In Christ, Mary is reconciled with God through the pre-redemption, which is the reason for her immaculate nature. But she is immaculate in Christ not merely as a privilege, but also, and even more so, as a minister of our reconciliation with God: a unique, irreplaceable, and always active ministry. She is immaculate for us. She is a brave woman of faith for us. She suffers to the point of death with Christ on the Cross for us. She is assumed by us. Mother of the Church, by the strength of charity in the Holy Spirit of Christ. She, who was faithful, is at the pinnacle of the “rest” of the people of Israel.But, reconciling us in Christ with God, Mary also reconciles each one of us with ourselves. She reconciles us with one another, making the multitude a family of brothers.Mary in Christ reconciles us with ourselves.Extroversão and Cultural Division of the PersonWhat is the condition of the individual today? He has lost the fundamental certitudes that expressed the meaning of life and gave serenity to his conscience in all dimensions. They gave energy to his will. They gave creativity and joy to his actions. We were in the world as a person in the image of God, not in an individualist sense, but as an “I” that opens to the “other” as a “you” to form a “we”: community, city.Today, every thinking individual feels interiorly insecure because he is divided within himself between aspiration and reality. In fact, this has always happened: consider, for example, Saint Augustine before his conversion to Christ. However, around us emerged and imposed a world of values that had force to guide us, and ultimately, the interior division between aspiration and reality found a solution. There was an interior reconciliation of ourselves with ourselves.Today, this is not entirely impossible, but it has become much more difficult. The natural environment has been replaced by a cultural environment, which often manipulates the individual, alienating, distracting, and disuniting him from himself.We have lost our autonomy as persons: persons, I repeat, as “I” who opens to the “other” as “you” to form a community, a city of values. It is painful to think that we have lost this autonomy and have allowed ourselves to be manipulated and divided interiorly, rejecting Him who was the foundational reason for this autonomy: God.“God is dead,” it was said in the 1950s, because He would not have saved us from the horrors of war, which we, however, desired. God is no longer useful, it was said in the 1960s, because technology had brought about such rapid economic progress that we deluded ourselves into thinking that from now on, the individual could build his own earthly paradise, unlimited individual and social well-being, by himself.And so, suspicion and rejection, starting from God, spread to the whole past: it was too dominated by God. From a just “secularization” we moved to “secularism” or “laicism.”What is the result of this race towards a new promised land? It is between two vacuums: the one of the past rejected. The one of the future, which reduces the individual to a mere servant of the computer that only produces matter to consume, and thus reduces the individual to a mere consumer. And, to consume, mass media create false needs within the individual, who is thus transformed into a chain of needs, which attribute value to things that have none. This leads to a split between the deep individual within and the extroverted individual on the surface, who is manipulated by an environment that is no longer a city suited to the natural individual.What Can Mary Tell Us and Give Us?What to do? Reject or change this city? Change it. But to change it without renouncing the new values and thus reconcile the individual of today with himself, remaining the individual of today, what can Mary tell us, what can Mary give us? The question is particularly relevant for women.Paul VI, in his Apostolic Exhortation “Lumen Gentium,” stated…Marialis Cultus», observes:> «In the veneration of the Virgin… a sense of dissonance is felt: the distance, that is, between certain elements of this veneration and contemporary anthropological concepts and the psychosocial reality, profoundly changed, in which our time’s individuals live and act… This results, in some, a certain disaffection for the veneration of the Virgin and a difficulty in taking Mary of Nazareth as a model, because the horizons of her life, it is claimed, seem restricted in comparison with the vast areas of activity in which contemporary individuals are called to act» (n. 34).Undoubtedly, the world in which Mary lived was confined to a small village in Galilee, Nazareth, as a simple housewife in a carpenter’s house. And the culture of the region did not extend beyond the concerns of everyday life of simple folk.But here a fundamental and decisive question must be posed: is the environment in which an individual finds themselves the measure of their greatness, so that the smaller the world, the lesser and more insignificant the individual, or is the measure of the world, wherever it may be, the individual? And is the greatness of the individual chiefly internal and measured by the greatness of God? And, therefore, by the greatness of the values that material reality assumes when it enters into service for this internalness?The answer cannot be in doubt: it is the individual, with the values they create, even if they remain immanent in the person. It is this individual who constitutes the true greatness of the world, the great culture of the world.In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus reveals to us who the figures of individuals are and what works truly achieve value and, therefore, endure as ‘history’, in contrast to what makes mere ‘chronicle’ and lasts only a moment.In chapter 25, He tells us that, in the actions of individuals, beyond the dimension of factuality, which for us makes ‘news’, there is a dimension of value that already possesses the intensity and vastness of eternal life in the Kingdom of God. It is the ‘historical end’ immanent in ‘history’: it does not make ‘news’, it does not make a ‘secular culture’. It often goes completely unnoticed by individuals, but it emerges in the consciousness of one who acts as a person and is experienced and evaluated by God.Thus, whoever feeds the hungry, gives drink to the thirsty, clothes the naked, and visits those in prison, etc., performs acts of the utmost value, acts that have endurance as ‘historical’ and the vastness of the Kingdom of God, even if they are actions of a single instant in a place without splendor. Similarly, whoever does not feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, etc., commits acts of omission that are not even noticed by individuals, especially those of our time.But they are of such gravity and permanence that they can be measured only by the exclusion of the Kingdom of God.Therefore, when we ask whether Mary has anything to say to us and to give us to compose, reconcile interior reality with external, mundane reality, we must seek the answer in the dimension of values, true values, even if they do not make news. Even as extroverted culture ridicules true interiority and proposes as values what is not. And it exalts them with monuments and lights, weaving praises in libraries of books.It teaches us to make decisions as a person of true and great history.In essence, it is a matter of responding with truth to the question: what is the human? What are the truly human values? It is, therefore, an anthropological discourse. And it is the discourse that Paul VI wants to be made regarding Mary, and which he begins in his Apostolic Exhortation with some reflections. I evoke one here:> «The reading of the divine Scriptures, carried out under the influence of the Holy Spirit and taking into account the acquisitions of human sciences and the various situations of the contemporary world, will lead to discovering how Mary can be taken as a mirror of the expectations of men of our time. Thus, to give some examples, the modern woman, desirous of participating with decisive power in the guidance of the community, will look with intimate joy at Mary who, admitted to dialogue with God, gives her active and responsible consent, not to the solution of a contingent problem, but to that «work of the ages», as was rightly called the Incarnation of the Word», (n. 37, St. Peter Chrysologus, Sermo 143).This page of Paul VI should be meditated, precisely because of our theme: Mary, in Christ, reconciling us with God, reconciles each one of us with ourselves.Therefore, one must emphasize in Mary the act of decision, the courage with which she decides, the wise and pondered manner, even finding herself before God, and finally, the docility and totality of that decision, which was a decision of faith.This was a true fundamental moral option of a mature person: with this, she gave a new final sense to her whole life. And she also accepted an unknown and, therefore, a risk. But she was well aware of who God was: the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the God whose promises she believed and to whom she remained faithful, as that person in whom «the People of God», «the Rest of Israel», finds its maximum expression.Surety of faith and of historical experience, and therefore security.And then, steadfastness in taking, persevering in, and carrying out the path marked out by God.All of this is what is asked so that the modern person can find the meaning of their own life, in any environment, in any culture, whether they perform a humble work in a humble home, or guide a spaceship to the moon. The vastness of the earth’s horizons is always small in comparison to the vastness of dialogue and then walking with God.Mary is not only a model of how we should give meaning to our person when acting in our time; she is present in the inner principle that forms our person, and thus is at the root of our identity and our continuous synthesis between interiority and the reality of the surrounding world, without scattering or distraction. To always be ourselves and yet serve and create values around us. To reconcile or reconcile reality with ourselves and ourselves with reality.How is Mary the principle of all of this within us?One must reflect on the expression of Saint Peter of Rome, cited by Paul VI to indicate the incarnation of the Word: “It is the work of all the ages.” The work desired by all the ages, from the creation of the world. The work present and operative in the history of all the ages, in every moment, until the ages end, and the sky of Christ’s resurrection becomes our dwelling place, where God will be all in all.Universal reconciliation at its maximum realization, operated by God in Christ.This is not merely rhetorical imagery from Saint Peter of Rome. It is revealed doctrine, especially through Saint Paul. In his letter to the Ephesians, it is indicated as “the economy of the fullness of times,” with eschatological tension (tòn kairón), which reaches its peak in the recapitulation of all things in Christ (Eph 1:10; cf. 1 Cor 15:24-28).By saying yes, the “fiat,” to God, God in Christ assumed Mary as his particular minister in this work. This “fiat” was renewed and, in fact, took on a dimension and salvific tension, as “partner of Christ” on the Cross, and finally revealed publicly in its ecclesial dimension on the day of Pentecost. With her Assumption, she was assumed into the sky of the Risen One, always as a minister in action of the Risen One with her motherhood. Well, precisely through this maternal ministry, she is not only an example for us to also say yes to God, but she operates within the action of Christ with the energy of the Holy Spirit.All this should cause no surprise if we understand that it is realized in a specific space, which is the space of the Church, a mystery.It teaches us to act in harmony with the merciful charity of the Holy Spirit of God in Christ.As a unique member in her ministeriality to Christ in the Church, Mary does not act merely as a principle, on God’s part, with her “fiat,” but also acts with her charitable eclesial action, moving us to say, as she said and with her that she always repeats, our “yes” to God. It is a community of charity and prayer that forms the community, which is expressed in popular Marian piety, moved and always animated by the Holy Spirit.Mary’s action within us and the action of the Church here merge into a single action of reconciliation, that is, of identity of the Christian: an identity that is restored if one is outside of charity through sin, and is intensified if one is already in charity, making us, with Mary, saints of Christ’s holiness, of Christ who is expressed in the Church for the world.And here we can also understand another great truth and practice that animates authentic Marian piety: Mary’s concern for sinners and sinners’ confidence in Mary. It is always Mary’s charity that circulates in the Church, along with the charity of all the saints. Sinners are reached by her because it is a dogmatic truth that sinners, through the indelible sacrament of baptism and, one might say, the confirmation, although they may lose the sanctifying grace and charity, are still members of the Church and are under the action, indeed the pressure, of charitable eclesial and Marian action to convert.The Second Vatican Council states this explicitly:> “Those who approach the sacrament of penance receive from God’s mercy forgiveness of their offenses and, at the same time, are reconciled with the Church, which they have wounded by sin, and with whom they are united by charity, example, prayer,” (Lumen gentium 11).Only he who renounces the Church with an act of apostasy and actively opposes the action of the Holy Spirit is as if he were separated from the Church and deprived of the goods that come from the influence of charitable eclesial and Marian action. And yet, God’s tenderness does not lose sight of these unhappy ones.In the early centuries of the Church, great attention was paid to those who, although not in full communion with the Church, were linked to her, either through catechumens, in the case of those preparing for baptism, or in the case of sinners who, although they could not receive penance, suffered, contrite, their sin, made offerings.Thus, they were prepared for final penance before death, with the imposition of hands if they had not yet received penance, or at least with the Viaticum.If some died without this last action of the Church, yet desired it, the Church prayed for them afterward, imploring the most merciful God not to condemn them eternally.All this richness of the Church’s charity, with its original pastoral practices, has changed over time. It is necessary to recapture this charity and adapt it to the pastoral needs of our time, for the reconciliation, at least gradual, of Christians who feel in difficulty and have a great need to meet again and to place themselves in confident prayer to God.The economy of the Church, that is, Christ who makes the Church, is an economy of reconciliation. It is an economy of “mercy,” that is, according to biblical terminology, the tender love of a fatherly and maternal God in Christ for the world. In this economy, God the Father, in Christ and the Holy Spirit, willed that Mary be a minister of motherhood, especially to sinners. Thus, entering into the circuit of Mary’s love is entering into a circuit of sure salvation. Saint Alphonse writes:“This is the principal office that was given to Mary when she was placed on earth: to raise fallen souls from the divine grace and reconcile them with God,” (Saint Alphonse, *Le glorie di Maria* chap. 6, § 3).And he adds: “Devotion to Mary is a grace that God grants to those He wants to save,” (op. cit., chap., § 1).ConclusionThroughout these reflections, the guiding thread has remained the same: Mary, inseparable from Christ and entirely related to Him, is a singular minister of reconciliation that God accomplishes in Christ, and thus reconciles us with God, with ourselves, and among ourselves, so that the multitude becomes a true family of brothers. This maternal mediation does not diminish the uniqueness of Christ, but rather manifests it in His historical and ecclesial fertility, because it is exercised in the proper space where Christ acts and communicates His life, the Church mystery.In the anthropological plan, contemporary man often experiences an inner fracture between aspiration and reality, exacerbated by a cultural environment that disperses, alienates, and fragments the person. The Christian response to this crisis is not flight from the world but the recovery of interiority as the place of the truth of man before God. Here, Mary appears as a mirror of the legitimate expectations of our time: the multiform, and with her all humanity, recounts in her the greatness of a fully personal, conscious, and responsible decision, her “yes” of faith, not to solve a contingent problem, but to welcome “the work of the ages,” the incarnation of the Word (Paul VI, *Humanae vitae*).In the words of Saint Peter Chrysologus, *Sermo* 143, *Patrologia Latina* 52, 583: It is precisely this spiritual maturity, clarity, courage, and complete docility that restores inner unity and gives meaning to action, whether in everyday humility or in the broader tasks of culture and technology.Mary’s decision, her *fiat*, does not remain merely an exemplary memory but, by divine disposition, is placed at the heart of the economy of salvation, that “economy of the fullness of time” in which all things are recapitulated in Christ (Eph 1:10; cf. 1 Cor 15:24-28). Therefore, Mary is not only an external model; she is present, as a mother, in the inner principle that sustains our Christian identity, helping us to maintain the synthesis between interiority and the external world, without dispersion or loss of self. Saying yes to God, with Mary and as Mary, becomes a path of integration: to remain a person, to serve, to create true values, to reconcile reality with ourselves and ourselves with reality, on the horizon of the Kingdom.Reconciliation, however, also has a pastoral and merciful face. The Church, the Body of Christ, lives an economy of reconciliation that is an economy of mercy, that is, the tender love of God in Christ. In it, Mary exercises a motherhood particularly focused on sinners, not as an alternative to grace but as an expression of the maternal charity of Christ communicated by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, true Marian piety, when it is truly ecclesiastic, does not become fixated in affections, but becomes a power of conversion, prayer, example, and charity. Those who approach the sacrament of penance receive God’s forgiveness and, at the same time, reconcile themselves with the Church wounded by sin, which cooperates for conversion “with charity, example, and prayer” (Second Vatican Council, *Lumen gentium*).
11). Reconstructing, with creativity and prudence, the pastoral richness of the ancient church’s care for those in difficulty, can be a providential path towards the gradual reconciliation of many wounded, weary, or distant faithful.
In summary, the proposal is clear and demanding: to rediscover the truth of the matter in the light of God, and to learn, with Mary, the art of making great decisions that restore unity to the person and open the heart to the community. Entering into Mary’s circuit of love is to enter into the circuit of the Church’s charity, which the Holy Spirit stirs up and sustains, and thus on a safe path to salvation and inner reconstruction (St. Alfonso, *Le glorie di Maria* chap. 6, § 3. Cap., § 1). Thus, reconciled in Christ, we become capable of reconciling concrete life: relationships, accompaniment, work, culture, history. And, like Mary, we remain faithful to the essential: walking with God, so that in our life and time, the true great story may be manifested, one that God recounts and makes permanent.
Deepen your knowledge of Mariology: This article is part of our extensive collection of Marian reflection. If you desire to study Mariology with academic rigor, consider our Graduate Program in Mariology. For more on Marian apparitions and Marian theology, explore the resources of the Locus Mariologicus Institute.
To deepen the Marian theology of reconciliation and Mary’s role in Christ’s redemptive work, consult the Encyclical Redemptoris Mater of Pope John Paul II.
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But, reconciling us in Christ with God, Mary also reconciles each one of us with ourselves. She reconciles us with one another, making the multitude a family of brothers.Mary in Christ reconciles us with ourselves.Extroversão and Cultural Division of the PersonWhat is the condition of the individual today? He has lost the fundamental certitudes that expressed the meaning of life and gave serenity to his conscience in all dimensions. They gave energy to his will. They gave creativity and joy to his actions. We were in the world as a person in the image of God, not in an individualist sense, but as an “I” that opens to the “other” as a “you” to form a “we”: community, city.Today, every thinking individual feels interiorly insecure because he is divided within himself between aspiration and reality. In fact, this has always happened: consider, for example, Saint Augustine before his conversion to Christ. However, around us emerged and imposed a world of values that had force to guide us, and ultimately, the interior division between aspiration and reality found a solution. There was an interior reconciliation of ourselves with ourselves.Today, this is not entirely impossible, but it has become much more difficult. The natural environment has been replaced by a cultural environment, which often manipulates the individual, alienating, distracting, and disuniting him from himself.We have lost our autonomy as persons: persons, I repeat, as “I” who opens to the “other” as “you” to form a community, a city of values. It is painful to think that we have lost this autonomy and have allowed ourselves to be manipulated and divided interiorly, rejecting Him who was the foundational reason for this autonomy: God.“God is dead,” it was said in the 1950s, because He would not have saved us from the horrors of war, which we, however, desired. God is no longer useful, it was said in the 1960s, because technology had brought about such rapid economic progress that we deluded ourselves into thinking that from now on, the individual could build his own earthly paradise, unlimited individual and social well-being, by himself.And so, suspicion and rejection, starting from God, spread to the whole past: it was too dominated by God. From a just “secularization” we moved to “secularism” or “laicism.”What is the result of this race towards a new promised land? It is between two vacuums: the one of the past rejected. The one of the future, which reduces the individual to a mere servant of the computer that only produces matter to consume, and thus reduces the individual to a mere consumer. And, to consume, mass media create false needs within the individual, who is thus transformed into a chain of needs, which attribute value to things that have none. This leads to a split between the deep individual within and the extroverted individual on the surface, who is manipulated by an environment that is no longer a city suited to the natural individual.What Can Mary Tell Us and Give Us?What to do? Reject or change this city? Change it. But to change it without renouncing the new values and thus reconcile the individual of today with himself, remaining the individual of today, what can Mary tell us, what can Mary give us? The question is particularly relevant for women.Paul VI, in his Apostolic Exhortation “Lumen Gentium,” stated…Marialis Cultus», observes:> «In the veneration of the Virgin… a sense of dissonance is felt: the distance, that is, between certain elements of this veneration and contemporary anthropological concepts and the psychosocial reality, profoundly changed, in which our time’s individuals live and act… This results, in some, a certain disaffection for the veneration of the Virgin and a difficulty in taking Mary of Nazareth as a model, because the horizons of her life, it is claimed, seem restricted in comparison with the vast areas of activity in which contemporary individuals are called to act» (n. 34).Undoubtedly, the world in which Mary lived was confined to a small village in Galilee, Nazareth, as a simple housewife in a carpenter’s house. And the culture of the region did not extend beyond the concerns of everyday life of simple folk.But here a fundamental and decisive question must be posed: is the environment in which an individual finds themselves the measure of their greatness, so that the smaller the world, the lesser and more insignificant the individual, or is the measure of the world, wherever it may be, the individual? And is the greatness of the individual chiefly internal and measured by the greatness of God? And, therefore, by the greatness of the values that material reality assumes when it enters into service for this internalness?The answer cannot be in doubt: it is the individual, with the values they create, even if they remain immanent in the person. It is this individual who constitutes the true greatness of the world, the great culture of the world.In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus reveals to us who the figures of individuals are and what works truly achieve value and, therefore, endure as ‘history’, in contrast to what makes mere ‘chronicle’ and lasts only a moment.In chapter 25, He tells us that, in the actions of individuals, beyond the dimension of factuality, which for us makes ‘news’, there is a dimension of value that already possesses the intensity and vastness of eternal life in the Kingdom of God. It is the ‘historical end’ immanent in ‘history’: it does not make ‘news’, it does not make a ‘secular culture’. It often goes completely unnoticed by individuals, but it emerges in the consciousness of one who acts as a person and is experienced and evaluated by God.Thus, whoever feeds the hungry, gives drink to the thirsty, clothes the naked, and visits those in prison, etc., performs acts of the utmost value, acts that have endurance as ‘historical’ and the vastness of the Kingdom of God, even if they are actions of a single instant in a place without splendor. Similarly, whoever does not feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, etc., commits acts of omission that are not even noticed by individuals, especially those of our time.But they are of such gravity and permanence that they can be measured only by the exclusion of the Kingdom of God.Therefore, when we ask whether Mary has anything to say to us and to give us to compose, reconcile interior reality with external, mundane reality, we must seek the answer in the dimension of values, true values, even if they do not make news. Even as extroverted culture ridicules true interiority and proposes as values what is not. And it exalts them with monuments and lights, weaving praises in libraries of books.It teaches us to make decisions as a person of true and great history.In essence, it is a matter of responding with truth to the question: what is the human? What are the truly human values? It is, therefore, an anthropological discourse. And it is the discourse that Paul VI wants to be made regarding Mary, and which he begins in his Apostolic Exhortation with some reflections. I evoke one here:> «The reading of the divine Scriptures, carried out under the influence of the Holy Spirit and taking into account the acquisitions of human sciences and the various situations of the contemporary world, will lead to discovering how Mary can be taken as a mirror of the expectations of men of our time. Thus, to give some examples, the modern woman, desirous of participating with decisive power in the guidance of the community, will look with intimate joy at Mary who, admitted to dialogue with God, gives her active and responsible consent, not to the solution of a contingent problem, but to that «work of the ages», as was rightly called the Incarnation of the Word», (n. 37, St. Peter Chrysologus, Sermo 143).This page of Paul VI should be meditated, precisely because of our theme: Mary, in Christ, reconciling us with God, reconciles each one of us with ourselves.Therefore, one must emphasize in Mary the act of decision, the courage with which she decides, the wise and pondered manner, even finding herself before God, and finally, the docility and totality of that decision, which was a decision of faith.This was a true fundamental moral option of a mature person: with this, she gave a new final sense to her whole life. And she also accepted an unknown and, therefore, a risk. But she was well aware of who God was: the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the God whose promises she believed and to whom she remained faithful, as that person in whom «the People of God», «the Rest of Israel», finds its maximum expression.Surety of faith and of historical experience, and therefore security.And then, steadfastness in taking, persevering in, and carrying out the path marked out by God.All of this is what is asked so that the modern person can find the meaning of their own life, in any environment, in any culture, whether they perform a humble work in a humble home, or guide a spaceship to the moon. The vastness of the earth’s horizons is always small in comparison to the vastness of dialogue and then walking with God.Mary is not only a model of how we should give meaning to our person when acting in our time; she is present in the inner principle that forms our person, and thus is at the root of our identity and our continuous synthesis between interiority and the reality of the surrounding world, without scattering or distraction. To always be ourselves and yet serve and create values around us. To reconcile or reconcile reality with ourselves and ourselves with reality.How is Mary the principle of all of this within us?One must reflect on the expression of Saint Peter of Rome, cited by Paul VI to indicate the incarnation of the Word: “It is the work of all the ages.” The work desired by all the ages, from the creation of the world. The work present and operative in the history of all the ages, in every moment, until the ages end, and the sky of Christ’s resurrection becomes our dwelling place, where God will be all in all.Universal reconciliation at its maximum realization, operated by God in Christ.This is not merely rhetorical imagery from Saint Peter of Rome. It is revealed doctrine, especially through Saint Paul. In his letter to the Ephesians, it is indicated as “the economy of the fullness of times,” with eschatological tension (tòn kairón), which reaches its peak in the recapitulation of all things in Christ (Eph 1:10; cf. 1 Cor 15:24-28).By saying yes, the “fiat,” to God, God in Christ assumed Mary as his particular minister in this work. This “fiat” was renewed and, in fact, took on a dimension and salvific tension, as “partner of Christ” on the Cross, and finally revealed publicly in its ecclesial dimension on the day of Pentecost. With her Assumption, she was assumed into the sky of the Risen One, always as a minister in action of the Risen One with her motherhood. Well, precisely through this maternal ministry, she is not only an example for us to also say yes to God, but she operates within the action of Christ with the energy of the Holy Spirit.All this should cause no surprise if we understand that it is realized in a specific space, which is the space of the Church, a mystery.It teaches us to act in harmony with the merciful charity of the Holy Spirit of God in Christ.As a unique member in her ministeriality to Christ in the Church, Mary does not act merely as a principle, on God’s part, with her “fiat,” but also acts with her charitable eclesial action, moving us to say, as she said and with her that she always repeats, our “yes” to God. It is a community of charity and prayer that forms the community, which is expressed in popular Marian piety, moved and always animated by the Holy Spirit.Mary’s action within us and the action of the Church here merge into a single action of reconciliation, that is, of identity of the Christian: an identity that is restored if one is outside of charity through sin, and is intensified if one is already in charity, making us, with Mary, saints of Christ’s holiness, of Christ who is expressed in the Church for the world.And here we can also understand another great truth and practice that animates authentic Marian piety: Mary’s concern for sinners and sinners’ confidence in Mary. It is always Mary’s charity that circulates in the Church, along with the charity of all the saints. Sinners are reached by her because it is a dogmatic truth that sinners, through the indelible sacrament of baptism and, one might say, the confirmation, although they may lose the sanctifying grace and charity, are still members of the Church and are under the action, indeed the pressure, of charitable eclesial and Marian action to convert.The Second Vatican Council states this explicitly:> “Those who approach the sacrament of penance receive from God’s mercy forgiveness of their offenses and, at the same time, are reconciled with the Church, which they have wounded by sin, and with whom they are united by charity, example, prayer,” (Lumen gentium 11).Only he who renounces the Church with an act of apostasy and actively opposes the action of the Holy Spirit is as if he were separated from the Church and deprived of the goods that come from the influence of charitable eclesial and Marian action. And yet, God’s tenderness does not lose sight of these unhappy ones.In the early centuries of the Church, great attention was paid to those who, although not in full communion with the Church, were linked to her, either through catechumens, in the case of those preparing for baptism, or in the case of sinners who, although they could not receive penance, suffered, contrite, their sin, made offerings.Thus, they were prepared for final penance before death, with the imposition of hands if they had not yet received penance, or at least with the Viaticum.If some died without this last action of the Church, yet desired it, the Church prayed for them afterward, imploring the most merciful God not to condemn them eternally.All this richness of the Church’s charity, with its original pastoral practices, has changed over time. It is necessary to recapture this charity and adapt it to the pastoral needs of our time, for the reconciliation, at least gradual, of Christians who feel in difficulty and have a great need to meet again and to place themselves in confident prayer to God.The economy of the Church, that is, Christ who makes the Church, is an economy of reconciliation. It is an economy of “mercy,” that is, according to biblical terminology, the tender love of a fatherly and maternal God in Christ for the world. In this economy, God the Father, in Christ and the Holy Spirit, willed that Mary be a minister of motherhood, especially to sinners. Thus, entering into the circuit of Mary’s love is entering into a circuit of sure salvation. Saint Alphonse writes:“This is the principal office that was given to Mary when she was placed on earth: to raise fallen souls from the divine grace and reconcile them with God,” (Saint Alphonse, *Le glorie di Maria* chap. 6, § 3).And he adds: “Devotion to Mary is a grace that God grants to those He wants to save,” (op. cit., chap., § 1).ConclusionThroughout these reflections, the guiding thread has remained the same: Mary, inseparable from Christ and entirely related to Him, is a singular minister of reconciliation that God accomplishes in Christ, and thus reconciles us with God, with ourselves, and among ourselves, so that the multitude becomes a true family of brothers. This maternal mediation does not diminish the uniqueness of Christ, but rather manifests it in His historical and ecclesial fertility, because it is exercised in the proper space where Christ acts and communicates His life, the Church mystery.In the anthropological plan, contemporary man often experiences an inner fracture between aspiration and reality, exacerbated by a cultural environment that disperses, alienates, and fragments the person. The Christian response to this crisis is not flight from the world but the recovery of interiority as the place of the truth of man before God. Here, Mary appears as a mirror of the legitimate expectations of our time: the multiform, and with her all humanity, recounts in her the greatness of a fully personal, conscious, and responsible decision, her “yes” of faith, not to solve a contingent problem, but to welcome “the work of the ages,” the incarnation of the Word (Paul VI, *Humanae vitae*).In the words of Saint Peter Chrysologus, *Sermo* 143, *Patrologia Latina* 52, 583: It is precisely this spiritual maturity, clarity, courage, and complete docility that restores inner unity and gives meaning to action, whether in everyday humility or in the broader tasks of culture and technology.Mary’s decision, her *fiat*, does not remain merely an exemplary memory but, by divine disposition, is placed at the heart of the economy of salvation, that “economy of the fullness of time” in which all things are recapitulated in Christ (Eph 1:10; cf. 1 Cor 15:24-28). Therefore, Mary is not only an external model; she is present, as a mother, in the inner principle that sustains our Christian identity, helping us to maintain the synthesis between interiority and the external world, without dispersion or loss of self. Saying yes to God, with Mary and as Mary, becomes a path of integration: to remain a person, to serve, to create true values, to reconcile reality with ourselves and ourselves with reality, on the horizon of the Kingdom.Reconciliation, however, also has a pastoral and merciful face. The Church, the Body of Christ, lives an economy of reconciliation that is an economy of mercy, that is, the tender love of God in Christ. In it, Mary exercises a motherhood particularly focused on sinners, not as an alternative to grace but as an expression of the maternal charity of Christ communicated by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, true Marian piety, when it is truly ecclesiastic, does not become fixated in affections, but becomes a power of conversion, prayer, example, and charity. Those who approach the sacrament of penance receive God’s forgiveness and, at the same time, reconcile themselves with the Church wounded by sin, which cooperates for conversion “with charity, example, and prayer” (Second Vatican Council, *Lumen gentium*).
But, reconciling us in Christ with God, Mary also reconciles each one of us with ourselves. She reconciles us with one another, making the multitude a family of brothers.Mary in Christ reconciles us with ourselves.Extroversão and Cultural Division of the PersonWhat is the condition of the individual today? He has lost the fundamental certitudes that expressed the meaning of life and gave serenity to his conscience in all dimensions. They gave energy to his will. They gave creativity and joy to his actions. We were in the world as a person in the image of God, not in an individualist sense, but as an “I” that opens to the “other” as a “you” to form a “we”: community, city.Today, every thinking individual feels interiorly insecure because he is divided within himself between aspiration and reality. In fact, this has always happened: consider, for example, Saint Augustine before his conversion to Christ. However, around us emerged and imposed a world of values that had force to guide us, and ultimately, the interior division between aspiration and reality found a solution. There was an interior reconciliation of ourselves with ourselves.Today, this is not entirely impossible, but it has become much more difficult. The natural environment has been replaced by a cultural environment, which often manipulates the individual, alienating, distracting, and disuniting him from himself.We have lost our autonomy as persons: persons, I repeat, as “I” who opens to the “other” as “you” to form a community, a city of values. It is painful to think that we have lost this autonomy and have allowed ourselves to be manipulated and divided interiorly, rejecting Him who was the foundational reason for this autonomy: God.“God is dead,” it was said in the 1950s, because He would not have saved us from the horrors of war, which we, however, desired. God is no longer useful, it was said in the 1960s, because technology had brought about such rapid economic progress that we deluded ourselves into thinking that from now on, the individual could build his own earthly paradise, unlimited individual and social well-being, by himself.And so, suspicion and rejection, starting from God, spread to the whole past: it was too dominated by God. From a just “secularization” we moved to “secularism” or “laicism.”What is the result of this race towards a new promised land? It is between two vacuums: the one of the past rejected. The one of the future, which reduces the individual to a mere servant of the computer that only produces matter to consume, and thus reduces the individual to a mere consumer. And, to consume, mass media create false needs within the individual, who is thus transformed into a chain of needs, which attribute value to things that have none. This leads to a split between the deep individual within and the extroverted individual on the surface, who is manipulated by an environment that is no longer a city suited to the natural individual.What Can Mary Tell Us and Give Us?What to do? Reject or change this city? Change it. But to change it without renouncing the new values and thus reconcile the individual of today with himself, remaining the individual of today, what can Mary tell us, what can Mary give us? The question is particularly relevant for women.Paul VI, in his Apostolic Exhortation “Lumen Gentium,” stated…Marialis Cultus», observes:> «In the veneration of the Virgin… a sense of dissonance is felt: the distance, that is, between certain elements of this veneration and contemporary anthropological concepts and the psychosocial reality, profoundly changed, in which our time’s individuals live and act… This results, in some, a certain disaffection for the veneration of the Virgin and a difficulty in taking Mary of Nazareth as a model, because the horizons of her life, it is claimed, seem restricted in comparison with the vast areas of activity in which contemporary individuals are called to act» (n. 34).Undoubtedly, the world in which Mary lived was confined to a small village in Galilee, Nazareth, as a simple housewife in a carpenter’s house. And the culture of the region did not extend beyond the concerns of everyday life of simple folk.But here a fundamental and decisive question must be posed: is the environment in which an individual finds themselves the measure of their greatness, so that the smaller the world, the lesser and more insignificant the individual, or is the measure of the world, wherever it may be, the individual? And is the greatness of the individual chiefly internal and measured by the greatness of God? And, therefore, by the greatness of the values that material reality assumes when it enters into service for this internalness?The answer cannot be in doubt: it is the individual, with the values they create, even if they remain immanent in the person. It is this individual who constitutes the true greatness of the world, the great culture of the world.In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus reveals to us who the figures of individuals are and what works truly achieve value and, therefore, endure as ‘history’, in contrast to what makes mere ‘chronicle’ and lasts only a moment.In chapter 25, He tells us that, in the actions of individuals, beyond the dimension of factuality, which for us makes ‘news’, there is a dimension of value that already possesses the intensity and vastness of eternal life in the Kingdom of God. It is the ‘historical end’ immanent in ‘history’: it does not make ‘news’, it does not make a ‘secular culture’. It often goes completely unnoticed by individuals, but it emerges in the consciousness of one who acts as a person and is experienced and evaluated by God.Thus, whoever feeds the hungry, gives drink to the thirsty, clothes the naked, and visits those in prison, etc., performs acts of the utmost value, acts that have endurance as ‘historical’ and the vastness of the Kingdom of God, even if they are actions of a single instant in a place without splendor. Similarly, whoever does not feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, etc., commits acts of omission that are not even noticed by individuals, especially those of our time.But they are of such gravity and permanence that they can be measured only by the exclusion of the Kingdom of God.Therefore, when we ask whether Mary has anything to say to us and to give us to compose, reconcile interior reality with external, mundane reality, we must seek the answer in the dimension of values, true values, even if they do not make news. Even as extroverted culture ridicules true interiority and proposes as values what is not. And it exalts them with monuments and lights, weaving praises in libraries of books.It teaches us to make decisions as a person of true and great history.In essence, it is a matter of responding with truth to the question: what is the human? What are the truly human values? It is, therefore, an anthropological discourse. And it is the discourse that Paul VI wants to be made regarding Mary, and which he begins in his Apostolic Exhortation with some reflections. I evoke one here:> «The reading of the divine Scriptures, carried out under the influence of the Holy Spirit and taking into account the acquisitions of human sciences and the various situations of the contemporary world, will lead to discovering how Mary can be taken as a mirror of the expectations of men of our time. Thus, to give some examples, the modern woman, desirous of participating with decisive power in the guidance of the community, will look with intimate joy at Mary who, admitted to dialogue with God, gives her active and responsible consent, not to the solution of a contingent problem, but to that «work of the ages», as was rightly called the Incarnation of the Word», (n. 37, St. Peter Chrysologus, Sermo 143).This page of Paul VI should be meditated, precisely because of our theme: Mary, in Christ, reconciling us with God, reconciles each one of us with ourselves.Therefore, one must emphasize in Mary the act of decision, the courage with which she decides, the wise and pondered manner, even finding herself before God, and finally, the docility and totality of that decision, which was a decision of faith.This was a true fundamental moral option of a mature person: with this, she gave a new final sense to her whole life. And she also accepted an unknown and, therefore, a risk. But she was well aware of who God was: the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the God whose promises she believed and to whom she remained faithful, as that person in whom «the People of God», «the Rest of Israel», finds its maximum expression.Surety of faith and of historical experience, and therefore security.And then, steadfastness in taking, persevering in, and carrying out the path marked out by God.All of this is what is asked so that the modern person can find the meaning of their own life, in any environment, in any culture, whether they perform a humble work in a humble home, or guide a spaceship to the moon. The vastness of the earth’s horizons is always small in comparison to the vastness of dialogue and then walking with God.Mary is not only a model of how we should give meaning to our person when acting in our time; she is present in the inner principle that forms our person, and thus is at the root of our identity and our continuous synthesis between interiority and the reality of the surrounding world, without scattering or distraction. To always be ourselves and yet serve and create values around us. To reconcile or reconcile reality with ourselves and ourselves with reality.How is Mary the principle of all of this within us?One must reflect on the expression of Saint Peter of Rome, cited by Paul VI to indicate the incarnation of the Word: “It is the work of all the ages.” The work desired by all the ages, from the creation of the world. The work present and operative in the history of all the ages, in every moment, until the ages end, and the sky of Christ’s resurrection becomes our dwelling place, where God will be all in all.Universal reconciliation at its maximum realization, operated by God in Christ.This is not merely rhetorical imagery from Saint Peter of Rome. It is revealed doctrine, especially through Saint Paul. In his letter to the Ephesians, it is indicated as “the economy of the fullness of times,” with eschatological tension (tòn kairón), which reaches its peak in the recapitulation of all things in Christ (Eph 1:10; cf. 1 Cor 15:24-28).By saying yes, the “fiat,” to God, God in Christ assumed Mary as his particular minister in this work. This “fiat” was renewed and, in fact, took on a dimension and salvific tension, as “partner of Christ” on the Cross, and finally revealed publicly in its ecclesial dimension on the day of Pentecost. With her Assumption, she was assumed into the sky of the Risen One, always as a minister in action of the Risen One with her motherhood. Well, precisely through this maternal ministry, she is not only an example for us to also say yes to God, but she operates within the action of Christ with the energy of the Holy Spirit.All this should cause no surprise if we understand that it is realized in a specific space, which is the space of the Church, a mystery.It teaches us to act in harmony with the merciful charity of the Holy Spirit of God in Christ.As a unique member in her ministeriality to Christ in the Church, Mary does not act merely as a principle, on God’s part, with her “fiat,” but also acts with her charitable eclesial action, moving us to say, as she said and with her that she always repeats, our “yes” to God. It is a community of charity and prayer that forms the community, which is expressed in popular Marian piety, moved and always animated by the Holy Spirit.Mary’s action within us and the action of the Church here merge into a single action of reconciliation, that is, of identity of the Christian: an identity that is restored if one is outside of charity through sin, and is intensified if one is already in charity, making us, with Mary, saints of Christ’s holiness, of Christ who is expressed in the Church for the world.And here we can also understand another great truth and practice that animates authentic Marian piety: Mary’s concern for sinners and sinners’ confidence in Mary. It is always Mary’s charity that circulates in the Church, along with the charity of all the saints. Sinners are reached by her because it is a dogmatic truth that sinners, through the indelible sacrament of baptism and, one might say, the confirmation, although they may lose the sanctifying grace and charity, are still members of the Church and are under the action, indeed the pressure, of charitable eclesial and Marian action to convert.The Second Vatican Council states this explicitly:> “Those who approach the sacrament of penance receive from God’s mercy forgiveness of their offenses and, at the same time, are reconciled with the Church, which they have wounded by sin, and with whom they are united by charity, example, prayer,” (Lumen gentium 11).Only he who renounces the Church with an act of apostasy and actively opposes the action of the Holy Spirit is as if he were separated from the Church and deprived of the goods that come from the influence of charitable eclesial and Marian action. And yet, God’s tenderness does not lose sight of these unhappy ones.In the early centuries of the Church, great attention was paid to those who, although not in full communion with the Church, were linked to her, either through catechumens, in the case of those preparing for baptism, or in the case of sinners who, although they could not receive penance, suffered, contrite, their sin, made offerings.Thus, they were prepared for final penance before death, with the imposition of hands if they had not yet received penance, or at least with the Viaticum.If some died without this last action of the Church, yet desired it, the Church prayed for them afterward, imploring the most merciful God not to condemn them eternally.All this richness of the Church’s charity, with its original pastoral practices, has changed over time. It is necessary to recapture this charity and adapt it to the pastoral needs of our time, for the reconciliation, at least gradual, of Christians who feel in difficulty and have a great need to meet again and to place themselves in confident prayer to God.The economy of the Church, that is, Christ who makes the Church, is an economy of reconciliation. It is an economy of “mercy,” that is, according to biblical terminology, the tender love of a fatherly and maternal God in Christ for the world. In this economy, God the Father, in Christ and the Holy Spirit, willed that Mary be a minister of motherhood, especially to sinners. Thus, entering into the circuit of Mary’s love is entering into a circuit of sure salvation. Saint Alphonse writes:“This is the principal office that was given to Mary when she was placed on earth: to raise fallen souls from the divine grace and reconcile them with God,” (Saint Alphonse, *Le glorie di Maria* chap. 6, § 3).And he adds: “Devotion to Mary is a grace that God grants to those He wants to save,” (op. cit., chap., § 1).ConclusionThroughout these reflections, the guiding thread has remained the same: Mary, inseparable from Christ and entirely related to Him, is a singular minister of reconciliation that God accomplishes in Christ, and thus reconciles us with God, with ourselves, and among ourselves, so that the multitude becomes a true family of brothers. This maternal mediation does not diminish the uniqueness of Christ, but rather manifests it in His historical and ecclesial fertility, because it is exercised in the proper space where Christ acts and communicates His life, the Church mystery.In the anthropological plan, contemporary man often experiences an inner fracture between aspiration and reality, exacerbated by a cultural environment that disperses, alienates, and fragments the person. The Christian response to this crisis is not flight from the world but the recovery of interiority as the place of the truth of man before God. Here, Mary appears as a mirror of the legitimate expectations of our time: the multiform, and with her all humanity, recounts in her the greatness of a fully personal, conscious, and responsible decision, her “yes” of faith, not to solve a contingent problem, but to welcome “the work of the ages,” the incarnation of the Word (Paul VI, *Humanae vitae*).In the words of Saint Peter Chrysologus, *Sermo* 143, *Patrologia Latina* 52, 583: It is precisely this spiritual maturity, clarity, courage, and complete docility that restores inner unity and gives meaning to action, whether in everyday humility or in the broader tasks of culture and technology.Mary’s decision, her *fiat*, does not remain merely an exemplary memory but, by divine disposition, is placed at the heart of the economy of salvation, that “economy of the fullness of time” in which all things are recapitulated in Christ (Eph 1:10; cf. 1 Cor 15:24-28). Therefore, Mary is not only an external model; she is present, as a mother, in the inner principle that sustains our Christian identity, helping us to maintain the synthesis between interiority and the external world, without dispersion or loss of self. Saying yes to God, with Mary and as Mary, becomes a path of integration: to remain a person, to serve, to create true values, to reconcile reality with ourselves and ourselves with reality, on the horizon of the Kingdom.Reconciliation, however, also has a pastoral and merciful face. The Church, the Body of Christ, lives an economy of reconciliation that is an economy of mercy, that is, the tender love of God in Christ. In it, Mary exercises a motherhood particularly focused on sinners, not as an alternative to grace but as an expression of the maternal charity of Christ communicated by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, true Marian piety, when it is truly ecclesiastic, does not become fixated in affections, but becomes a power of conversion, prayer, example, and charity. Those who approach the sacrament of penance receive God’s forgiveness and, at the same time, reconcile themselves with the Church wounded by sin, which cooperates for conversion “with charity, example, and prayer” (Second Vatican Council, *Lumen gentium*).
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