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Vigils Reading – Mary Mother of the Church
May 20
MARY’S EDUCATION AS MOTHER OF THE CHURCH
From the writing of Hans Urs von Balthasar2
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At first it was the Mother who introduced the Son into the Old Covenant
and thereby trained him for his messianic office. However, it was not she but
his own knowledge of the Father’s mission in the Holy Spirit that showed him
who he was and what he had to do. The relationship is thus reversed: from now
on it is the Son who educates the Mother for the greatness of his task, cultivating
in her the maturity she needs to stand under the Cross and, finally, to receive,
at prayer within the Church, the universal gift of the Holy Spirit.
From the very outset, this education reflects Simeon’s prophecy that a
sword would pierce the Mother’s soul. It is a pitiless process. All the episodes
handed down for us are more or less brusque rejections. It is not as though
Jesus had been disobedient for thirty years; we have an explicit affirmation to
the contrary. However, the merely physical relationship to which faith was so
intimately tied in the Old Testament is sovereignly, ruthlessly forced open.
Henceforth faith in Jesus, the incarnate Word of God, is the only thing that
counts…
The scene in which Jesus, teaching those gathered around him in a certain
house, refuses to receive the visit of his Mother, who is standing outside, seems
almost unbearable to us. “Here are my mother and my brethren! Whoever does
the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother”. Jesus means her more
than anyone, though he does not mention her by name. Yet who understands
his meaning? Did Mary herself understand it? We have to accompany Mary in
spirit as she makes her way home and try to imagine her state of mind. The
2 Hans Urs Von Balthasar and Pope Benedict XVI. Mary: The Church at the Source. Trans. Adrian
Walker. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005. 107-110.5
sword gnaws at her soul; she feels as if bereft of her inmost self, as if the point
of her life has been drained away. Her faith, which at the beginning received so
many sensible confirmations, is plunged into a dark night. It is as if the Son,
who sends her no news about what he is doing, has run away from her, yet she
cannot simply let him go away: she has to accompany him, full of dread, in her
night of faith…
The purpose of this constant training in the naked faith Mary will need
under the Cross is often insufficiently understood; people are astonished and
embarrassed by the way in which Jesus treats his Mother, whom he addresses
both in Cana and at the Cross only as “woman”. He himself is the first one to
wield the sword that must pierce her. But how else would she have become
ready to stand by the Cross, where not only her Son’s earthly failure, but also
his abandonment by the God who sends him is revealed. She must finally say
Yes to this, too, because she consented a priori to her child’s whole destiny. And
as if to fill her bitter chalice to the brim, the dying Son expressly abandons his
Mother, withdrawing from her and foisting on her another son: “Woman,
behold, your son”. This gesture is usually understood primarily as evidencing
Jesus’ concern about where his Mother will live after he is gone… This must not,
however, lead us to overlook a second motif: just as the Son is abandoned by
the Father, so, too, he abandons his Mother, so that the two of them may be
united in a common abandonment. Only thus does she become inwardly ready
to take on ecclesial motherhood toward all of Jesus’ new brothers and sisters.