The plural presence of Mary in the Church

IntroductionPope Pius X, in his encyclical letter “Ad diem illum,” wrote: “It can be said that Mary, in carrying in her womb the Savior, also carried all those whose life was contained in the life of the Savior. Thus, all of us, who are united to Christ and, as the Apostle says, ‘members of His Body, of His flesh and of His bones’ (Eph 5:30), come forth from Mary’s womb, like a body united to its head. Hence, for a spiritual and mystical reason, we are called the children of Mary, and she is the mother of us all.”Therefore, the Virgin Mary is not merely an “hearer” of the Word, as every human being is, but she is also a full reception of God’s Word in faith, in her body, and in all her existence. She, more than any other creature, participates and cooperates in the work of salvation carried out by the Son, and she is fully inserted into the mystery of the Church, those who believe in Him and follow Him on the path of life, fulfilling the Father’s will, animated by the Spirit, in a disciples’ sequence. She is the first in whom this profound and transformative connection with the Trinitarian God is realized, making her also a mother in a full sense, of a multitude of children, to whom she indicates by example and maternal care the path to follow.The deep bond of Mary with the Most Holy Trinity, fundamental for understanding her relationship with the Church, manifests itself in a substantial attitude of availability towards God and docility to his grace, through which she becomes a triadic icon of the merciful goodness of the Father, the redeeming obedience of the Son, and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. She is the one consecrated to God in a perfect manner, the Virgin of listening, the Virgin who believed, the Virgin offering herself to the Holy Trinity.This relationship with God, essentially based on faith, was not passive, but stimulated in her a dynamic involvement in the mission of the Son as mother, disciple, and partner: her faith became love and maternal work, a continuous “doing” whose source always remains her being “formed” by the Holy Trinity. Even before the creation of the world, Mary is present in the mystery of Christ as the one the Father chose as mother of his Son in the Incarnation and whom the Son also chose, entrusting her to the Holy Spirit. Through her faithful obedience to the Father, her communion with the Son, and her correspondence to the Holy Spirit, Mary cooperates with the whole Trinity in our salvation.Her perfect obedience to the Father first involved a full surrender to divine will in diligent faith that was like a constant and uninterrupted dialogue between God’s call and Mary’s response, between election and faithfulness, grace and freedom. In this faith surrender to the Father’s will, Mary’s existence was like a journey towards a deeper and deeper union with God. In this, Mary, in the fullness of her filial experience, becomes the model of Christian spirituality: to live as children of the Father.Obedience to the Father meant for Mary, above all, to generate the Son in time, whom he generated eternally, as mediator between God and men. She thus becomes the merciful and maternal image of God, the “mediator” of the salvific Incarnation of the Son. By welcoming the Son and living with him, Mary becomes an integral part of the Incarnation of the Word, the privileged witness to this mystery and to the true humanity of Christ. Mary inserted the Son of the Father into history, guided him, educated him, followed him. Therefore, this welcome and coexistence with Christ was for her a wonderful experience of joy and tenderness, but also a daily and laborious knowledge of the Son in faith and through faith.As already emphasized, her faith was a heart’s labor, like passing through a veil, drawing near to the invisible and living in intimacy with the mystery. Therefore, Mary, in addition to being a mother, is also, from the Annunciation to Calvary, above all, a *disciple of Christ*. Her life is a continuous learning from the Son and understanding of the Son. To do this, she had to remove the creaturely schemes to insert herself into God’s perspective, so that her existence was like a dynamic adventure of discovering the true face of the Son in history and humanity. Mary, intimately united to Christ, is therefore the perfect icon not only as a mother but especially as a faithful and persistent disciple.Mary’s relationship with the Trinity is completed by her perfect correspondence to the grace of the Holy Spirit. Mary is as molded by the Spirit who made her a new creature. By welcoming the Spirit, she lived in the Spirit and according to the Spirit, becoming thus the “spiritual creature” par excellence, the “All Holy.” The Spirit filled her fully with his gifts, whose fruits of holiness are love, joy, goodness, peace, patience, fidelity, meekness, self-control.Mary cannot be understood without her relationship with the Father, with the Most High who sends to her the eternal Word, without the continuous relationship with the Only-Begotten Son who becomes her son, without the reference to the Spirit who, as a dynamism of love, makes possible the conception of Christ in her virgin womb. This trinitarian reference is grasped by Vatican II, which calls Mary the “Mother of the Son of God, and therefore daughter beloved of the Father and Temple of the Holy Spirit” (Lumen Gentium 53).

The plural presence of Mary in the Church

The reference to the Most Holy Trinity underpins the profound bond that Mary has with the faithful Church, humanity, and history. Her ineffable nearness to the Trinity and to the Incarnate Word, her singular and exemplary Christ-likeness, ensure that the splendid martyrial faith of the Mother of the Redeemer endures in the Church, through her “maternal presence” and her “example.” The Church, by proclaiming, celebrating, and bearing witness to the faith and reception of the Trinitarian God revealed in Christ, in history, and in his journey towards the salvific eschaton, manifests its apostolic and petrine dimension, as well as its undeniable Marian character.Already in Sacred Scripture, Mary is foreshadowed as the Daughter of Zion, the representative of all the people of Israel, so that, at the Incarnation of the Word, her personal “yes” becomes the “yes” of humanity to God who was coming to save them. This “yes” was reaffirmed by Mary at the Cross, where she became, by the will of the Crucified, the spiritual mother of the disciples, gathered in the new Jerusalem that brings together the scattered children of God, the Church, of which she is, as we will see, the perfect icon and the first and most noble member.The “sensus fidei” of the faithful throughout history has always recognized Mary’s close bond with the People of God, and Paul VI solemnly confirmed this on November 21, 1964, proclaiming the Mother of the Lord also “Mother of the Church.” The Second Vatican Council sees precisely in Mary’s divine maternality and her cooperation in salvation the foundation of her ontological bond with the Church, whose bases, in summary, are these: it arises from Christ’s command on the Cross. It is consequent to divine maternality. It is an extension of Christ’s biological maternality, Head in his spiritual Body, which is the Church.Although Mary is the mother of individual disciples she generates and forms in collaboration with the Holy Spirit, her motherhood is exercised in the Church as such, and therefore should not be interpreted solely in an individualistic sense, but in a communal perspective. The Preface of the Mass for Mary, Virgin Mother and Spiritual Master, states: «intimately associated with the mystery of Christ the Redeemer, she continues to generate with the Church new children who are drawn to her by her example, and with the strength of her love leads to perfect charity. In her school, the reader rediscovers the model of evangelical life, learns to love you above all with his heart, and contemplates with his spirit your Word made man, to serve it with the same diligence in the brothers».We can then affirm that the Church, looking to the model mother and perfect icon, deepens its fidelity to the Lord. Following the creativity and dynamics of the virgin-mother, it also intends to be entirely Mother of Christ and entirely for humanity. Gathering under Mary’s gaze, its mother, it discovers to be one family. Imitating the mother, it seeks to be faithful to its Lord, persevering in faith to the Cross. Echoing Mary’s song of liberation, it serves the liberation of every human being, helping them to realize themselves as Sons of God, liberating them from injustices, and promoting them integrally.Assumed into heaven and placed in a unique and singular condition with her glorified and therefore incorruptible, glorious, powerful, and pneumatical body, Mary is fully invested with the strength of the Holy Spirit and can operate effectively and even miraculously in favor of the Church, as she participates in the glory and power of the same glorified body of Christ. Her complete transformation in the Spirit allows her to be a «presence» in different historical times and cultural spaces, without being confined and limited to individual locales, and allows her to constantly exercise her spiritual motherhood in favor of all men, for nothing hinders her universality of influence in the communication of divine grace.Mary shines before the Church and the world as the perfect icon of the new humanity recreated by divine grace, in which the “heart of stone” is replaced by the “heart of flesh,” new, gentle, and merciful like Christ’s. She is the creature recreated according to God’s original design, the New Eve, alongside the new Adam, for she was the first among creatures to live with this new heart, whose most complete expression is love.To have, like Mary, a “new heart,” means to have the same feelings as Jesus, that is, to love life and the gift of life. To announce the Kingdom of God through concrete signs of universal love, an attitude of welcome and mercy towards all, to live and suffer like and with Jesus an innocent and redeeming passion, to give one’s life for the Lord, realizing in the virgin and total gift, universal motherhood. Mary, a woman with a new heart, is, in her being, the image of Christ’s Heart, the model of the renewed humanity that, restored by grace to its primordial dignity, renews the face of the earth and initiates the coming of the “last times” in which all men will enjoy before God the equal dignity of sons.This presence of Mary in the Church, so articulated and so profound as to impregnate its own ontological nature, the same way of believing and the same path of fidelity to the Lord, can be defined as a multifaceted “transverse” presence. The Virgin is the transverse presence because throughout the centuries Mary has always been present in the Church, crossing its life, as a member, as a sister who precedes it on the path of faith, as a mother who cooperates in the birth of every man and woman to life in grace and their spiritual education and growth, as a guide who indicates the path to the homeland, as a supplicant voice and a comforting patron.Only in heaven will the reader be able to understand clearly and deeply what the Church owes to Mary regarding the intelligence of faith, but already now, simply by showing herself, she introduces us into the mystery of what the Church is in its essence: a pure work of the grace of the Trinitarian God.The cooperation of Mary in salvation and her multifaceted presence in the Church have an aspect of apostolic life and action, as her spiritual experience is oriented outward, toward others, as expressed in her visit to Saint Elizabeth and at the wedding in Cana. Mary does not act only within the Church, but extends throughout the history of humanity, so that with her presence she manifests herself not only as Mother of the Church and of Christians, but also as a universal Mother, a real model for every human being. Aware of this apostolic and universal “mission,” the Virgin encourages and inspires all, Christians and non-Christians, to follow her example and do what God asks of humanity.For us, the Church, Christians and non-Christians, the knowledge, contemplation, and encounter with Mary are incarnated in a lifestyle that makes our actions, both individual and ecclesiastic, “Marian.” The essential lines of this lifestyle are: the “sacramental line,” as we follow Mary’s example, learning to collaborate with grace, and, trusting in her guidance and help, we live intensely our union with Christ through a vibrant sacramental life.The “line of communion within the Church,” as we follow Mary’s example and with her help, we foster an attitude of communion among the baptized, marked by availability for dialogue, spiritual solidarity, understanding, and unity among all members of the Mystical Body of Christ.The “line of life,” as with the Virgin, who welcomed and defended the life of Christ, we will create a culture of life, characterized above all by maternal virtues, that is, love, tenderness, and welcome for others, in contrast to the dominant culture in the world, which is harsh, at war, tense, full of hatred, death, division, and violence.The “line of the paschal experience,” as we follow Mary’s example, we will accept pain, suffering, and death as elements that faith considers instruments of salvation, and we will be impelled to adopt solutions for life where pain reigns, and death opens its threatening portals.The “line of mission and evangelical fertility,” as we are animated by the same apostolic zeal of Mary, who brought the newly conceived Christ to Elizabeth and presented him to the shepherds, to the Magi, and to the world as the Son of God who came to save humanity, we will demonstrate through our actions the reality of the beatitudes and the real and visible effectiveness of the Gospel, thus facilitating its acceptance.Conclusion:The Mother of the Lord has a close and indissoluble bond with the spiritual and Christian life of the Church and with its socio-anthropological commitment, since the “dogmatic constitutive” and the “ethical constitutive” cannot be separated. Just as the division between the teaching of faith and the practice of life is, according to the Pastoral Constitution,In the document *Gaudium et spes*, one of the most serious errors of our time is addressed. The pivotal point that fosters the symbiosis between faith and life, between Mary and the commitment-testimony, is the opening to dialogue with the Trinitarian God, accompanied by reaching out to the man in need of spiritual and social salvation, and by actively contributing to his liberation and full realization.With the help and identification with the Virgin, the Church and every Christian should live the Christian experience in a spiritually fruitful manner, injecting the life of Christianity into the world. Becoming living pages of the Gospel, they will learn from her and, like her, value in their hearts the words and actions of Jesus to live them out and fulfill them in individual, social, and ecclesial history. Thus, the “Marian” style will appear as the supreme fulfillment of being a Christian, that is, individuals and communities, a truly Christian Church.Deepen your studies: explore Mariology, Marian Theology, Marian Apparitions, and the Postgraduate Program in Mariology.On the plural presence of Mary in the life of the Church, refer to the Encyclical *Redemptoris Mater* by Pope John Paul II.