Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church

We have just finished the season of Easter and we are beginning what is known as ‘Ordinary Time’. Yet, the readings for this feast bring us back both to Good Friday and the period of the first Easter. The evangelist John places Mary at the foot of the cross and the evangelist Luke places her with some women and other disciples, include the eleven, shortly after the Ascension of Jesus. In the gospel reading the dying Jesus is portrayed as instructing his mother to take the beloved disciple as her son, ‘Here is your son’. In this fourth gospel the disciple Jesus loved is representative of all subsequent disciples. He is never named and, so, becomes someone with whom all who hear and read this gospel can identify. In taking the beloved disciple as her son, the mother of Jesus is portrayed as the mother of all subsequent believers, the community of disciples or church in every generation. When Jesus says to the beloved disciple, ‘Here is your mother’, we are all being instructed to see the mother of Jesus as our own mother. In the following chapter of this gospel, the risen Lord, in conversation with Mary Magdalene, will refer to God as ‘my Father and your Father’. Jesus seeks to draw us all into a sharing in his own relationship with God, his heavenly Father, and with Mary, his earthly mother. It is said of the beloved disciple in the gospel reading that he took the mother of Jesus ‘into his own home’, which could be understood as his own house and family or as the family or community of disciples. As our representative, this beloved disciple takes the mother of Jesus as his own mother, and we are all invited to do the same. In one sense our earthly mothers stand over us and in another sense they stand alongside us. The same is true of Mary our spiritual mother. In the first reading, Luke presents Mary as standing alongside the disciples, praying with them in the wake of Jesus’ ascension and shortly before Pentecost. As a mother who stands above us, it is fitting that we ask Mary to ‘pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death’. As a mother who stands alongside us, it is fitting that we pray with her, in her own words, as we do when we pray her great prayer, the Magnificat.