Mary’s spiritual motherhood
“Linked to the text on the timing of Jesus’ hour, the question of Jesus’ relationship with his mother remains open until that time comes. The answer given at Cana is only a beginning, because Cana… is not the hour of Jesus, in a preliminary sense. Since the hour, in its full meaning, is the time of his glorified passion, it is in this hour that the question arises most radically. Indeed, ‘the mother of Jesus’ reappears then and only then in the Fourth Gospel (19:25-27).” Jesus, at the moment of his death, turns to her again and calls her “woman” once more.
In Cana, Mary shifts from being Jesus’ mother according to the flesh to becoming the spiritual mother of believers. At the Cross, we find the same issue: Mary becomes the mother of a disciple. The concept of Mary’s spiritual motherhood is the eschatological fulfillment of Zion’s motherhood, a theme found in Jewish tradition (see Serra: Contributi dell’antica letteratura giudaica 100, 405-406.414-415). The title “mother” applied to Israel is rare in the Old Testament. However, the idea of motherhood for God’s people recurs several times. Perhaps the most significant text is Psalm 87: Zion will be the mother of all, and each one who belongs to God’s people can say: ‘I was born there’, even if they come from Egypt, Babylon, Asia Minor, etc. Spiritually, every man was born there.
Jesus’ words to Mary, “Behold your son” (v. 26b), seem to echo the prophetic announcement to mother Zion, who sees her children return from exile (cf. Isaiah 60:4-5; Jeremiah 31:3-14; Ezekiel 37:22-28). “Jerusalem was the universal mother of the dispersed, gathered around her temple that stood within her walls. Mary is the universal mother of God’s scattered children, united in Christ.” (Serra, Maria a Cana e presso la croce 100).
John seems to see in Mary, who embodies the Daughter of Zion, around whom all her children are gathered, the fulfillment of Caiaphas’ prophecy: “Jesus had to die for the nation and not only for the nation, but also to gather into one the scattered children of God” (John 11:52).
The text reads literally: “to gather them together in one” (in the neuter eis tén). This “one” place where God’s divided children are gathered is probably Jesus on the cross. It is in him and around him that unity is achieved for all who believe in him and look at his side pierced (19:37). … These people are Mary and the disciple whom Jesus loved; symbolically, they represent here all of God’s new people (de la Potterie, Maria nel mistero dell’alleanza 233).
“Next to Jesus’ cross stood his mother and his sister, Mary of Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene.” (John 19:25) And Jesus, seeing his mother and the disciple he loved standing together, said first to one and then to the other, “He is your mother now, just as I am your Father.” (John 19:27) The Evangelist adds: “Knowing that everything was now finished, Jesus said… (John 19:28). With this bond between his Mother and the disciple, Jesus accomplishes the work entrusted to him by the Father.” (Stock, *Maria, la Madre del Signore, nel Nuovo Testamento* 93).Mary is proclaimed by Jesus as *”Mother”* of all believers, represented in the person of the disciple who follows his Master to the cross: a motherhood no longer physical but spiritual. “From that moment,” concludes John 19:27, “the disciple took her into his care” (εἰς τὰ ἴδια). *Εις τὰ ἴδια* means *”what is good”* with a very broad extension. The same expression appears in the Prologue of John: *”He came and took what was good”* (John 1:11). It refers to faith, as I. de la Potterie explains: he welcomed her “*in his inner life, in his life of faith*.” This inner dimension of the disciple is none other than his availability to open himself in faith to Jesus’ final words and to fulfill his spiritual testament, becoming a son of Mary, welcoming her as his Mother in his discipleship: Mary, the Mother of Jesus, becomes also his Mother (de la Potterie, *Maria nel mistero dell’alleanza* 245).If John the Baptist believed that the Messiah would come as a husband to renew the marriage with the bride, that is, with the contemporary people of Israel, after due preparation they would joyfully receive the Husband. The Johannine Evangelist deepens and expands the messianic idea of John the Baptist, widening and correcting it by showing there will be rejection and tragic death before the marriage is consummated. Alonso Schökel completes and enriches the ecclesiological sense of John 19:26, building on indications given by Augustine and Gregory in texts where “*relations are established between ‘death, resurrection, apostolic ministry, episcopal ministry’ within a levirate scheme, synthesizing christology and ecclesiology which is itself placed in relation to the historical Jesus in light of the Old Testament”* (“La lettura simbolica del Nuovo Testamento” 69-71).Augustine, for example, discussing the moral value of a Christian reading of Deuteronomy 25:5-10 (Against Faustus Manichaeus 32.10), writes:…What this figure more strongly signifies is that every evangelist in the Church must work to raise up a lineage for the deceased brother, who is Christ, who died for us, and he who is resurrected takes his name. Finally, the apostle, not seeing this carnally as a prefiguration but spiritually in the truth fulfilled, becomes indignant with those he remembers having generated in Christ Jesus through the Gospel [1 Cor 4:15], and correcting them, he rebukes them because they wanted to be of Paul: “Was it Paul who was crucified for you? Was it in Paul’s name that you were baptized?” [1 Cor 1:13]. As if he said: “I have generated you for my deceased brother; you call yourselves Christians, not Paulinians.”On a parallel line, St. Gregory follows a similar text (Regulae Pastoralis Liber I, 5), using another passage from Paul. “The theme is ecclesiological,” observes L. Alonso Schökel (“La lettura simbolica del Nuovo Testamento”69). It is the apostolic ministry that Augustine applies in terms of levirate:The brother dies without leaving a lineage. Who will have the wife to bear children for the dead? Mary, the mother of Jesus, has no other sons. She is like Naomi when she persuades her daughters-in-law to stay: “Yet I still have children in my womb who can be your husbands” ([Rt] 1:11). At the moment of his death, Jesus designates and establishes a brother, son of Mary, to whom the task of levirate is entrusted: “Woman, this is your son” (19:26). If this explanation is accepted, the ecclesiological sense is completed and enriched, symbolically linking to an institution so important in the law of the Old Testament and appreciated by many Fathers.Does Paul refer to levirate when he writes to the Corinthians, who remember having “generated in Christ Jesus through the Gospel” [1 Cor 4:15]? (Cf also 1:13).“Augustine thinks so,” L. Alonso Schökel wonders. “The false interpretation given of Paul’s ministry reminds us of the situation of John the Baptist, who used the enigmatic joke about levirate. But in the intention of the Church, and already perhaps that of the Evangelist and certainly that of Paul (Acts 13:24ff), it is something more than a joke, while it seems to recognize a constitutive law of apostolic succession, episcopal ministry, and the perpetuity of the Christian name.”On the Cross, a transformation takes place of which Jesus takes the initiative. Mary is no longer just the mother of Jesus but becomes the mother of the disciple. It is from dying Jesus that she receives this other son. “Her love for Christ must, therefore, have increasingly turned more clearly and strongly to those to whom her love was directed. Her maternal love for Christ welcomed into herself those ‘who are the firstfruits of many brothers’ (Rom 8:29) and Mother of Christ became Mother of Christians” (Guardini, “La Madre del Signore”59).Dr. Rita Torti Mazzi Locus Mariologicus ProfessorGraduate Studies in Mariology
Wishing to deepen your formation in Mariology? Discover the Graduate Studies in Mariology from Locus Mariologicus, an academic formation that combines theological rigor, spiritual life, and the living tradition of the Church.
Responses