Meditation

When Adam first discovers the mystery of woman, he describes her as “Eve,” which means “life.” She is created in and for maternity, which is constituted by her feminine genius and capacity to bear life within her. In this sense, all women in the first woman inhabit this relational dynamism of receptive self-giving, one which culminates in the maternal expression of new life.

These primordial biblical grounds elucidate what will in time culminate in Mary, the mother of the Church. What Eve bound in disobedience, Mary will release, St. Irenaeus tells us. The fall of humanity, with all its devastation, stands in need of redemption only accomplished by God in Christ. But the woman, a New Eve, will stand with him as helpmate and companion, and in time become “the mother of all the living” (Gen. 3:20).

Meditation

As the centuries unfold and the covenantal bond between God and his chosen people are intensified, the prophets begin to call out to Israel with a new title⎯ “daughter Zion” (Zech 9:9). Named for the fortified hill atop the holy city of Jerusalem, Zion becomes the signifier of the redeemed people, now interpreted in bridal relationship to God. It will usher in a time of rejoicing, as the promise of the bridegroom, so long in expectation, will be soon drawn to fulfillment. 

As the early Church meditated on the mystery of Mary, she discovered in her a typological relationship (a foreshadowing of a reality) between the bride Zion fulfilled in Mary, the mother of God. But as Mary never stands alone, so too does she reconstitute the New Zion as a people, namely the Church of whom she is mother. Just as the covenantal life of Israel takes bridal expression in daughter Zion, so too will Christ’s faithful and steadfast love of the Father ground the nascent Church in the Mystery of the “daughter of the Son” (as Dante says), and usher in the fulfillment of the Old Covenant.

Meditation

The mystery of Mary as mother of the Church arises first and foremost from the gratuity of grace. God frees and manifests  a singular grace in prevenient form to a young woman in Nazareth. The moment is enshrouded in mystery, kept for God alone. But as the Church prays, the pure receptivity of this grace is the source of Mary’s capacity for total self-giving in motherhood. She stands not as some kind of untouchable statute in grace, but as the fullness of humanity alive as it was made to be. 

Like Mary, the Church is utterly and entirely dependent on the grace of Christ, “in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). But the immaculate grounds of the Church are not in us, nor in the objective holiness of the hierarchical office⎯they lay purely in the subjectivity of Mary’s graced existence. From this grace, we will find healing, elevation, and ultimately, a mother.

Meditation

Just as gifts require reception to truly be fulfilled, grace calls for the response of love. Mary, in pure feminine and womanly fashion, honors this reciprocity in the most eloquent words ever spoke by creation: “Be it done unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). This, her fiat, is the most precious gift to God, and as St. Thomas Aquinas writes, is given on behalf of all creation.

Mary’s fiat not only ushers in the mystery of the Incarnate Word; it is the pattern of the Church at prayer. In the chamber of Nazareth, Mary alone, perfected in grace, stands as the Church in her first and proleptic posture. She manifests to us the inner logic of created being, and as a mother, begins her long instruction of us, her children, into the mysterious immersion which is itself Christian prayer.

Meditation

Within the dynamic unity of grace and assent, Immaculate Conception and fiat, the mystery of all mysteries is born⎯ "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Now we come to understand what centuries had prepared; that God was “to be born of a woman” (Gal. 4:4). We have grown too accustomed to this fact and must now wrestle with the mystery. God could have accomplished his plan of redemption through innumerable forms⎯but he chose one, and that was motherhood. The eternal Son of the Father was truly and completely born of a woman.

Mary’s divine maternity, which was called in the ancient Church Theotokos (literally God-bearer), was dogmatically vindicated in the fifth century at Ephesus. From it, the entire liturgical, artistic and theological patrimony of the Church will unfold. Mary is truly the Mother of God; only in and through that will she come to be the mother of all those born of God, namely the Church.

Meditation

As is often mistaken, Mary’s motherhood does not cease with the birth of Christ. She is always and forever his mother, just as we would say with ours. But as her life is co-extensive with that of her Son, her path must follow his to the cross. The trajectory of the life of the mother is from crib to cross, from the mystery of the Incarnation to its culmination in the Redemption. Mary will stand with her Son as he becomes the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world; and by doing so, become the New Eve.

In the fifteenth century in Austria, the name of this mystery was called “co-redemptrix.” The word is valuable and profound but can be misleading. In its essence, Mary is pure “compassion,” meaning “suffering-with.” She is not co- in the sense of necessity (Christ did not need her); but co- in the way that the truth of love is revealed. Love always desires to co-inhere in the other, to indwell in the other in the form of abiding love. At the moment of the Passion, Mary stands not just as the mother of God, but as the Church, being the receptive and faithful love into which all Christians will be born.

Meditation

After the mystery of the weeks following the resurrection and ascension, Mary will stand once again in the midst of the re-collected apostles, as the pattern of the Church at prayer. She the archetype and personal center of the Church is the nexus point upon which all the apostles (who “abandoned him and fled”) will be reunited. She is the source of integrity and purity in the life of the Church; as an asymptote approaches the line, so too can we never fully reach the mystical center of ecclesial holiness, which is Mary.

In a new moment, the fire of the Holy Spirit infuses the Church and becomes her inner soul (Augustine). At this moment of intensified quickening, Mary steps into the mission of motherhood in a deeper⎯and now thoroughly pneumatic⎯form. Her bridal existence is transformed as the temple of the Holy Spirit; through it, the fire of Christic charity will be poured out upon her children for the rest of history.

Meditation

As Christ’s earthly mission is drawn to conclusion, so too must the mother of God’s. But the event of her bodily assumption, which occurred the end of her earthly life, is not end of her mission⎯it is a supernatural elevation. Mary continues as the mother of God in his humanity, now resurrected and glorified in Heaven. The mystical body, which is the Church, is properly speaking, the body in which Mary gave birth to now perfected in the supernatural order. It is from heaven that she begins to bring her work to completion, a task that will set out over all of history and conclude only at the Second Coming.

Mary’s motherhood is now purely celestial, and it is the motherhood of the Church. Strictly speaking, Mary exercises her maternity through this dispensing of grace, which we call “mediatrix.” Like Co-redemptrix, this theological term is profound but must be deployed rightly. Jesus is the mediator; but given our knowledge of the revealed logic of trinitarian love, we know that God desires all true love to be an indwelling love. It is in this way that Mary is drawn into the mystery of Christ work of glorifying the Father through the transformation of the cosmos.

Meditation

On November 21, 1964, Pope St. Paul VI concluded the Second Vatican Council by solemnly naming Mary as the Mother of the Church. This designation, metaphysically grounded in Mary’s divine maternity, rooted as it is in the biblical typology of the New Eve, elevated the mystery of Mary by bringing it to the fore of the Church’s thought and heart. It stands as the mystery which crowns Vatican II, and the point of reference for how the Church interprets herself in the modern world.

As we invoke Mary, our mother and the mother of the Church, we recall how St. John Paul the Great, our patron, always lived in reference to her. He entrusted all things to her care, as a real, concrete and living mother. She was the one who could procure protection, alleviate suffering, and advocate for the dispensation of grace. Mary is the one who lives most intimately in union with God, and as the Church in personal form, draws us into the depths of union with God. If all sons born of God are born through Mary’s maternity in the Church, then our baptism and subsequent birth in God happened not only in the Church⎯but in and through Mary’s divine maternity. She is our mother, always and forever, because she is the Church and bride of God.