VIII Mystery: Mary, Disciple and Mother

While he was saying this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!’ But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’  Luke 11:27-28

While he was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, ‘Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.’ But to the one who had told him this, Jesus replied, ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ And pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’  Matthew 12:46-50

These two texts should be read in context of each other. In the first, Mary's motherhood is exalted; in the second, it is not demeaned because the two texts say the same thing, that is, Mary's motherhood is a consequence of her discipleship. Mary, before being a mother, was a disciple because she heard the Word of God through Archangel Gabriel and put it into practice by accepting to be the mother of God's only begotten Son. Mary was a mother because she was a disciple and not a disciple because she was a mother.

In a certain sense, Mary is not a mother by any special privilege, but because she was a disciple. "You're blessed because you believed," says her cousin Elizabeth, which means that Mary would not have been blessed if she had not believed. In Mary, as in all of us, it was faith that saved her and the fulfillment of the Word that made her the mother of Jesus.

This same path is offered to all of us by Jesus, that of being intimate with him as he and his mother are with each other. All we have to do is to listen to the Word and put it into practice. For whoever loves me, says Jesus, that is, whoever is or wants to be intimate with me, keeps my commandments (John 14:21).

Listening to the Word without putting it into practice is like building a house or a life on sand (Matthew 7:21-27), and being at the mercy of the winds and tides, time, fashions and situations, being a person without his or her own personality but guided by external factors, like a reed shaken by the wind (Matthew 11:7). And at the end of an inconsequential life to run the risk of the Lord telling them from inside, when they knock at the door of eternity, that he does not know them (Luke 13:27).

Another way of proving that the motherhood, both in Mary and in all of us, is the consequence of discipleship, that is, of hearing the word and putting it into practice, is the fact that Jesus gave his mother into the hands of the beloved disciple, that is, of the preferred disciple, the one who best obeyed his word. This disciple, by being authentic, became also the son of His mother (John 19:25-27).

Texts and contexts
The text that exalts Mary's motherhood is unique in Luke, there is no parallel in either Matthew or Mark. If feminists had to choose a gospel, Luke would certainly be the one chosen, because it places the most attention on the feminine, the one that gives more prominence to women, both in the life of Jesus and in his parables and events.

Both of the above texts, Luke (11:27-28) and Matthew (12:46-50), are preceded by the episode of the soul cleansed of demons that, by not being filled with good works, was later assaulted by other worse demons, thus ending up in a state worse than before.

From this we can conclude that the episode of the soul and demons serves, both for Luke as well as Matthew, as an illustration and proof that in fact the Word of God is either put into practice or is good for nothing for those who only hear it, and the state of their souls may be worse after hearing the Word and not putting it into practice, like that of the rich young man.

Negative spirituality
‘When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but not finding any, it says, “I will return to my house from which I came.” When it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first.’  Luke 11:24-26

The text does not say so, but the woman's words were certainly inspired by the Holy Spirit. To do the woman justice, the text should say "a woman among the people filled with the Holy Spirit exclaimed..." The woman's exclamation took place after Jesus narrates what happens when a person succeeds in eradicating evil from his soul, but does not fill it with good works. The wisdom of Jesus touched the heart of this woman.

This text is unusual, but it alludes to a spirituality that I call negative, that is, of spending all our time and energy fighting evil without doing anything good. The people say, when death comes may it catch us confessed, that is, the important thing is not to have sinned. This spirituality is negative, because the focus is not on doing good, but on avoiding evil, on not sinning.

A person is not good because he avoids evil, but because he does good. Those who avoid evil overcome negativity and bring themselves up to zero; only those who do good take themselves above zero. The rich young man who went to Jesus was a worthy representative of the Old Testament, for since his childhood days he had observed the ten commandments; but when Jesus asked him for just one positive thing, he backed away; avoiding evil is much easier than getting out of one’s comfort zone and doing good.

The priest and the Levite passed by the badly injured man in front of them who had been robbed and beaten by thieves, and who needed help, because their concern was not to do good, but to avoid evil. The evil they were witnessing at that moment had not been caused by them, so it was perfectly moral to pass him by. A life based on avoiding evil leads to a lack of solidarity with one’s neighbour. Since the best defense is the attack, as the proverb says, the best way to fight evil is to do good.

Nature has horror of emptiness
It is a law of physics whose application in the spiritual field we see exemplified in the Gospel text that opens this article. The obsessive compulsion of cleanliness is a psychological illness: there are people who spend their lives washing their hands. Perhaps they can stand before God with clean hands, but God will tell them that their hands are empty...

If we want to remove the air from a glass, we can extract it artificially with a machine to create a vacuum, or we can naturally fill it with wine. That is, if we occupy our time and energies every day in doing good, we have no time left to do evil. In this way, we kill two birds with one stone, we do good and avoid evil. This is what Jesus’ unusual text suggests about an empty soul with no evil inside that if not filled with good, is quickly taken over by evil again.

At Last Judgment, those who are saved are those who helped the Lord in the poor and marginalized, and gave him food to eat, gave him drink, welcomed him when he was a stranger or pilgrim, clothed him when he was naked, and visited him when he was in prison or hospital.

Those who condemned themselves were not the wicked, but those who turned their backs on every opportunity that life gave them to do good, because their concern was to avoid evil (Matthew 25:31-46). They are the bad Samaritans, the ones who passed by when they saw a brother in need, the ones who say that the problem is not of their making.

According to the text about the last judgment in Matthew 25, our confession should no longer be to make an examination of conscience to seek the evil we have done, but to seek the good we have not done. We should even forget the evil we have done and do good deeds, look for opportunities to do good and not to lose the ones that life provides us. It is the sins of omission that lead to condemnation, the opportunities we had to do good and yet did nothing.

The Commandment of Love and the Golden Rule
Jesus replaced the ten commandments which practically only tell us what not to do, with a positive commandment: love God above all things and our neighbour as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-39). Saint Augustine best interprets these two commandments in his famous phrase, "Love, and do what you will". What you do for love will never be wrong. Understanding love, of course, as St. Thomas Aquinas defines it, to love is to will the good of the other.

And what you hate, do not do to anyone. Tobit 4:15
‘In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.’  Matthew 7:12

The golden rule itself exists in all religions, and the Bible formulates it in a rule that we all learn in Sunday school: "Do not do to others what you do not want others do to you”. Minimalism is so ingrained in our psyche, the negative spirituality of avoiding evil without doing good, that our catechists did not teach us Jesus’ golden rule that is written in the positive sense, “Do onto others what you want others do onto you”. Instead, they have taught us the negative rule, the one found in the book of Tobit and which is the Jewish rule, included in the Old Testament.

Conclusion – Mary is the mother of Jesus because she was first a disciple, that is, she heard the Word and put it into practice. If we listen to the Word and put it into practice, we too can enjoy the same intimacy that Jesus and His mother had.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

VII Mystery: The Mediation of Mary at the Wedding in Cana of Galilee

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’  John 2:1-5

In St. John’s Gospel, at the end of the previous chapter, Jesus said to Nathaniel, “You will see greater things than this” (John 1:50). The wedding which the following chapter tells us took place in Cana of Galilee, the very town Nathaniel lived. At normal weddings, it was customary to serve the worst wine at the end, when the guests are inebriated, but at this wedding, which is also a symbol of the wedding in which God the Father marries his Son to humanity (Luke 14:15-24), the best wine was served last.

Jesus described Nathanael as "an Israelite in whom there is no deceit" (John 1:47). Therefore, we can conclude that, in this text, Nathanael represents the Jewish people at its best. For this people, who is also compared to the Lord's Vineyard (Psalm 79), the best is yet to come; therefore, the last wine is Jesus himself, the new wine for which we must have new wineskins, that is, new and open minds to be able to contain and hold the power of a spirit-filled wine.

There were six stone jars filled with water; and at Jesus' command, all the water turned into wine. According to the Jews, seven is the perfect and complete number; while six is the incomplete and imperfect number.  So, the six stone water jars represent all the imperfections of the Jewish law. Jesus came to put an end to the imperfection of the law and to put in its place the new wine of the gospel of his grace. Jesus transformed the imperfection of the law into the perfection of grace.

The amount of wine was astronomical: 680 liters in total. At no wedding on this planet could such quantity be drunk in full; what John means is that the grace that comes in Jesus and through Jesus is enough to reach everyone in the entire world for all times and still have leftovers, because it is limitless like God himself. ‘I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly’ (John 10:10).

The mother of Jesus and his cousins were invited to this wedding. Jesus probably invited his disciples as well. At this wedding, Jesus goes from being the son of Mary to being the Lord, the master of his disciples. It is a farewell wedding in which Jesus embarks on his public life and cuts the umbilical cord that binds him to his family. Later on, as we know, these two groups, the relatives of the Lord and the Lord’s disciples, are not going to get along until the matter is settled at the Council of Jerusalem, presided over not by Peter but by James the Lesser, a cousin of the Lord.

"They have no wine"
Mary, the mother of the Lord, after she visited her cousin Elizabeth, continues to visit her people in Fatima, Guadalupe and Lourdes, in addition to so many other places, because she is the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). She is a good observer, like God the Father, of the needs of others (Exodus 3:7) and, like God the Father, she sympathizes with the poor and the afflicted.

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear. Isaiah 25:6

In those days, as in all times, running out of wine at a wedding was a real disaster. Wine has a place at a wedding, just like meat. Good food without wine is not so appetizing. It would be a dishonor to the bride and the groom, and a bad omen, if the wine ran out without the guests being satiated. Mary foresaw all this and turned to her son to take care of the situation. He is the savior, not her; he is the one who can do something, remedy the situation, save the reputation of the bride and the groom, not her.

Mary is the mediatrix of the principal Grace which is God’s entry into the world, because through her and incarnated in her, she proved, in this episode of the wedding in Cana, to be the mediatrix of all graces, small or great. Everything Mary asks of her son, he grants. Mary is our intercessor in heaven, she observes what we lack and reports them back to her son.

The Vineyard of the Lord which represents the house of Israel (Psalm 79) has already given what it had to give; it no longer produces fruit. God who sends successive prophets in search of fruits on the vine, do not find them, so finally He sends his son, and the vinedressers have the audacity to kill him outside the vineyard (Mark 12:1-12). In the Bible, wine generally means joy. Here are some of the many texts that testify to this:

They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord, over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; their life shall become like a watered garden, and they shall never languish again.  Jeremiah 31:12

You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use, to bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart.  Psalms 104:14-15

Then the trees said to the vine, “You come and reign over us.” But the vine said to them, “Shall I stop producing my wine that cheers gods and mortals, and go to sway over the trees?”  Judges 9:12-13

Feasts are made for laughter; wine gladdens life…  Ecclesiastes 10:19

Gladness and joy have been taken away from the fruitful land of Moab; I have stopped the wine from the wine presses; no one treads them with shouts of joy… Jeremiah 48:33

I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.  Matthew 26:29

Mary is the humble daughter of Zion, the virgin who gave birth to the new wine, God with us, she is the hope of Israel, a new shoot from a dry vine that no longer produces fruits to make wine. From her will gush a wine that is the salvation and healing of humanity. In her and through her, the vine will produce again and there will be joy not only for Israel, but for the whole world.

"Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?"
Mary is a mother who cuts the umbilical cord with her son, and instead of keeping him to herself, she launches him into life even before the thought that his time has come had taken hold in his mind. This reminds me of swallows that push their young out of the nest because the time has come for them to fly away so they can migrate to warmer lands before the winter comes.

Young swallows do not fly off from the ground; hence their first flight out of the nest, if it goes wrong, could also be their last. Mary runs this risk with Jesus, of sending him off too soon. But she too was assisted by the Holy Spirit, so she acted with boldness and determination.

Jesus' initial reluctance to perform the miracle is pedagogical, as in the case of the Syrian-Phoenician woman. What this means is that even if Jesus does not want or it is not in his plans to help us, if we make the request through his Blessed Mother, he will not refuse it because now it is not only our request but also hers. She on our behalf puts all her weight, all her value, all her importance and power of influence into this request, so that Jesus cannot refuse it.

The excuse that Jesus used that the lack of wine did not concern them is in fact the excuse of every bad Samaritan. Mary makes the problems of others her own, she is empathic. Many people see the needs of others and like the priests in the parable of the Good Samaritan, they just pass by it because they think that the problem is not theirs. Today I am the one with a need, tomorrow it could you; therefore, what you want others do for you, you do for others: this is Jesus’ positive version of the golden rule (Matthew 7:12).

“My hour has not yet come”
Jesus sees his life as a mission: he has no spare time, for him time is short, he has no hobbies nor time to kill. It is in this sense that we should understand this sentence, his mission has not yet begun, he is still in the preparation phase. Luke describes Jesus’ life as being on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and on this pilgrimage, all places and events point to the final hour of his death and redemption of humanity. Jesus always seems to have a full agenda and everything is properly organized, controlled and calculated:

‘Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.’ And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.  Mark 1:38-39

He said to them, ‘Go and tell that fox for me, “Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem.”  Luke 13:32-33

"Do whatever he tells you"
Jesus' response to his mother's appeal was doubly negative; the first shaking of the head to indicate that the problem was neither his nor hers, and the second, to say that even if he could and wanted to do something, his time had not yet come.

Great is Mary’s faith, like that of the Syrian-Phoenician woman in the Gospel (Matthew 15:21-28) who is not discouraged by Jesus’ rejection and continues to believe that he can and will heal her daughter. Mary also turns a deaf ear to Jesus' negative words and is so sure that he will do something to solve the problem, remedy the situation, that she immediately tells the servants to make themselves available to her son, to immediately do whatever he orders them to do.

It is as if Mary is telling us that each thing we ask of her, "consider done whatever you have just asked of me", even before mentioning the matter to her Son, because she knows that a good son never refuses his mother's request. On the other hand, our dear mother in Heaven does not bother her son about everything, but only when it comes to a serious problem; and that problem at the wedding in Cana was serious indeed.

We can interpret this Gospel literally – the lack of wine at a wedding – or interpret it metaphorically, that is, humanity without the new wine that is Jesus has no joy in living, it lives depressed and without meaning; and depression, as we know, can lead to suicide.

Doing Jesus' will is in fact the attitude of a true disciple; more than that, it is the condition "sine qua non" of whether or not we are disciples of Jesus: Matthew 23:3 – Luke 11:28 – Matthew 6:1 – John 13:17 – Matthew 7:23 - John 3:21 – Matthew 7:21-24 – Matthew 28:18-20 – Luke 11:28.

Jesus’ food was to do the Father’s will (John 4:34). A true disciple of Jesus can have no other food but to listen to the Word, digest it (Jeremiah 15:16) and make it come to life, that is, to incarnate it in each and every act, to the point of becoming another Christ on earth and thus continuing his work of salvation.

Conclusion: As an ambassador, Mary informs her Son of men’s needs: "They have no wine..."; and informs men of what they need to do to have those needs met, that is: "Do whatever he tells you...".

Fr. Jorge Amaro IMC