our father. This experience makes the Christian people have a special devotion to Mary and project on her the same experience, the same kind of relationship that they have or had with their mother.

Mary is our mother because, like every mother, she is attentive to the needs of her children, as she was at the wedding in Cana, and she is still visiting us today in Guadalupe, Lourdes, and Fatima. Mary is our mother because she educates us with the gospel of her Son when she tells us, “Do whatever he tells you". Eve was our progenitor; Mary is our mother in heaven who accompanies us in our earthly life until we are united with her in Heaven.

The picture illustrating this text depicts St. Bernard, a great lover of Marian devotion, receiving the maternal milk of the Virgin Mary. An image that shocks our today’s mentality, but which was very much in line with the medieval Marian piety that exalted the breasts of our heavenly mother as that woman in Luke’s Gospel exalted them.

Also known as originated from Saint Bernard is the Marian prayer called the "Memorare" which exalts Mary as mother and, as such, an intercessor for us in Heaven:

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary,
that never was it known that  
anyone who fled to your protection,
implored your help, or sought your intercession,
was left unaided.

Inspired with this confidence,
I fly to thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother.
To you do I come.
Before you do I stand,
Sinful and sorrowful.
O Mother of the Word Incarnate,
Despise not my petitions,
But in your mercy hear and answer me. Amen.

Conclusion: Eve is our progenitor, Mary is our Mother, for it is she who educates us, giving birth to the Word of God in human form, the role model of humanity: Jesus of Nazareth.

Fr Jorge Amaro, IMC