Mary’s mission: divine motherhood and universal

The Mission of Mary: Divine and Universal Maternity

The divine election and vocation are centered around Mary’s maternity, as the mother of Jesus, the unique Person. This maternity signifies the purpose of her historic and salvific mission and represents the culmination of her election and vocation. It extends beyond Mary as an individual and assigns her a communal role. Indeed, her vocation makes her the embodiment of Jewish hope and introduces, in the follow of Christ, the new life of the Church.According to the narrative of the Annunciation, two distinct revelations are revealed, following the angelic words of messianic joy. The first is the text from Luke 1:30-33, which recalls the fulfillment of Israel’s hope: the verb “conceive” (v. 31), characteristic of feminine life, is here linked to Israel’s hopes (v. 32-33) so that her life as a woman is centered around messianic events, which unfold in dialogue between her freedom and the God before whom she has found grace (v. 30).The Second Revelation refers to the passage in *Luke* 1:35-38. Introduced by Mary’s question, which seeks to demonstrate how God is greater than any man, here the female role of conceiving is transcended to give way to the Spirit, the true actor of this event. Mary is thus called to surpass human messianism proper to creation, to open herself to the Spirit (v. 35), and this implies an inversion of usual human logic (v. 36-37). Hope always involves human participation, but its outcome is no longer a simple human measure.This creative action of the Spirit is realized in the birth of Jesus (*Luke* 2:1-7) and is revealed to shepherds and sages in the disturbance of Jerusalem. In Mary’s story, this transcendent work of the Spirit finds space in these surprising events as well as in the reception of the Word for meditation (*Luke* 2:19.51), assimilation, and announcement of its depth (*Luke* 1:51-53).The mission Mary is called to fulfill thus involves the Word penetrating hearts (*Luke* 2:35; *Acts* 2:37) and the Spirit, the *Ruah* and the *Dabar*, God’s two hands. The Spirit illuminates and introduces to the truth of the Word those who are not yet able to bear its weight (*John* 16:12. 14:17). From the Spirit comes the perception of the novelty of the Word, which only divine love can generate (*John* 14:26. 15:26. 16:13-14). Guided by the Spirit, Mary meditates on the Word until she finds in it human space for her understanding and testimony. Mary appears to us as the form, that is, the model, the type of the Church. She is, within the Church, the form by which the Church is completed as Bride to be given to the Bridegroom.Even more clearly, when we say that the Church is Marian, we mean that Mary is interiorized in the Church, to whom she communicates her spirit.This Marian reading of the Church requires some clarifications. It is not a simple transposition of Mary’s notion as a person to the Church, but a rethinking of Mary’s bond with the Word and the Spirit, and the way the Church structures itself in them. Following Paul, one can say that the bond of Christ with the Church resides in the fact that it is his body, in the sense that it is a participation and extension of his life. This theological perspective will find its most incisive expression in the Church as a continuous *incarnation*.Christ sustains and animates the Church because he participates in its Spirit. It is necessary to take into account both the fact that Christ is the head of that Church which is his body, and the fact that the members of the Church are individuals in themselves and, as such, cannot be dissolved into a communal personality.Then, it is necessary to go beyond the simple corporate personality, of a legal nature, and understand the Spirit as a force of communion that, through its trinitarian ancestry, places the faithful in deep communion with Christ and His life, while respecting their individuality and distinction. As a force of communion, the Spirit mediates through individuals, making them participants in His communion with the divine persons of the Father and the Son and members of the ecclesial communion.In this context, the Marian reading of the Church appears truly profound. On the one hand, Mary models herself after that self-giving that is proper to the Son, while on the other, she models herself after the unifying communion of many that is the Spirit. Thus, the self-giving of the Son reaches the fullness of the kingdom in the economy of salvation only when the Church emanates from itself, participating in its Spirit. In Mary, the Church, which the Spirit will later build in history, is present in an originative and real way, so we can define Mary as the *normative subjectivity of the Church in its response as Bride to Christ*.Mary’s relation to Christ passes through the Spirit because, in the Incarnation, Mary did not cooperate immediately with her Son, at the beginning of the work of salvation, but did so only through the mediation of the Holy Spirit. The proper function of the Holy Spirit in the economy of salvation can be described as a collaboration in the redemptive work of the Son. Mary’s cooperation is primarily a participation in the collaboration that the Holy Spirit offers to the redemptive work of the Son. Following the pneumatological heritage of the Patristic era, we can affirm that Mary’s personality is *pneumatoform*.Christ and the Spirit seem to be active in Mary and are necessary for the life of the Church. Christ confers unity to the various members as parts of a whole, while the Spirit confers to this whole the characteristics of each personal life: memory and consciousness. Thus, the personality of the Church begins with Christ, lives through the Spirit, and finds its icon in Mary: in her, the Spirit performs a unique and singular function that leads her to make her global relation with the Word, through the Spirit, *the model of life for every Christian*.To deepen your reflection on Mary’s mission and her universal motherhood, consult Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Redemptoris Mater, dedicated entirely to Mary’s maternal mission in the economy of salvation.Further your studies: explore Mariology, Marian theology, Marian apparitions, and Graduate studies in Mariology.