By DON FIER
As has been established over the past two weeks, the Church’s teaching that Mary is “Mother of the Church” is deeply rooted in Scripture and Tradition. Although the formal title is of recent origin, it has been implicit in magisterial teaching for many generations. Nowhere can it be more profoundly perceived than in the words of our dying Savior to His Sorrowful Mother at the foot of the cross: “Woman, behold your son!” (John 19:26).
“That filial gesture, full of messianic meaning, went beyond the person of the beloved disciple, designated as the son of Mary,” stated St. John Paul II during his general audience of November 23, 1988. “Jesus wished to give Mary the mission of accepting all his followers of every age as her own sons and daughters.”
Mary’s title as “Mother of the Church” is eminently fitting in every conceivable sense, affirms Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ: She is the Mother of Christ, who instituted the Church and is her invisible Head; she collaborated with her Son at every stage of His redemptive work, from the moment of her fiat at the Annunciation until His death on Calvary; following Christ’s Ascension into Heaven, she assisted the infant Church by her nurturing presence and through her prayers to call down the Holy Spirit; and after her bodily Assumption, she continues to intercede for us with her divine Son as Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix (cf. The Faith, p. 96).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), frequently citing chapter VIII of Lumen Gentium (LG), now speaks of Mary as type and model of the Church: “She is hailed as a pre-eminent and singular member of the Church, and as its type and excellent exemplar [model] in faith and charity” (LG, n. 53; cf. CCC, n. 967). “At once virgin and mother, Mary is the symbol and the most perfect realization of the Church” (CCC, n. 507).
Utilizing the teachings of St. John Paul II from his general audiences and also insights from Fr. Hugo Rahner in Our Lady and the Church (OLC), we will now examine the intimate connections that exist between the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Church in her roles as member, type, and model.
First, what does it mean when we say that Mary was a pre-eminent member of the Church? “According to some people,” observed St. John Paul II in his general audience of July 30, 1997, “Mary cannot be considered a member of the Church, since the privileges conferred on her — the Immaculate Conception, her divine motherhood, and her unique cooperation in the work of salvation — place her in a condition of superiority with respect to the community of believers.”
But like all human persons, “because she belongs to the offspring of Adam she is one with all those who are to be saved” (LG, n. 53). In other words, Mary needed redemption just like each of us. However, through a singular gift of grace, she was preserved from original sin in a different way from us, by anticipation as it were, at the moment of her conception.
Thus, says St. John Paul II, although “differing from all other faithful because of the exceptional gifts she received from the Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary nevertheless belongs to the Church and is fully entitled to be a member” (ibid.).
And as we saw last week, she indeed was in fraternal communion with the apostles and other members of the faithful during the Church’s infancy — she truly belonged to the community of the redeemed and participated in “the breaking of bread [the Eucharistic Celebration] and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). Her status as a pre-eminent member of the Church stems from the special gifts she received, her continuous fiat to the will of the Father, and her intimate collaboration in her Son’s redemptive sacrifice.
Next, what does it mean to say that Mary is a type or figure of the Church? Very early in this series, we discussed the concept of typology (see volume 145, n. 26; June 28, 2012). In his general audience of August 6, 1997, St. John Paul II defines the word type according to St. Paul’s usage of the term in his epistles: “To give tangible form to a spiritual reality.” For example, the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites is a type or figure of Baptism. Likewise, manna and the water gushing forth from the rock are types of the Eucharistic Body and Blood of Christ.
St. John Paul II emphasizes, however, that Mary as a type of the Church is different from Old Testament types or images. Whereas the crossing of the Red Sea and manna and water gushing forth from the rock only prefigure or foreshadow future spiritual realities, “in Mary the spiritual reality signified is already eminently present….In her the spiritual reality proclaimed and represented is completely fulfilled. The Blessed Virgin is a type of the Church, not as an imperfect prefiguration, but as the spiritual fullness which will be found in various ways in the Church’s life” (ibid.).
Similarly, as expressed by Fr. Rahner with regard to the early Church fathers, “In Patristic thought Mary is the typos of the Church: symbol, central idea, and as it were summary of all that is meant by the Church in her nature and vocation” (OLC, pp. 7-8). The Second Vatican Council, in Lumen Gentium, invites us to see in Mary the visible figure of the Church’s spiritual reality and in her spotless motherhood, the Church’s virginal motherhood.
In beautifully expressive language, Fr. Rahner says of Mary: “It was her fiat that marks the end of the Old Testament…and in her womb the New Testament begins, the kingdom of the true David, of whose ‘kingdom there will be no end’ (Luke 1:33)” (OLC, p. 9). He goes on to say that it is a fundamental doctrine of the Church that “Mary is a type or symbol of the Church, and therefore everything that we find in the Gospel about Mary can be understood in a proper biblical sense of the mystery of the Church” (ibid., p. 13), and proceeds to give several examples of the amazing similarities between Mary and the Church.
In her Immaculate Conception, as Fr. Rahner explains, Mary already became a figure of the Church. The Church is the fulfillment of the history that began at Mary’s conception, anticipating her Son’s redeeming sacrifice and culminating in the admission of Adam’s race to eternal life with the Triune God (cf. OLC, p. 17). Like Mary, the Church is immaculate because her members are cleansed by the waters of Baptism and washed with the Blood of Christ; she exists without “spot or wrinkle” (LG, n. 65; CCC, nn. 773, 929).
Citing St. Ambrose, Fr. Rahner explains that just as Mary is perpetually a virgin, so too is the Church. The Church, like Mary, is ever a virgin according to the purity of her faith, and can never fall into Eve’s unfaithfulness. Just as the new Eve, by her undefiled faith and obedience, brought forth the Son of the Father (cf. LG, n. 63), the Church has been promised infallibility, or perpetual purity, through her hierarchical structure in teaching on matters of faith and morals: “The mystery of the perpetual virginity of Mary is continued in the purity of the teaching Church” (OLC, p. 32).
“[The Church] herself is a virgin, who keeps the faith given to her by her Spouse whole and entire. Imitating the mother of her Lord, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, she keeps with virginal purity an entire faith, a firm hope, and a sincere charity” (LG, n. 64).
Holy Mother Church
Lastly, just as Mary became the spiritual mother of all the faithful by giving birth to the Head of the Mystical Body, so too the Church is a mother. In a sense, the womb of the Church is her baptistery. We, her members, receive our birth into everlasting life and enter into the womb of the Church through Baptism.
It can accurately be said that while Mary’s divine Son was born by coming out of Mary’s womb, Christians are born by entering into the Church’s womb. “What happened with Mary through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit is daily renewed mystically within the Church” (OLC, p. 42).
For all of these reasons and many more, she is referred to as “Holy Mother Church,” and Mary is her type and figure.
How is Mary model of the Church? In addition to being a model of the Church’s maternity and virginity, as described above, our Lady “shines forth to the whole community of the elect as the model of virtues” (LG, n. 65).
“By her complete adherence to the Father’s will, to his Son’s redemptive work, and to every prompting of the Holy Spirit,” teaches the Catechism, “the Virgin Mary is the Church’s model of faith and charity” (CCC, n. 967).
The Church “strives to imitate the perfection which in [Mary] is the fruit of her full compliance to Christ’s command: ‘You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matt. 5:48)” (ibid., St. John Paul II, September 3, 1997).
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(Don Fier serves on the board of directors for The Catholic Servant, a Minneapolis-based monthly publication. He and his wife are the parents of seven children. Fier is a 2009 graduate of Ave Maria University’s Institute for Pastoral Theology. He is doing research for writing a definitive biography of Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ.)
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