"Blessed is She who is the believer

in the promise made her

by the Lord would be fulfilled"

Luke 1:45

As this month of May comes to a close and we await the upcoming Pentecostal Feast, it behooves us to consider the overall significance of the image of the Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus.

St. Augustine already pointed out that Mary's greatness is not so much that of being the Mother of Jesus, but rather that she believed in the Word of God.

On the contrary, the translation of the original Greek text should be rendered in Italian so as to give beginning to this thought. In fact, Mary is not extraordinary because she believed but rather because, in her simplicity, she was a believer in God and in His Word - forever!

In fact, what really determines whether one follows Christ is not so much his fleeting belief nor his formal keeping of the faith, but rather it is the one who lives by faith in Him constantly, in the midst of life's diverse riches, made of sunny and overcast days, of grace and sinful infidelity.

It is an attitude that not only calls upon the giving grace of God but also calls upon the constant responsiveness of the man who fuels his personal and public relationship with Christ.

The dogma of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of body and soul into heaven is not an explanation that the Church has capriciously tacked onto the image of Mary in recent times, but is, rather, the recognition of that which the community of believers in Christ, the Church, has recognized, loved and upheld.

It is then a recognition of the work of grace in the mother of Jesus, but also a celebration of her as "believer" in the word of God. She is a mirror for the community of believers, a constant stimulus to always hold in one's heart, she who, better and more fully than all, not only embraced the faith but always desired and loved to embrace it.

It was inevitable that, beginning with the protestant reformation, that which was not from Luther (extremely devoted to the mother of Christ) would become a stumbling block for the entire reformed Church. To adhere to scripture without the tradition that sustained it for more that a millennium, and to find scriptural traces of Mary that could help the faithful to redefine the worship of Mary, was and remains a battle gone wrong both from the theological and scriptural point of view, both in the conception of the Church and, above all, in the semiological and epistemological points of view.

To refute part of the tradition up to 1500, which is the life of the Church, that same life which, paradoxically, fueled the reformation to re-establish the faith of the believer solely upon the scriptures, is an unprecedented work of violence much greater than pastoral degeneracy or wandering flocks, which the Catholic Church has achieved not just in days gone by, but also in times to come.

The excommunication of a person as an act of judgment, especially in Luther's case, becomes obsolete with his death when he stands before the loving and merciful Judgment of God; (as with all of us on the other hand.) I am not here then to argue the ecumenical path - which has its purposes, methodologies and difficulties. Luther's theology bogs down not just in problematic objectives but also in the questions of Luther's personal perspectives built upon his personal relationship with God, his vision of God, the personal conflict of his tortured conscience and also, probably on his inability to find someone in his day who could seriously love and evangelize this brother in the faith.

To establish oneself on socio-political dynamics, on childishness on both sides and to not benefit from the unique love for Christ Jesus, sole mediator and high priest, brought degeneracy and hardening of which we are all aware

I am rather radically convinced that to be unified around Mary "the believer," waiting for the Holy Spirit, can only be the basis for a true ecumenical walk even if we approach Mary from different perspectives. (And not just that.)

The problem of Mary's co-redemption and mediation is a false problem.

To not understand Mary's role in the history of salvation is to blaspheme her incarnation and not understand the profoundness of the scriptures. It is to not know the heart of Christ and the plan of the Father in the Spirit. God the Father, who, with His son "born of woman," born in "the fullness of time," ardently desired man's assistance in His grace and in His love.     

Let's make up a simple example:

            If I am hungry and need bread and I ask a brother (for whatever bread I may need!) and the brother or sister gives me some, these people do a good deed.

            Now, this good deed comes about first of all by the grace of God but also the free acceptance of my brother's good deed. The brother who helps me, therefore, is a collaborator of good. God is not jealous, on the contrary, he wants such collaborators who show their faith by their works and (who) worship God in spirit and truth. True it is that all good comes from God, however, historically, good comes even by man's free acceptance to grace.

On the Contrary, he is a Collaborator "in Grace"

 And if a sister prays to God for me, does she not perhaps work a form of mediation? Of course, she is not a mediator in the ontological sense, only Christ is (that) to the Father. He alone, in fact, reveals and gives the Father, but she is (a mediator) in a participatory sense.

If you pray to Christ for me, you actually do nothing more than actively participate in the already-accomplished mediation of Christ that awaits (historical revelation) and the collaboration of believers. It is the logic of the incarnation, and I repeat, it is not just a theological fact but is coherent with God's language that he has always used toward mankind. It is the language that God has revealed in scripture and from the traditions of the life of the believers around Jesus Christ.

If this (is so) for us, can we not (also) say it in a special manner for the "Believer," for Mary?

Mary, in fact, did not ascend to heaven but was raised up. That is, she is not God but is the complete image which the Church, as the bride of Christ, is called to be.

That is, she the "believer," turned completely toward God through the Son, completely (desirous) of the Father in the Holy Spirit. Not just with her own spirit but with her own historical physicality. With her whole body.

She is the firstborn of those resurrected in the Firstborn Resurrected

This seems to be a play on words but it is rather a promise, full of hope, and a pledge in the Spirit to understand that which we are and that which we are called to be.

We know, obviously, that "heaven" is not a geographic reality but, in the precise Biblical sense, (it is) the meta-historical and meta-temporal reality of God where everything is unspeakable Love ; where all earthly reality is followed, seen and watched over perfectly and constantly by the never-ending inexpressible (glance) of the Countenance of the Father...and so much more that eternity itself  is scarcely able to understand Her Beauty.

She who has watched over, cared for and suffered with the foundling Church.

She, so discreet and so feminine.

She, so strong and so sweet.

Mary is much more than a mother, she is the "believer."

She is the icon which the Father has given us to confront our symbolic and psychological weakness

to grasp Her feminine side. Mary is the being that has best experienced the intimacy

and the sweetness in the Holy Spirit.

If it were not so, she would not have been able to conceive the Savior.

Mary then is a priest by participation, always saying, "Do that which He shall tell you!"

 Mary becomes an icon for us, sinful believers along the path but in a very special way for each woman to understand and appreciate her feminine self in God.

She who keeps to herself in a unique and unrepeatable way the virginal and spousal consecration. Paradigm for all virgins and for all wives.          

 I do not touch upon the question of Jesus' "brothers" (which would) discredit Mary's everlasting virginity because it is such a foolish and ascriptural (thought) that only they who do not love the scriptures, the exegetists, believe it. In the panorama of believers each generation gives (us) models that could be called the "voracious believers" (in Rome they are called the "splendid ones"), those who want to be the first to have discovered the "always hidden truth"...and mankind which always needs magicians of the soul, who seem benevolent and not misleading (but who) are then revealed as veritable tyrants, (and mankind) runs after them, needing self-esteem and originality. But it is only another means to avoid their own internal problems, especially those of the father figure. He who turns to or is fascinated by them has never had a true experience with Christ, nor one with the Church.

Mary is a paradigm for these as well, for he who truly wants to reform the Church in the fruitful sense that Christ instituted and bound to a golden thread, in the Holy Spirit and in human poverty, from Peter down to our day with Pope John Paul.

 The woman thus destabilized in her femininity, from professional competition, from new stimuli of the family structure, from conflicts with her father and the male image, finds in Mary of Nazareth a sure vehicle of psychological, emotional and spiritual maturation.

Mary, in fact, in her capacity as the "believer," is the one who sets in order the crazed unconsciousness, fluctuating energies, contradictions and dualism, hysteria and dissipation to direct someone, more especially women, towards a richness and capacity to love truly divine and Christ-like.

Mary is not the icon for a perverse masculine universe that wants to venerate woman and femininity and thus render her a masculine and apparently noble object.

No!

Mary is the woman-believer for women so that they may be women and is woman-believer for men so that they may be men.

She who raised the baby Jesus ardently wishes to raise Her Son in us.

It is her eternal duty. From the time in little-known Nazareth when she said yes to when she said it beneath His cross, taking us under her wing as His witness. I don't say us as a Church...not just that but much more...us as an ever-needful mankind to find the only mediator of the Love of the Father.

 For this and many other reasons, let us not marvel that Mary was raised up to Heaven, body and soul, in all her being...rather let us ask ourselves:

How did she manage to stay on Earth all that time!

Mary in other Churches; for further information click here