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Sacred Scriptures/Liturgy- Commentary on Sunday's Readings |
"Mary
Meditated on All These Things in Her Heart"
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFMCap, Pontifical Household Preacher
www.zenit.org
Numbers 6:22-27; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21
The council taught us to look upon Mary as a "figure" of the Church,
that is, as the Church's perfect exemplar, as the first fruits of
the Church. But can Mary be a model of the Church even as "Mother of
God," the title with which she is honored this day? Can we become
mothers of Christ?
Not only is this possible, but some fathers of the Church have said
that, without this imitation, Mary's title is useless to me: "What
does it matter," they said, "if Christ was once born to Mary in
Bethlehem but is not born by faith in my soul?"
Jesus himself was the first to apply this title, "Mother of Christ,"
to the Church when he declared: "My mother and my brothers are those
who hear the word of God and put it into practice" (Luke 8:21).
Today's liturgy presents Mary to us as the first of those to become
mother of Christ through attentive listening to his word. The Church
has chosen for this feast the Gospel passage where it is written
that "Mary, for her part, treasured all these words, meditating on
them in her heart." How one concretely becomes a mother of Christ is
explained to us by Jesus himself: hearing the word and putting it
into practice.
There are two types of incomplete or interrupted motherhood. One is
the old one which we know: early termination of the pregancy. This
happens when a woman conceives a life but does not give birth to it
because, in the meantime, either for natural causes or the sin of
men, the child dies. Until a short time ago this was the only known
form of incomplete motherhood.
Today, however, we know another which consists, on the contrary, in
giving birth to a child without having conceived it. This happens
when child is first conceived in a test tube and then inserted into
the womb of a woman. In some terrible and squalid cases, the womb is
borrowed, sometimes rented, to bear a human life conceived
elsewhere. In this case, that which the woman gives birth to does
not come from her, is not "first conceived in her heart."
Unfortunately, also on the spiritual plane there are these two sad
possibilities. There are those who conceive Jesus without giving
birth to him. Such are those who welcome the word without putting it
into practice, those who have one spiritual abortion after another,
formulating plans for conversion which are then systematically
forgotten and abandoned at the halfway point; they behave toward the
word as hasty observers who see their faces in a mirror and then go
away immediately forgetting what they looked like (cf. James
1:23-24). In sum, these are those who have faith but not works.
On the other hand, there are those who give birth to Christ without
having conceived him. Such are those who do many works, perhaps even
good ones, which do not come from the heart, from love of God and
right intention, but rather from habit, from hypocrisy, from the
desire for their own glory or interests, or simply from the
satisfaction of doing something, acting. In sum, these are those who
have works but not faith.
These are the negative cases of an incomplete maternity. St. Francis
of Assisi describes for us the positive case of a complete maternity
which makes us resemble Mary: "We are mothers of Christ," he writes,
"when we carry him in our hearts and our bodies through divine love
and pure and sincere conscience; we give birth to him through holy
works, which should shine as an example before others!"
We -- the saint says -- conceive Christ when we love him with
sincerity of heart and with rectitude of conscience, and we give
birth to him when we accomplish holy works that manifest him to the
world.
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary
