Mary, Mother of the Church [Homily]

*Originally recorded in May 2018 (the first year of the obligatory Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church)

Welcome dear brothers and sisters. I'm Father Philip with the Brotherhood, and it's my privilege to be able to share some thoughts with you with regard to the feast which has recently been set up by our Holy Father, with regard to Mary as “Mother of the Church.” It's a time for us to reflect on her life and particularly the way our Holy Father places this feast, this observance, this memorial—properly speaking—the Monday after Pentecost. So let me give you a little history of the idea and the practice of Mary as the Mother of the Church so that you can see where it fits into the piety of our faith.

Actually, it's a title that's been used only rarely. The first instance that we know of was way, way, back in the fourth century by St Ambrose. But it was mentioned in the 18th century by Pope Benedict XIV and then Pope Leo XIII in 1885. But our concern with it, our presence to it, comes to us through St Paul VI in 1964, where he gave a talk at the end of the third session of the Second Vatican Council. He mentioned Mary as the “Mother of the Church” as a particularly apt way for us to understand her care for us. A little later on a series of Masses in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary were set out in a separate folder for optional use. And one of those Masses was entitled “Our Lady, Mother of the Church.”

What Pope Francis has done is he's taken those and he's inserted that into the actual calendar of the Church's life so that, from now on, the Monday after Pentecost will be the memorial of Our Lady, Mother of the Church. And so what I want to do is reflect a little bit together with you in regard to this title of hers, and to the place that she can play ever more deeply in our own life. And for that purpose, I want to take the Mass text of Our Lady, Mother of the Church, and look at the preface to the Eucharistic prayer because it has a lot to say about Mary and her life.

Mother of God, Mother of All Disciples

The preface (which is said just before the Eucharistic prayer) for the memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mary model and Mother of the Church, contains a couple of references that might be helpful for us to get a clearer picture of her place as Mother of the Church. You know where it starts, of course, is under the cross, where Jesus confides John (John, representing the disciples, and representing therefore ourselves) to Mary, as son to mother. And so the motherhood of Mary is not simply now the motherhood of Jesus, but now she becomes the mother of all of his disciples. And so the preface of this Mass has these few things to say. “It's truly right and just ... always and everywhere to give you thanks”, the preface says, and “to proclaim your greatness with due praise as we honor the Blessed Virgin Mary… giving birth to the Creator, she nurtured the beginnings of the Church.” So the first thing that's celebrated is Mary as the Mother of God. But the preface links her motherhood of the Lord to the Church herself: “She nurtured the beginnings of the Church”—of course, in the presence and person of her son, who would be the one to bring the Church into its full existence. 

Then secondly, the preface goes on to say, “standing beside the Cross, she … took to herself, as sons and daughters, all those who … are born to a heavenly life” through the death of Christ. So the second thing about her is that, at the cross, where she’s confided to by the Lord, by her son, as mother of his disciples, the preface says she takes those “to herself.” And so she accepts that, and she becomes a mother to us because she accepts the mission which is given to her by her son in the moments of his last and final agony. So that's the second thing. 

The Pattern of the Church at Prayer

So the first is she's the Mother of God. Secondly, underneath the cross, she becomes the mother of his disciples. And thirdly, she is present, as you know, at Pentecost. And so the third paragraph of the preface says, “As the apostles awaited the Spirit … she joined her” prayers to theirs, and “so became the pattern of the Church at prayer.” So the third thing about her is that, she is not only present to the disciples at the very moment where they are going to receive from the Lord Jesus Christ the gift of the Spirit (which will enable them to become missionaries; enable them to have the Church's light actually begin to exist outside of the land of its birth)—she becomes the “pattern of the Church at prayer.” So, her connection with praying with these disciples for the coming of the Spirit becomes now a model for you and for me. One of the things we want to ask Mary to do is to inflame us with desire for mission; desire for the extension of the Church into every land and place and people in generation. And so she becomes the “pattern of the Church at prayer.” 

Encouraged to Be Missionaries in Our Time

The fourth thing which the preface celebrates is that, now in “the glory of heaven, she … watches in kindness over the Church's homeward steps.” So she becomes our intercessor, she who has a resurrected body. She becomes the embodiment of our future. And, she has a care for us as we take our steps in the patterns of life that the Lord brings to us. So we see, just in this one Mass text, the description of Mother Mary in a way that really reveals to us how she is the Mother of the Church. For, in her assumption (which is not simply something of her own glorification), she has extended that motherhood, by virtue of her appearances, which have taken place all through the centuries in every land and place where possible, as a physical presence of her caring for us in our homeward steps.

So we're both encouraged by her to be missionaries in our time, endowed with the Holy Spirit, filled with the Spirit’s zeal to see all men and women come to know the Lord Jesus and to be able to choose him because they have come to know him (knowing that their choice is theirs, of course); but also this missionary activity is incorporated into the much larger picture, that we are all on our homeward steps to the Father's house. And as the preface says, she looks over and guides those homeward steps of ours.

So brothers and sisters, this placing of the observance of Mary as Mother of the Church in the day after Pentecost was something quite deliberate on the Holy Father's part, and it helps to show us the connection between Mary and mission. So just as the Spirit is the center of the Church's life—like a soul, almost, to the Church—so just as the Spirit is the center of that: the fruit of his presence is to inspire us to mission. And Mary therefore is the mother of our efforts, is the mother of our zeal, the mother of our hopes, the one who really wants us to actually undertake this mission so that other people can come to know the Lord Jesus. Well, as you know, that fits like “hand in glove” to our life in the Brotherhood of Hope; for we are not only a community which has its own family life and its own search for the growth and perfection of its members, but we also are charged with this mission of the Church herself, which is particularized, in our community, in the mission to university life and to the university campuses of our times. Where, now that in order to succeed in American life, it's taken as granted that you must go to a college or university or its equivalent; so this mission, therefore, is a mission now for all those who are going to do this. And so we want to celebrate the truth that we are called to this mission and that Mother Mary is there for us as the mother of this part of the Church's life.

So my brothers and sisters, I want to encourage you, as you hear this, to come to the Holy Spirit and say, “Come Holy Spirit, where am I in that? Where am I in the mission of the Church? What do I see that the Holy Spirit would empower me to be able to say, or to do, so as to bring the love of Jesus Christ, and to bring people to a point where they can choose to commit themselves to him, and so to benefit from the totality of his life? Where am I in that process?” Well, the person you can go to, of course, is the Holy Spirit, and the human person you can go to, is Mother Mary. Since she is our mother in the order of grace, there's a part of our life which she has a concern for, and a particular interest in. So Mary and the Spirit, therefore, work together, as it were, in a very particular way: the Spirit revealing to us the Son and the Father; Mary revealing to us the power which the Spirit wants us to have in order to live the life of the Father and the Son. All for the purpose so that, in your life and mine, the Holy Spirit would lead us to those actions, those words, those prayers, those intentions, those gifts, those involvements, so as to bring the Gospel outwards. For our Church desperately needs the witness of us all. It's no longer simply the witness of particular groups of people as it was in the past (particular groups of people, even like religious, who were mostly charged with missionary activity). That day has passed. And now it is a mission for us all. It's a mission for each of us, and each of us has a part to play in that, not only by our prayers, but actually by our involvement in some aspect of the mission.

And you say, “Well what is that?” Well, the Holy Spirit wants to reveal that to you. And so we ask Mother Mary on this Memorial of herself as Mother of the Church to intercede for each of us, that we would experience here the Spirit's voice inside us; experience the Spirit’s moving within us; experience the Spirit’s changing us from within; so that we come to the full maturity of our Christian life, which always involves—always must involve—the mission to others. So I want to recommend that to you, dear friends of the Brotherhood, thanking you, as always, for your great interest and love for us, and the way in which you express that in so many different ways. But it is also that we work together, so that we are partners together in mission, so that we can actually be together, not only in our prayers and our personal relationships, but in our missionary relationships.

And so may Mary, Mother of the Church, she who is the foundation at the very beginning of its life through the action of Jesus, at the cross, confiding to her the care of John, and asking John to accept her as mother: we ask her intercession. And we beg the Holy Spirit to fill us with power as we say, “Come Mother Mary, come Mother Mary, you who are Mother to us in the Church, and by your intercession, by your example, by your presence, by your appearances, inspire in us a great desire for mission which the Holy Spirit has confided to us, as baptized members of the body of Christ.” God bless you.