Mary Mother of the Church

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Mary and the Church

`There is simply no way to understand the Church, the essence and the mission of Christ’s kingdom, without understanding Mary.

The Church is the community of Christ’s disciples, those who are united to Christ, who accept Him, who do His will, and who participate in His work.

This is what the Church is about.

Mary was the one who did all of these things first, and who does all these things most perfectly.

She is the ideal disciple. We can’t know what it’s like to be a member of the Church, unless we’re willing to learn from Her.

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Saved in a Concrete Family

St. John Paul II (Redemptoris Mater 30), says that there is no way to get people, and especially protestants, to accept the Catholic understanding of the Church without explaining to them the centrality of Mary because Mary is Christ’s Mother. She reminds us that union with Christ is union with His family.

Christ came to earth as our brother. He made us His brothers and sisters, so that His Father could be Our Father. But if His brothers are our brothers, His sisters are our sisters, and His Father is Our Father, then it makes absolutely no sense to deny that His Mother is Our Mother.

The Church exists because God did not choose to save us in isolation, each of us marooned on our own little spiritual planet, just as He did not choose to create us in isolation, each on our own little physical planet.

We are created in a family, we are born into a family, and we are saved into a family. And the heart of every family is the Mother. That’s why, as Pope Francis said, a Christian without a relationship with Mary is an orphan.

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Mary as Neck of the Body

The Church is the Body of Christ. The Soul of that Body is the Holy Spirit. The Head of that Body is Christ. But certain saints, especially St. Bernard of Clairvaux, says that Mary is Neck of the Church.

She is the one who brought Jesus to Earth. So, in that sense, She is the one who connected the Head to the Body, who brings Christ and us together.

Moreover, just as the neck turns the head, so Mary at the Wedding at Cana brought Her Son’s attention to the needs of the people. She is the great Intercessor with Christ, the Queen Mother. She is the greatest friend we have in Heaven.

As some of the saints have said, Mary is the only human being Jesus owes something to. She is the only one who never desired anything contrary to God’s will.

Whatever she asks Him, like at Cana, Christ will grant her.

So what grace do you want from God? What help? Think of it, and then ask Mary to ask it of Her Son.

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Mary as Mother of the Church

So Mary is the Mother of the Church. It was the Holy Spirit who descended on Mary at Nazareth to make her the Mother of Jesus and it was the Holy Spirit who descended on Mary at Pentecost to make her the Mother of the Church.

As the Popes have said, it makes sense that the same one who is the Mother of the Head, who is Jesus, would be the Mother of the Body, who is the Church.

That means Mary is the Mother of each one of us. Now in a family, the relationship between a mother is normally the most profound influence on a child’s life.

Christ gave His Mother to His Beloved Disciple from the Cross and the beloved disciple took her into his heart. Christ offers His Mother to every beloved disciple in the Church – and His hope is that each of them will take her into his heart.

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Mary as Face of the Church

The greatest similarity between the Church and Our Lady is that both of them are our spiritual mothers. The Holy Spirit uses both to bring us into new life and to form us into the image of Christ.

But the Church will never feel like a mother to us, she’ll just feel like a cold, impersonal institution unless we picture the Church with the face of Mary

The late theologian Jean Galot said it beautifully: “She presents us with a concrete realization, in her flesh, of a motherhood that transmits, in all purity and holiness, the divine life which she has been given from above. Without Mary’s motherhood we could not appreciate the degree to which the Church is truly our mother. In the face of the Virgin we see the outlines of the face of the Church.”

If we want people to have an actual affection for the Church, we need to cultivate an affection for the Mother of God.