The Mission of the Spirit and Mary
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The Holy Spirit has a mission of mediation which means the Spirit is the Person who unites the Father and the Son in the Trinity; and the Spirit unites God and humans together by bringing Jesus to us and us to Jesus.
In the Suma, Saint Thomas Aquinas writes, “Without the Holy Spirit who is the bond of both, one cannot understand the unity between the Father and the Son.”
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI called the Holy Spirit the “absolute mediator,” stating: “Satan is the absolute destroyer, undermining every relationship: Man’s relationship with himself and man’s relationship to one another. Thus, he is the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit, who is the absolute ‘mediator’ who guarantees the relationships in which all the others are rooted and whence they spring: the Trinitarian relationship by which the Father and the Son are One, one God in the unity of the Spirit.”
The Holy Spirit has a mission of mediation, of uniting persons together; first in the Trinity and then in the world because it is the Holy Spirit who brings Jesus to us and us to Jesus.
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According to the Bible and the Catechism the Holy Spirit is Wisdom. Listen to how the Bible describes the mission of the Holy Spirit in a distinctively feminine and maternal way:
Wisdom 7:7-12 And so I prayed, and understanding was given me; I entreated, and the spirit of Wisdom came to me. I esteemed her more than scepters and thrones; compared with her, I held riches as nothing. I reckoned no priceless stone to be her peer, for compared with her, all gold is a pinch of sand, and beside her silver ranks as mud. I loved her more than health or beauty, preferred her to the light, since her radiance never sleeps. In her company, all good things came to me, at her hands riches not to be numbered. All these I delighted in, since Wisdom brings them, but as yet I did not know she was their mother.
Sirach 15:2 Whoever fears the Lord…will obtain wisdom. She will come to meet him like a mother, and receive him like a virgin bride.
The New Testament also describes the mission of the Spirit with maternal characteristics.
Mary conceives Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. God the Father is the father of Jesus, not the Holy Spirit. Jesus is conceived by the power of the Spirit. Conceiving is a maternal mission. 1 Corinthians chapter twelve ascribes the mission to form Christ in Christians and so build up the Body of Christ as the mission of the Spirit. This too is a maternal mission.
The Holy Spirit is not a woman. God is neither man nor woman. However, we can attribute specific characteristics to the mission of the Son who became man in Jesus and to the mission of the Spirit. And the mission of the Spirit is distinctively maternal to form Jesus first in the womb of Mary and then in your soul.
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Like the Holy Spirit, Mary has a maternal mission of mediation because she brings Jesus to us and us to Jesus.
Remember, mediation is to unite persons together. Mary is the human mother who unites God and humanity together when she says “Yes” to the invitation of the Angel and Jesus is conceived within her. Immediately Mary brings Jesus to Elizabeth and John the Baptist in the Visitation. Then Mary brings the Jesus into the world at Christmas, and it is through Mary that the shepherds and the Magi meet him. At the Presentation, Simeon and Anna receive Jesus through the hands of Mary. Finally, it is through the mediation of Mary at Cana that Apostles can first to believe.
Jesus extends Mary’s mission of maternal mediation to every human who will ever live when from the Cross he proclaimed “Behold, your Mother!”
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The Holy Spirit has a mission of mediation, of uniting persons in the Trinity and of uniting God to humans. The Holy Spirit carries out this mission in a distinctively maternal way. The Catechism in paragraph 726 says the Holy Spirit carries out this maternal mission through Mary: Finally, through Mary, the Holy Spirit begins to bring men, the objects of God's merciful love, into communion with Christ. And the humble are always the first to accept him: shepherds, magi, Simeon and Anna, the bride and groom at Cana, and the first disciples. The Holy Spirit and Mary act as one.
On July 28, 1935 Kolbe wrote (p. 473-474 Foster)
And what about the Holy Spirit? He is in the Immaculata as the second person of the Holy Trinity, as the Son of God is in Jesus, but of course, with this distinction – in Jesus Christ, one divine person, two natures, the divine and the human, are united. In the Immaculata, her nature and person are distinguished from the nature and person of the Holy Spirit. However, the union between the Holy Spirit and the Immaculata is so inexpressibly perfect that He conducts His activity through her only. Therefore, she is the mediatrix of all graces flowing from the Holy Spirit…In honoring the Immaculata, we honor in a special way the Holy Spirit.
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Why is there this profound similarity between the Holy Spirit and Mary? Because the Holy Spirit fashioned Mary to be the perfect human expression of the Holy Spirit.
As Kolbe said: The Son of God became manifest in Jesus; the Holy Spirit became manifest in Mary.
Mary is not the Holy Spirit. They are two separate persons. The Holy Spirit is a divine person and Mary, human. Yet Fr. Rene Laurentin sums this mystery up when he said: “What the Holy Spirit does as God, Mary does with Him: she participates with Him as His visible sign. Mary is the sensible visible presence of the Holy Spirit.”
Why do we place so much emphasis on Mary? Because the Holy Spirit carries out a maternal mission to form Jesus in you through Mary. Mary is the human sign that accomplishes the maternal mission of the Holy Spirit to form Jesus in you.
Pentecost highlights the coming of the Holy Spirit because it is the Holy Spirit who brings Jesus into the souls of the Disciples in the Upper Room and it is the Holy Spirit who brings Jesus to us. Now here is the key. The Holy Spirit brings Jesus to us through Mary. In fact, the Holy Spirit and Mary act as one to such a degree that when we turn to Mary we are turning to the Holy Spirit.