THE
OFFICE OF READINGS
Second ReadingFrom the Addresses of Blessed John Paul II, Pope
(At the Marian Basilica of the Pillar at Zaragoza, Spain. 6 November, 1982, nn. 3-4).
Mary has become the column of faith and sure guide towards
salvation!
By means of Mary, through
different forms of piety the light of faith in Christ —the Son of God and of
Mary—has
reached many Christians. And how many Christians also live their communion of
Ecclesial faith sustained by the devotion to Mary who has become the column of
that faith and sure guide towards salvation!
Remembering this presence of Mary, I cannot the least not mention the important work of Saint Ildephonse of Toledo “On the perpetual virginity of Mary most holy”, which expresses the faith of the Church on this mystery. With a precise formula it indicates that: “ The Virgin befoe the coming the Son, a virgin she remains after engendering the Son, virgin with the birth of the Son and Virgin after giving birth to the Son.”
The fact is that the first great
Spanish Marian affirmation consisted in a defense of the Virginity of Mary, had
been decisive for the image the Spaniards have of her, to whom they call the
Virgin, that is the virgin by name.
In a virginal way, “the work of the Holy Spirit, without the intervention of a man”, Mary had given human nature to the Eternal Son of the Father. It is of a virginal way did Mary gave birth to a holy body animated by a rational soul, in which the Word had been hypostatically united.
It is the faith of the amplified
Creed of Saint Epiphanius expressed in the term: “ever Virgin” and which Pope
Paul IV articulates in the tender phrase of “ before birth, at birth and
perpetually after birth”. The same was taught by Paul VI: “We believe that
Mary, ever Virgin, by the Incarnate Word”.
This is what you have to maintain in all its amplitude.
Pope Paul VI wrote that “in the Virgin Mary everything refers to Christ and all depends on Him”. This has a special application in the Marian cult. All the motives which we find in Mary to render her worship are the gifts from God, privileges deposited in her by God so that she would be the Mother of the Word. And all the worship we offer her, rebounds in the glory of Christ, in the same time that the devotion itself to Mary leads us to Christ.
Saint Ildephonse of Toledo, the
most ancient witness of this form of devotion known as the Marian slavery,
justifies our attitude as slaves of Mary through the singular relationship she
has with respect to Christ: “That is why I am your slave, because my Lord is
your Son. That is why you are our Lady,
because you are the slave of my Lord. That is why I am the slave of of my Lord,
because you have been made the Mother of my Lord. Because you had been made the
mother of my creator”.
As it is obvious, these real relationships existent between Christ and Mary had made the Marian cult may have Christ as its objective end. With all clarity, this was seen by Saint Ildephonse: “Thus with regards to what refers to the Lord as to what is served to the slave, it rebounds to the Son all that is given to the Mother, all forms of service for the kingdom goes to the king”. This double destiny of desire can be understood therefore when the same Saint formulates, when speaking with the most holy Virgin: “May I be granted to surrender myself to God and to you, to be the slave of your Son and yours, to serve your Lord and you”.
There are a good many
investigators who believe and sustain that the most popular of Marian prayers, —that is,
after the Ave Maria—was composed in Spain. And that
its author would have been the Bishop of Compostela: Saint Peter of Mezonzo, by
the end of the X century; I am referring to the “Salve”.
This prayer ends in the petition:
“Show us Jesus”. This is what Mary does constantly, as it is perpetuated in so
many images of the Virgin spread in the cities and villages of Spain. She, like her Son in her arms, as it is here
in the Pillar, ceaselessly manifest to us as the way the truth and the
life. At time with the her dead Son on
her knees, reminds us of the infinite value of the blood of the Lamb which had
flowed for our salvation. In other
occasions, her image, inclining herself to men, close to her Son and to us make
us feel the closeness of the radical revolution of mercy, and manifesting it as
it is, she herself is the Mother of mercy.
Responsory
R.
The pious Virgin granted us certain confidence in her protection. * She herself chose this place, in which the faithful
from all over the world come to pray.V. May our people jump for joy, grateful for this visit of the Virgin Mary.
R. * She herself chose this place, in which the faithful from all over the world come to pray.
Or
From the Encyclical Redemptoris Mater of Blessed John Paul
II, Pope.Encyclical Redemptoris Mater, 25 March, 1987, nn. 17-19.
She bears within herself the radical "newness" of faith:
the beginning of the New Covenant.
From the moment of the
Annunciation, the mind of the Virgin-Mother has been initiated into the radical
"newness" of God's self-revelation and has been made aware of the
mystery. She is the first of those "little ones" of whom Jesus will
say one day: "Father, ...you have hidden these things from the wise and
understanding and revealed them to babes" (Mt. 11:25). For “no one knows
the Son except the Father” (Mt. 11:27). If this is the case, how can Mary
"know the Son"? Of course she does not know him as the Father does;
and yet she is the first of those to whom the Father "has chosen to reveal
him" (cf. Mt. 11:26-27; 1 Cor. 2:11). If though, from the moment of the
Annunciation, the Son-whom only the Father knows completely, as the one who
begets him in the eternal "today" (cf. Ps. 2:7) was revealed to Mary,
she, his Mother, is in contact with the truth about her Son only in faith and
through faith! She is therefore blessed, because “she has believed,” and
continues to believe day after day amidst all the trials and the adversities of
Jesus' infancy and then during the years of the hidden life at Nazareth, where
he “was obedient to them” (Lk. 2:51).
The Mother of that Son,
therefore, mindful of what has been told her at the Annunciation and in
subsequent events, bears within herself the radical “newness” of faith: the
beginning of the New Covenant. This is the beginning of the Gospel, the joyful
Good News. However, it is not difficult to see in that beginning a particular
heaviness of heart, linked with a sort of “night of faith"-to use the
words of St. John of the Cross-a kind of “veil” through which one has to draw
near to the Invisible One and to live in intimacy with the mystery. And this is
the way that Mary, for many years, lived in intimacy with the mystery of her
Son, and went forward in her “pilgrimage of faith”, while Jesus “increased in
wisdom...and in favor with God and man” (Lk. 2:52). God's predilection for him
was manifested ever more clearly to people's eyes. The first human creature
thus permitted to discover Christ was Mary, who lived with Joseph in the same
house at Nazareth.
Jesus was aware that “no one
knows the Son except the Father” (cf. Mt. 11:27); thus even his Mother, to whom
had been revealed most completely the mystery of his divine sonship, lived in
intimacy with this mystery only through faith! Living side by side with her Son
under the same roof, and faithfully persevering “in her union with her Son”,
she “advanced in her pilgrimage of faith”, as the Council emphasizes. And so it
was during Christ's public life too (cf. Mk. 3:21-35) that day by day there was
fulfilled in her the blessing uttered by Elizabeth at the Visitation:
"Blessed is she who believed."
This blessing reaches its full
meaning when Mary stands beneath the Cross of her Son (cf. Jn. 19:25). The
Council says that this happened "not without a divine plan": by
"suffering deeply with her only-begotten Son and joining herself with her
maternal spirit to his sacrifice, lovingly consenting to the immolation of the
victim to whom she had given birth," in this way Mary "faithfully
preserved her union with her Son even to the Cross." It is a union through
faith- the same faith with which she had received the angel's revelation at the
Annunciation.
And now, standing at the foot of
the Cross, Mary is the witness, humanly speaking, of the complete negation of
these words. On that wood of the Cross her Son hangs in agony as one condemned.
"He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows...he was despised,
and we esteemed him not": as one destroyed (cf. Is. 53:3- 5). How great,
how heroic then is the obedience of faith shown by Mary in the face of God's
"unsearchable judgments"! How completely she "abandons herself
to God" without reserve, offering the full assent of the intellect and the
will" to him whose "ways are inscrutable" (cf. Rom. 11:33)! And
how powerful too is the action of grace in her soul, how all-pervading is the
influence of the Holy Spirit and of his light and power!
Through this faith Mary is
perfectly united with Christ in his self- emptying. For "Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing
to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in
the likeness of men": precisely on Golgotha "humbled himself and
became obedient unto death, even death on a cross" (cf. Phil. 2:5-8). At
the foot of the Cross Mary shares through faith in the shocking mystery of this
self- emptying. This is perhaps the deepest "kenosis" of faith in
human history. Through faith the Mother shares in the death of her Son, in his
redeeming death; but in contrast with the faith of the disciples who fled, hers
was far more enlightened. On Golgotha, Jesus through the Cross definitively
confirmed that he was the "sign of contradiction" foretold by Simeon.
At the same time, there were also fulfilled on Golgotha the words which Simeon
had addressed to Mary: "and a sword will pierce through your own soul
also."
Yes, truly "blessed is she who believed"! These words, spoken by Elizabeth after the Annunciation, here at the foot of the Cross seem to re-echo with supreme eloquence, and the power contained within them becomes something penetrating. From the Cross, that is to say from the very heart of the mystery of Redemption, there radiates and spreads out the prospect of that blessing of faith.
In the expression "Blessed is she who believed," we can therefore rightly find a kind of "key" which unlocks for us the innermost reality of Mary, whom the angel hailed as "full of grace." If as "full of grace" she has been eternally present in the mystery of Christ, through faith she became a sharer in that mystery in every extension of her earthly journey. She "advanced in her pilgrimage of faith" and at the same time, in a discreet yet direct and effective way, she made present to humanity the mystery of Christ. And she still continues to do so. Through the mystery of Christ, she too is present within mankind. Thus through the mystery of the Son the mystery of the Mother is also made clear.
Responsory
R.
The pious Virgin granted us certain confidence in her protection. * She herself chose this place, in which the faithful
from all over the world come to pray.V. May our people jump for joy, grateful for this visit of the Virgin Mary.
R. * She herself chose this place, in which the faithful from all over the world come to pray.
Or
From the Encyclical Redemptoris Mater of Blessed John Paul II, Pope.
Encyclical Redemptoris Mater, 25 March, 1987, nn. 25-27.
Mary "goes before them," "leads the way" for
them.
The Council further says that "Mary figured profoundly in the history of salvation and in a certain way unites and mirrors within herself the central truths of the faith." Among all believers she is like a "mirror" in which are reflected in the most profound and limpid way "the mighty works of God" (Acts 2:11).
Built by Christ upon the Apostles, the Church became fully aware of these mighty works of God on the day of Pentecost, when those gathered together in the Upper Room "were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Acts 2:4). From that moment there also begins that journey of faith, the Church's pilgrimage through the history of individuals and peoples. We know that at the beginning of this journey Mary is present. We see her in the midst of the Apostles in the Upper Room, "prayerfully imploring the gift of the Spirit."
In a sense her journey of faith is longer. The Holy Spirit had already come down upon her, and she became his faithful spouse at the Annunciation, welcoming the Word of the true God, offering "the full submission of intellect and will...and freely assenting to the truth revealed by him," indeed abandoning herself totally to God through "the obedience of faith," whereby she replied to the angel: "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." The journey of faith made by Mary, whom we see praying in the Upper Room, is thus longer than that of the others gathered there: Mary "goes before them," "leads the way" for them. The moment of Pentecost in Jerusalem had been prepared for by the moment of the Annunciation in Nazareth, as well as by the Cross. In the Upper Room Mary's journey meets the Church's journey of faith. In what way?
Among those who devoted themselves to prayer in the Upper Room, preparing to go "into the whole world" after receiving the Spirit, some had been called by Jesus gradually from the beginning of his mission in Israel. Eleven of them had been made Apostles, and to them Jesus had passed on the mission which he himself had received from the Father. "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you" (Jn. 20:21), he had said to the Apostles after the Resurrection. And forty days later, before returning to the Father, he had added: "when the Holy Spirit has come upon you...you shall be my witnesses...to the end of the earth" (cf. Acts 1:8). This mission of the Apostles began the moment they left the Upper Room in Jerusalem. The Church is born and then grows through the testimony that Peter and the Apostles bear to the Crucified and Risen Christ (cf. Acts 2:31-34; 3:15-18; 4:10-12; 5:30-32).
Mary did not directly receive this apostolic mission. She was not among those whom Jesus sent "to the whole world to teach all nations" (cf. Mt. 28:19) when he conferred this mission on them. But she was in the Upper Room, where the Apostles were preparing to take up this mission with the coming of the Spirit of Truth: she was present with them. In their midst Mary was "devoted to prayer" as the "mother of Jesus" (cf. Acts 1:13-14), of the Crucified and Risen Christ. And that first group of those who in faith looked "upon Jesus as the author of salvation," knew that Jesus was the Son of Mary, and that she was his Mother, and that as such she was from the moment of his conception and birth a unique witness to the mystery of Jesus, that mystery which before their eyes had been disclosed and confirmed in the Cross and Resurrection. Thus, from the very first moment, the Church "looked at" Mary through Jesus, just as she "looked at" Jesus through Mary. For the Church of that time and of every time Mary is a singular witness to the years of Jesus' infancy and hidden life at Nazareth, when she "kept all these things, pondering them in her heart" (Lk. 2:19; cf. Lk. 2:51).
But above all, in the Church of that time and of every time Mary was and is the one who is "blessed because she believed"; she was the first to believe. From the moment of the Annunciation and conception, from the moment of his birth in the stable at Bethlehem, Mary followed Jesus step by step in her maternal pilgrimage of faith. She followed him during the years of his hidden life at Nazareth; she followed him also during the time after he left home, when he began "to do and to teach" (cf. Acts 1:1) in the midst of Israel. Above all she followed him in the tragic experience of Golgotha. Now, while Mary was with the Apostles in the Upper Room in Jerusalem at the dawn of the Church, her faith, born from the words of the Annunciation, found confirmation. The angel had said to her then: "You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great...and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end." The recent events on Calvary had shrouded that promise in darkness, yet not even beneath the Cross did Mary's faith fail. She had still remained the one who, like Abraham, "in hope believed against hope" (Rom. 4:18). But it is only after the Resurrection that hope had shown its true face and the promise had begun to be transformed into reality. For Jesus, before returning to the Father, had said to the Apostles: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations . . . lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age" (cf. Mt. 28:19-20). Thus had spoken the one who by his Resurrection had revealed himself as the conqueror of death, as the one who possessed the kingdom of which, as the angel said, "there will be no end."
Responsory
R.
The pious Virgin granted us certain confidence in her protection. * She herself chose this place, in which the faithful
from all over the world come to pray.V. May our people jump for joy, grateful for this visit of the Virgin Mary.
R. * She herself chose this place, in which the faithful from all over the world come to pray.
Prayer
All powerful and ever-living God,
through the glorious Mother of Your Son, you have given heavenly protection to
all who invoke her under the title of the Pillar. Through her intercession,
grant us strength in faith, security in hope, and constancy in love. We ask
this through Christ our Lord, Your Son, who lives and reigns, with You in the
unity of the Holy Spirit, One God, forever and ever. Amen.
Or
Almighty and eternal God, who gave the Blessed Virgin Mary, the
glorious Mother of your Son, as a pillar of strength to all who call upon her,
grant that, by her intercession, we may be strong in faith, steadfast in hope,
and constant in charity. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and
reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen.
