Our readings tell of two trees. In the lush verdant garden, there is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. On a barren, dusty hill outside the holy city, is where we find the tree of life.
While the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is living and flourishing, its fruit tempting and seemingly irresistible, two intersecting pieces of dead wood make up the tree of life.
Just as there are two trees, there are two women (in our Gospel more, but one on whom we turn our focus). Both are mothers: Eve, the mother of the all the living and Mary, the Mother of the Church, the Mother of all reborn through baptism. The first woman, desirous of becoming like God and seeing the delicious fruit, partakes of it, despite God’s dire warning. The second sits grieving underneath the tree of life, the fruit of which is the bleeding, dying body of her only Son.
Between these two poles unfolds the time and space of God’s plan of redemption, in effect from the foundation of the world. In his Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul sets this forth succinctly:
creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God1It is vital to grasp that the death and resurrection of His only begotten Son is not God’s Plan B. Jesus Christ is and was from the beginning not just God’s Plan A, but God’s only plan. As Paul notes, this is a great mystery. Stated analytically, this mystery is about squaring divine providence with human freedom. We certainly have no time for that now.
Maybe it is because we are made in God’s image that we have an inherent desire not only to be “like” God but to be God. Maybe this is what gives birth to the human desire to determine for oneself what is true, right, and just.
This original sin is at the root of every personal sin. First and foremost, each sin is a sin against God, whom should be loved above all things. Sin consists of loving myself above all things. This is deadly both temporally and eternally. The serpent strikes at your head by exploiting your human vulnerability; your creatureliness ultimately betrays the lie of any divine pretensions.
How is this deadly blow thwarted? In the theo-drama that is salvation history, it is foiled by a humble, nondescript teenage girl in the village of Nazareth with the words, given in reply to archangel’s announcement that she is to bear God’s Son, “May it be done to me according to your word.”2 Her selflessness is what breaks the cycle of human self-absorption, our fascination with nothingness.
The Marian principle is the heart of the Church. The Marian principle is nothing other than her selfless fiat, her total “Yes!” to God. Mary is the creature who places the analogia entis (i.e., the relationship between the beings in creation and the being of God) into bold relief. In contrast to Eve, Mary does this by accepting the lowliness of creaturehood.
On 18 November 1964, at the end of the Third Session of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Saint Paul VI, in his weekly General Audience, noted:
Mary… occupies a very singular position; she too is a member of the Church, she is redeemed by Christ, she is our sister; but precisely by virtue of her election as Mother of the Redeemer of humanity, and by reason of her perfect and eminent representation of the human race, she can rightly be said morally and typically to be the Mother of all men, and especially ours, of us believers and redeemed, the Mother of the Church, the Mother of the Faithful [translation mine]3Somewhat controversially, due to ecumenical worries, Pope Paul declared that he was ending this session of the Council “in the joy of recognizing Our Lady's rightful title of Mother of the Church ‘Mater Ecclesiae’.”4 Mary is Mother of the Church. Being deeply Marian, the Church, in turn, is our mater et magistra- mother and teacher.
Mary was in the midst of the earliest Christian community at the beginning of the Church at Pentecost.5 The Church exists to elicit, enable and sustain and our total “Yes!” to God.
On 11 February 2018, the Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, which marked the one hundred sixtieth anniversary of the Blessed Mother’s apparitions to another humble, nondescript young woman- Saint Bernadette Soubirous, Pope Francis signed the decree inserting the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church into the Roman Calendar, to be observed the Monday after Pentecost.
Don’t hesitate to fly unto our Blessed Mother. Go to her. Stand before her, sinful and sorrowful. Implore her not to despise your petitions, but in her maternal care and concern, to hear and answer your prayers. Pray the Rosary often, daily if possible. Pray the Memorare. Now that we are back in Ordinary Time, pray the Angelus three times a day: morning, noon, and evening.
1 Romans 8:20-21.↩
2 Luke 1:38.↩
3 Pope Paul VI. General Audience, 18 November 1964. ↩
4 Ibid.↩
5 Acts 1:14.↩
No comments:
Post a Comment