Memorial of the BVM
March 1
MARY AND HER SON
By Fr Romano Guardini 7
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The life of Mary, as the Gospel tells it, is as humanly true as it can possibly be, but in this human quality it is filled with a mystery of divine communion and love the depth of which is unfathomable.
Jesus is the substance of Mary’s life, just as the child is the life-blood of its mother, for whom it is the one and all. But, at the same time, He is also her redeemer, and that another child cannot be for its mother. Not only was Mary’s existence as a human mother achieved in her relation to Jesus, but also her redemption. Becoming a mother, she became a Christian. By living with her child, she lived with the God whose living revelation He is. Growing humanly along with the child, as do all mothers who really love; releasing him on the road of life with so much resignation and pain, she ripened in God’s divine grace and truth.
For this reason, Mary is not only a great Christian, one among a number of saints, but she is unique. No one is like her, because what happened to her happened to no other human being. Here lies the authentic root of all exaggeration about her. If people cannot be extravagant enough in their praises of Mary, and even say reckless and foolish things, they are still right in one respect: even though the means are faulty, they seek to express a fact the tremendous depth of which must overwhelm everyone who realizes it. But exaggerations are useless and harmful, because the simpler the word expressing a truth, the more tremendous and at the same time the more deeply realized the facts become.
7
The Rosary of Our Lady, New York, 1955, pp. 30-31.