Behold Your Mother
When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold your son.” And to the disciple, “Behold your mother.” From that time on, the disciple took her into his home.
John 19, 26-27
The child’s mother said, “As the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, I will not leave you.” So he arose and followed her.
2 Kings 4, 30
All true disciples of Christ, those who faithfully keep God’s commandments and bear witness to Jesus in their lives, take our Blessed Mother Mary into their hearts as she leads the way in the order of grace taking them by the hand to their heavenly home, just as Mary must have taken John by the hand as they went to his home together with her leading the way never to separate herself from him. The Gospel of John bears testimony to the traditional belief of the one universal Church that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted his mother to her, the Bride of Christ; so the early Church believed in keeping with the Apostolic Tradition. In the Roman catacomb of St. Agnes there is an extant frescoe which depicts our Blessed Mother situated between the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul with her arms lovingly outstretched to them both. The image of these two chief apostles being placed together has always symbolized the Church. Thus it is clearly evident that the early Christians invoked Mary as the Mother of the Church and of all humankind by the third century. The tradition of Mary as our spiritual mother and the anti-type of our biological mother Eve – the prototype of what the Church virtuously stands for as the bride of Christ, the new Adam - was just as vibrant in the Eastern churches, but apparently more public than in the Latin West in the early centuries.
“I love to call her the Church. This mother, when alone, had not milk, because alone she was not a woman. But she is once virgin and mother, pure as a virgin, loving as a mother. And calling her children to her, she nurses them with holy milk, viz., the Word for childhood.”
St. Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, 1:6 [A.D. 202]
“If Mary, as those declare with sound mind extol her, had no other son but Jesus, and yet Jesus says to His mother, ‘Woman, behold thy son,’ and not, Behold you have this son also, then he virtually said to her this is Jesus, whom thou didst bear. Is it not the case that everyone who is perfect lives himself no longer, but Christ lives in him; and if Christ lives in him, then it is said of him to Mary, Behold thy son Christ? ”
Origen, Commentary on John, 1:6 [A.D. 232]
We the faithful truly believe in the profound words uttered by our Lord in his agony, shortly before he commended his spirit into the hands of his heavenly Father, as they were meant to be understood by the evangelist who stood next to Mary before the cross. John is notably more poetic, symbolic, and mystical in his literary approach than are the sacred authors of the synoptic gospels. His narratives contain deeper meanings and convey greater insight than what appears at first glance. What is actually being divinely revealed by God’s word is that which can only be perceived in a spiritual sense: a traditional belief held by the nascent Church expressed in literary form pertaining to a unique privilege our heavenly Father granted Mary on account of her faith and obedience at the Annunciation. Not only did our Blessed Mother merit this grace by virtue of her faith, but her spiritual motherhood of the Church and all mankind naturally rests on her divine maternity. The patristic Fathers of the Church affirmed this Marian truth as belonging to the deposit of faith: Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. They recognized the symbolic importance of the expression the disciple used by the apostle when referring to himself and understood that he was identifying himself with all of Christ’s disciples, namely the Lord’s brethren.
“Therefore this woman alone, not only in spirit, but also in body, is both Mother and Virgin. She is Mother in the Spirit, but not of our Head, the Saviour himself, for it is she who is spiritually born from him, since all who believe in him, among whom she too is to be counted, are rightly called children of the Bridegroom. Rather, she is clearly the Mother of his members…because she cooperated by her charity, so that faithful Christian members might be born in the Church.”
St. Augustine, De sancta virginitate, 6 [A.D. 401]
As the woman is of a man, even so is the man also of a woman.
1 Corinthians 11, 12
Not unlike John the evangelist, we have been called to accept the Blessed Virgin Mary as our spiritual mother. It is significant that our Lord first addresses his mother before he turns to his apostle. Our Lord gives his mother to his beloved disciple and then asks him to receive her as his own after having confirmed her maternal prerogative in the appellation Woman. If Adam and Eve had not sinned against God, they would have transmitted spiritual life to their offspring together with biological and physiological life. Since God has ordained that human life should emerge from the intimate union between a man and a woman, but our original parents have forfeited any spiritual life to give, he ordained from all eternity, in view of the fall, that spiritual life should be restored through the intimate union between our Lord (the new Adam) and his Mother (the new Eve).
The figure of the new Eve forms a biblical theme that runs from the Book of Genesis to Revelation. Israel and the Church are presented as corporate types of the new Eve, while the Blessed Virgin Mary is portrayed as the personal antithetical type of Eve (Gen 3:15; Rev 12). The first Christians in Palestine believed that as Adam had a female helper named Eve (mother of all the living), so Jesus, the new Adam (1 Cor 15:45), had a woman known as Mary, the new Eve, intimately associated with him in his work of redemption (Lk 1:38; 2:35; Jn 2: 3-5; 19: 26-27). Eve succumbed to the inticing lies of the serpent in the garden of Eden and consequently disobeyed God thereby contributing to the fall of mankind (Gen 3: 1-7). At the Annunciation, Mary had faith in the promising words of the archangel Gabriel and thus became the mother of the divine Messiah, who would save us from sin and death by reconciling us with God ( Rom 5:19; 1 Cor 15: 22). As Eve was personally involved in mankind’s (Adam’s) fall from grace by her infidelity and disobedience to the word of God, so Mary helped bring about mankind’s salvation by her faith and obedience. As Eve became the mother of those of the old creation in Adam (2 Cor 5:17), so Mary became the mother of those of the new creation in Christ (Rom 8:29). The spiritual life that Eve lost on our behalf was regained through Mary’s collaboration with the Holy Spirit for the sake of our reconciliation and salvation.
“Nevertheless it is true, the Church is the mother of Christ. Mary preceded the Church as its type.”
St. Augustine, Sermon Denis, 25:8
We Christians must not overlook the fact that John’s description of the crucifixion scene on Calvary resembles what took place in the garden of Eden at the beginning of our creation. There is a tree in the form of a wooden cross (Gal 3:13) on which hangs the fruit of Mary’s womb (Lk 1:42). There is a man (the new Adam) and his helpmate (the new Eve) who is explicitly referred to as Woman (the mother of all the living). She is the mother of all those who are truly living, having been reborn in the Spirit by the merits of her divine Son and made worthy of attaining eternal life. Eve encouraged Adam to partake of the forbidden fruit which resulted in man’s fall from grace and the original state of holiness and justice. With deep and loving concern our Blessed Mother encourages us to partake of the fruit of her womb, Jesus, so that we can be restored to friendship with God by doing everything he tells us to do (cf. Jn 2:5).
“From his glorious Cross, the Lord entrusted his Virgin Mother to the blessed apostle John, so that in this way the Lord’s command might be fulfilled.”
St. Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum 9, 42 [c. A.D. 587]
Needless to say, Mary could have lived with her elder sister (“the other Mary”) who was also present at the foot of the cross, seeing that Joseph was deceased and she had no other uterine offspring who could have honourably taken care of her. But instead her Son apparently places her in the custody of his beloved disciple, although in reality he is placed in her care together with all the faithful. If Jesus had been strictly concerned with looking after his mother by attending to her temporal welfare before he departed from this world, he could have simply addressed only John by asking him to look after her. Clearly our Lord had something deeper and more mysterious in mind that concerned his heavenly Father’s intentions for his mother in the order of redemption (Gen 3:15). This was that Mary had a spiritual vocation to continue and expand in a maternal capacity, a role that was predestined from all eternity and began on the morning of the Annunciation upon the overshadowing by the Holy Spirit. Mary had conceived us in spirit the moment she pronounced her fiat. It is no coincidence (nothing recorded in Scripture is historically incidental) that our Lord in fact addresses his mother, and does so first, as Woman – not “Mother”, for Mary was not created to be exclusively his mother but also ours in spirit. Mary was truly the mother of our Lord by hearing the word of God and keeping it (Lk 11:28). She first conceived Jesus spiritually in faith before conceiving him physically by supernatural intervention. Thus in her spiritual relationship with us Mary is truly our mother, by acting as our maternal advocate and channel of divine grace in our spiritual conflict with Satan and his offspring. She desires and prays that we be as faithful to her divine Son – our brother in spirit - as she was.
“May the Ever-Virgin — radiant with divine light and full of grace, mediatrix first through her supernatural birth and now because of the intercession of her maternal assistance — be crowned with never-ending blessings…seeking balance and fittingness in all things, we should make our way honestly as sons of light.”
Homily for the Liberation of Constantinople, 23
St. Germanus of Constantinople [ante A.D. 733]
Then the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth, to devour her child when she gave birth. She gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all nations with an iron rod. Her child was caught up to God and his throne. Then the dragon became angry with the woman and went of to wage war against all the rest of her offspring, those who keep God’s commandments and bear witness to Jesus.
Revelation 12, 4-5, 17
Our Blessed Mother Mary is definitely the caretaker of our souls in her collaboration with the Holy Spirit. We should keep in mind that the child in Elizabeth’s womb leaped for joy at the sound of Mary’s greeting, just as David had leapt when he beheld the ark of the Old Covenant. From the moment she became the mother of our Lord, Mary has always served as an acqueduct of divine grace in the mystical body of Christ, serving the Source of all grace by dispensing his gifts to us as a faithful steward and communicating the abundance of grace she has received by the mercy of God. We truly faithful Christians invoke the Virgin Mary for her prayerful intercession and mediation confident that she will lead us to her divine Son if we are truly devoted to her by imitating her life in Christ. Our Lady’s powerful intercessory role is fitting, since she was predestined to bring the Saviour into the world. She desires that we have a share in the gift of salvation which she has received and be united with her as her children in Heaven. There our Blessed Mother prays that we all receive her Son in our hearts by our thoughts, words, and deeds. And she prays, that by the grace of God, we will gain the wisdom, strength, and courage to lovingly receive him in our lives. St. Paul tells us that we are called to share the many graces we have received, proportionate to our spritual gifts and spirit of charity, with others so that we can help lead them to Christ. Thus by the gift of her divine motherhood, the Virgin Mary, as our spiritual mother, shares with us the fulness of grace she has received by drawing us to the Source of all grace through her mediation in the hope that we will draw as closely to her Son in our hearts as she did on earth. We have good cause to leap for joy at the sound of her celestial prayers provided we are true to her by being faithful to her divine Son.
This motherhood of Mary in the order of grace continues uninterruptedly from the consent she loyally gave at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering at the foot of the cross, until the eternal fulfillment of the elect. Taken up to heaven, she did not lay aside this saving office, but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation.
Vatican ll Council, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, 62
Pax Christu,
J.A.
