Mary, Servant of the Word and Star of Evangelization

Mary is not a myth, but a real woman, with a personal history, even though we can only glean certain traits of her personality from the New Testament and not a proper biography.

She lived at Nazareth, an insignificant Galilean city. She belonged to a working class neighbourhood; she was betrothed to Joseph the Carpenter, thus becoming a member of the tribe of David. She was actively involved in everyday life: she visited an aging relative, she went in pilgrimage to Jerusalem, she intervened in a wedding feast. She knew how to listen and reflect; but also knew how to speak out and take courageous decisions. She contemplated the marvels of God with awe and awaited justice for the oppressed, in the manner of the spirituality of the poor of JHWH.

She sought to understand his will and was ready to place herself at his disposal as a humble "servant of the Lord", (Lk.1,38): and this is the only title she attributes to herself. She laboured tirelessly in trying to understand her son Jesus; she followed him with a maternal care and an heroic faith; she shared with him the poverty of Bethlehem, the exile in Egypt, the hidden life of Nazareth, the agony of Calvary. Finally, at Jerusalem, in the heart of the first christian community, she prayed for the coming of the Spirit of Pentecost: "All these devoted themselves with one accord to prayer, together with some women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers", (Acts 1, 14).

The information we have on her ends with the previous statement. This is obviously not much to go on. However, we see that Mary is present at the decisive moments: The Birth of the Lord, Easter and Pentecost; these moments which respectively signal the beginning, the conclusion and the communication of salvation. While her Son is the personal image of God, she is the exemplar of saved humanity: one of us, but redeemed and sharing a unique partnership with him. In her, the Church finds its first and most perfect realization in the order of faith, charity and perfect union with Christ. It is not for nothing that she is presented in the Gospel of Luke as the new Jerusalem; the Gospel of John refers to her as the woman, symbol of Israel; while the Apocalypse shows her as the woman clothed in the sun, who bears the Messiah and is assaulted by the dragon in the desert.

Mary is at the centre of the Church as if in a perennial Pentecost: "One cannot speak of the Church if Mary is not present there, the Mother of the Lord, along with His brothers", (St. Cromatius of Aquileia, Discourses, 30,1). The gifts of God are concentrated in her: the presence of the Spirit, the interior beauty of sanctity, virginal fidelity, maternal charity, the spousal covenant, heavenly glory and the cooperation in the salvific mission of Christ. The mystery of the Church shines with the purest light in her. Mary symbolizes the Church: she is not a myth, she is in fact a concrete exemplar.

She is within the Church but closer to Christ, in an unparalleled way, than the other faithful. Looking over the road she walked, in the light of this characteristic viewpoint, her individual prerogatives, which are defined by, and rooted in, the mystery of divine motherhood.

Christ is the only master and redeemer; it is from him that we receive the grace to be his disciples and collaborators, participants is his life and mission, saints and sanctifiers.

Mary is the most perfect follower of Christ and his first collaborator in the work of salvation. Her personal pilgrimage of faith, as recounted in the gospels, is also an extension of her love for all men and is always accompanied by a deeper insertion in the mystery of redemption.

At the Annunciation, Mary hears, in faith, the word of God and places herself in his hands as a docile instrument; she welcomes the Messiah and makes herself available for his works. Her consent made it possible for the Lord to come personally into the world and initiate the fulness of time.

After this momentous event, Mary does not withdraw into herself, but goes off to visit her relative, Elizabeth. Thus the one who was first evangelized becomes herself the first evangelizer: she proclaims the wonders of the Lord and his joyful and sanctifying presence, in a canticle of praise and service.

Jesus is born at Bethlehem in poor and disenfranchised circumstances and Mary presents him to the shepherds as a Messiah for the poor, he being poor himself. After forty days she presents him in the Temple and offers her obedience with him, while the voice of Simeon tells her that her motherhood will be hidden and sorrowful. The Magi come, the forerunners of the pagan peoples, to adore the Messiah; but Herod unleashes the first persecution and it was necessary to flee to Egypt.

When he was twelve years of age, Jesus participated in the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Paschal feast and performed a mysterious prophetical gesture there. When it came time to leave, he remained in the Temple without his own being aware of this. They find him after three days of an agonizing search. Mary, in gentle way, brings up the rights of parents: "Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety", (Lk. 2, 48). He gave an enigmatic reply: Jesus belongs to another father and must be with him. But he returns to Nazareth and is obedient and submissive. At the end of his days on earth, at another Paschal feast, he reveals the meaning of this being with his Father. Mary and Joseph do not understand at the time and reflect in silence. Thus pass the long years of the hidden life: daily work, intimate contact with the Mystery, toiling with belief.

The public life of Jesus begins.

At Cana of Galilee, Mary presents her Son with a human need: "They have no more wine"; and then asks the servants to do what he asks: "Do whatever he tells you", (Jn. 2, 3-5). Thus she cooperates at the beginning of the signs and stimulates the faith of the first followers "Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs in Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him", (Jn. 2,11). She is presented as the "woman", symbol of the people of God at the time the new nuptial covenant with the Lord is celebrated, which will receive its definitive ratification in the Pasch of death and resurrection.

Jesus proceeds with his ministry and gradually reveals the claims of the kingdom of God. Mary is called to go beyond her most human maternal care for her Son. When she went to him along with her relatives to have him moderate his zeal and act with more caution, she had to hear the decisive response: "Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother", (Mk. 3, 35). The faithful disciple always understands better what it means to be the servant of the Lord in the shadow of the Messiah-Servant walking towards the cross.

Mary is beside the cross at Calvary. Her Son is mocked and condemned, beaten and crushed like a worm, abandoned by his disciples. In a certain sense he also appears to have been abandoned by the Father. The grand promises seem to be untrue: Where is the throne of David? Where is the kingdom that will never end? It is a harsher trial for Mary than that endured by Abram at the sacrifice of Isaac, but she endures it. Her faith is not shaken, is not held back. There does not seem to be a way out; only that all things are possible for God and his ways are inscrutabile. Thus her "Yes" at the time of the Annunciation becomes an explicit consent to the sacrifice of her Son and a participation in his redeeming love for mankind.

The crucified Jesus sees in Mary the "woman", the figure of the Church, the new Jerusalem and the new Eve; he makes her the spiritual mother of all mankind, especially of believers, present in the person of the beloved disciple : "When he saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, 'Woman, behold, your son'. Then he said to the disciple, 'Behold, your Mother'", (Jn. 19, 26-27).

The divine maternity which was exercised for Christ is now expanded into a universal motherhood. By reason of the Holy Spirit, Mary becomes for us a mother in the order of grace, to cooperate in the rebirth and the formation of the children of God.

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On the morning of Pentecost she watched over with her prayer the beginning of evangelization prompted by the Holy Spirit: may she be the Star of the evangelization ever renewed which the Church, docile to her Lord's command, must promote and accomplish, especially in these times which are difficult but full of hope!

Evangelii Nuntiandi.

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May the Virgin of Pentecost obtain this for us through her intercession. By a unique vocation, she saw her Son Jesus "increase in wisdom and in stature, and in favour". As He sat on her lap and later as He listened to her throughout the hidden life at Nazareth, this Son, who was "the only Son from the Father", "full of grace and truth", was formed by her in human knowledge of the Scriptures and of the history of God's plan for His people, and in adoration of the Father. She in turn was the first of His disciples. She was the first in time, because even when she founder her adolescent Son in the temple she received from Him lessons that she kept in her heart. She was the first disciple above all else because no one has been "taught by God" to such depth. She was "both mother and disciple", as St. Augustine said of her, venturing to add that her discipleship was more important for her than her motherhood. There are good grounds for the statement made in the synod hall that Mary is "a living catechism"...

Catechesi Tradendae.