Mary Mother of the Church

• 8 years ago

By DON FIER

Part 2

“Mary is the summary image of the Church,” declares Christoph Cardinal Schönborn as he comments on the topic we began to reflect upon last week: Mary — Mother of Christ, Mother of the Church. The archbishop of Vienna and principal editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) continues, “Whoever wishes to draw nearer, in faith, to the mystery of the Church will look to Mary” (Living the Catechism of the Catholic Church, p. 137).

Vatican Council II, which had the Church as its central theme, devoted the final chapter of its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Why close a document on the Church with an exposition on Mary? “The Church knows no other way to glorify God,” explains Douglas G. Bushman, STL, “than to grow in the holiness which is most perfectly realized in Mary, Mother of the Lord” (The Sixteen Documents of Vatican II, p. 114).

Blessed Paul VI, who solemnly proclaimed Mary “Mother of the Church” in closing Vatican II’s third session in 1964, three years later promulgated his apostolic exhortation Signum Magnum, which includes the theological basis for Mary’s spiritual maternity. And to further instruct the faithful on the prominence which our Lady has in the life of the Church, St. John Paul II issued his encyclical letter Redemptoris Mater (RM) in the Marian Year of 1987. Later in his pontificate, the reigning Vicar of Christ devoted no less than 70 general audiences to catechesis on the Blessed Mother (from September 1995 to November 1997).

When the ever-virgin Mary consented to become the Mother of Christ at the Annunciation, as we saw last week, she also embraced her role as Mother of the Church. “By pronouncing her ‘fiat’ at the Annunciation and giving her consent to the Incarnation,” explains the Catechism, “Mary was already collaborating with the whole work her Son was to accomplish. She is mother wherever he is Savior and head of the Mystical Body” (CCC, n. 973). But it was at her Son’s side on Calvary that the Blessed Virgin Mary’s spiritual maternity was most fully demonstrated.

It has been the traditional teaching of the Church that when the crucified Jesus said from the cross to His sorrowful Mother: “Woman, behold your son!” (John 19:26) in reference to St. John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 21:20) is symbolic of all humanity, especially all the baptized faithful. For example, in his 1895 encyclical letter Adiutricem Populi, Pope Leo XIII wrote: “Now in John, as the Church has constantly taught, Christ designated the whole human race, and in the first rank are they who are joined with Him by faith” (n. 6).

Just a few years later, Pope St. Pius X said in his 1906 encyclical: “All we who are united to Christ…have issued from the womb of Mary like a body united to its head” (Ad Diem Illum Laetissimum, n. 10). In other words, the Roman Pontiff is referring to Mary as “the womb of the Church.”

In his general audience of September 24, 1997, St. John Paul II taught: “With these words [‘Woman, behold your son’] the crucified one established an intimate relationship between Mary and his beloved disciple, a typological figure of universal scope, intending to offer his Mother as Mother of all mankind.”

And in Mother of the Redeemer, he said: “The words uttered by Jesus from the Cross signify that the motherhood of her who bore Christ finds a ‘new’ continuation in the Church and through the Church, symbolized and represented by John” (RM, n. 24).

To cite one final papal source, Pope Pius XII spoke of Mary’s spiritual maternity in his 1943 encyclical On the Mystical Body of Christ. Of our Lady he said: “It was she, the second Eve, who, free from all sin, original or personal, and always more intimately united with her Son, offered Him on Golgotha to the Eternal Father for all the children of Adam, sin-stained by his unhappy fall, and her mother’s rights and her mother’s love were included in the holocaust. Thus she who, according to the flesh, was the mother of our Head, through the added title of pain and glory became, according to the Spirit, the mother of all His members” (Mystici Corporis Christi, n. 110).

Although Pope Pius did not refer directly to Mary with the title “Mother of the Church,” he affirms that she has for the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, “the same motherly care and ardent love with which she cherished and fed the Infant Jesus in the crib” (ibid.).

Many Mariologists and biblical exegetes also point to the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee as scriptural evidence of Mary’s maternity in the spiritual order. In a superb book entitled Our Lady and the Church (OLC), published in 1961 just prior to the commencement of Vatican II, Fr. Hugo Rahner, SJ, makes precisely that case. Prior to performing His first public miracle at His Mother’s request, the God-man responded: “Woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come” (John 2:4).

In figurative language, Fr. Rahner argues that “the marriage at Cana…includes the whole history of salvation from the first coming at the Incarnation to our Lord’s return at the end of days….Humanity is being changed [from the water of human nature] into the wine of the life of grace, while Mary is there, the mother who cares and intercedes, standing at the very center of the mystery in which God takes human nature from the child of Eve: Mary is the mother of all who are sanctified by their faith in the coming of God” (OLC, p. 56).

It is especially noteworthy that our Lord addresses His Mother as “woman.” It is the same title He used when speaking to her on Calvary when His hour had arrived. As pointed out by Fr. Rahner, the title “woman” as used by Jesus “takes us back at once to the beginning of revelation at the gates of paradise lost” (OLC, p. 55) when God said to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman” (Gen. 3:15).

Likewise, although unanimous agreement is lacking among Scripture scholars regarding the identity of the “woman clothed with the sun” (Rev. 12:1), many posit a Marian interpretation. In Dr. Mark Miravalle’s Mariology: A Guide for Priests, Deacons, Seminarians, and Consecrated Persons, the following interpretation is presented:

“The child to whom [the woman] gave birth is Christ both in his personal and in his Mystical Body. She is pictured as suffering the pains of childbirth, because she brought forth the Mystical Body amid the sorrows of her compassion on Calvary. If this interpretation is valid, the passage of the Apocalypse may be used as a scriptural proof of Mary’s spiritual maternity” (p. 515).

“After her Son’s Ascension,” says the Catechism, “Mary ‘aided the beginnings of the Church by her prayers’” (CCC, n. 965). This is attested to by St. Luke: “All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus” (Acts 1:14). Just as Luke begins his Gospel by describing how the birth of Christ to Mary came about (see Luke 1:26ff), he begins his narrative in the Acts of the Apostles on the emergence of the infant Church with Mary in the midst of the early believers.

Moreover, on Pentecost Sunday, the day traditionally recognized as the Church’s birthday, Mary was present as the disciples received the gift of the Holy Spirit into their hearts, and she remained with them for several years.

When The Need Is Dire

Even after her time on earth was complete, our Lady continues in her role as Mother of the Church: “This maternity of Mary in the order of grace began with the consent which she gave in faith at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross, and lasts until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect” (LG, n. 62).

In other words, following her earthly sojourn and her glorious Assumption into Heaven, Mary continues her salvific work as “Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix” (CCC, n. 969) — she continues to guide and intercede for her faithful spiritual children until they are safely home in Heaven.

Having collaborated fully with our Lord as “co-redemptrix” in His salvific work to gain all the graces necessary to redeem mankind, she remains our most powerful “Advocate.” From her place in Heaven, she continues to intercede universally for the needs of the human family before the throne of Christ the King.

Finally, while in no way obscuring or diminishing the unique mediation of Christ (cf. LG, n. 60), she participates as “Mediatrix” in the distribution of grace won by Jesus. And as we have witnessed over the centuries in many locations such as Lourdes and Fatima, she comes in miraculous ways to the aid of her children when the need is dire.