MARY OUR MOTHER

At the dawn of creation, God's omnipotence, wisdom, and kindness spoke with a majestic calm over the chaos of the universe: “Let there be light!” And there was light!...

A second time the earth had become desolate and empty, darkness covered the abyss. It was then that the fullness of time had come. Due to Adam's fall, an endless flood of morass had accumulated and made our view of the living God, our gaze upward, nearly impossible... A second time God's omnipotence, wisdom and kindness spoke: “Let there be light!” or more precisely: “Let there be Mary!” And there was light! There was Mary! In brilliant radiance, the star of salvation -Mary - shone forth and announced the dawning Sun, Christ Jesus... The words “Ecce mater tua” - Behold your mother, eternalize this second command of the Creator.

As often as dark clouds hover over the earth, as often as the earth again becomes desolate and empty, God's omnipotence, wisdom, and merciful love repeat his creative words over the abyss: “Let there be light! Let there be Mary! Behold your mother!” The very same is happening now as pitch-black darkness covers the earth, as the world races toward the abyss with no one apparently present to stop it. God's words of omnipotence, wisdom, and love fill our vale of tears more powerfully and more audibly than ever before. “Let there be light! Let there be Mary! Behold your mother!” His lips thus speak to us through the pronouncements of the popes during the past centuries, through the apparitions recently approved by the Church and through the breakdown and ineffectiveness of all the purely human means we have been using until now.

It seems understood that we should fix our hearts and minds firmly above in order to be filled with Mary's radiant image, until we fall on our knees; until our everyday lives bravely and courageously repeat the words which our lips utter with deep emotion: “O Mary, our Mother!”

Whenever the Church has been in danger, she has always remembered Mary's position as Mediatrix and Mother and consciously made a covenant of love with her, a covenant of protection, a covenant of defense. The success has not been missing. The history of the world and the Church provides innumerable proofs for this fact. The popes point emphatically to Our Lady because in the entire world, the ship of Peter is tossed back and forth by the most powerful storms. Therefore, the popes urge us to consecrate ourselves to her and to make a covenant of love with her.

If we daily consecrate ourselves and our nation to Our Lady and in this way daily renew our covenant of love, then truly our country has the right to a home under her mantle. Perhaps we may then hope to see our homeland spared from a great catastrophe. If God's plan ordains differently, we may be assured that Our Lady will prove herself the great educator of our nation; that through the storms of our time our nation will become very similar to Christ Crucified, the Victor over death and Satan.

The greater the affliction which grieves us and the more intense our decision for God's kingdom and the salvation of souls, the more interested and receptive the Mother of all Christians is, and the more quickly we can find her and convince her to help us.

As we confidently believe, the next century will be a Marian century, in which Our Lady will reveal her power, wisdom, and kindness in a unique way. She will openly manifest herself as the God-chosen, official mother, protector and educator of God's children. She will defeat all of God's enemies on earth.

It was God's wish and will that the children of God should not only have a father, but also a real and true mother with the clearly defined duties and rights of a mother.

By virtue of the natural laws of growth, human nature is strongly mother-oriented. This makes us very receptive to motherly love...

God who oriented our nature toward supernature responds to this by giving his children a real and true Mother in Mary. St. Bonaventure bears this happy reality in mind when he unceasingly admires and praises God's mercy. God reveals this mercy in a singular way by making his Mother the Mother of all people. The human being, full of sin, afraid to approach him directly, thus has an easy way of returning to him.

An old missionary preaching a sermon of renewal about Our Lady acknowledged before the faithful: “I am already sixty years old and I realize more and more each day that I need a mother.”

Mary is the Mother of the whole Christ, that is to say, of Christ the God-Man and of Christ the Head of those who are mysteriously incorporated into him. Consequently, in the true sense of the word, she is Mother of the Head and of the members; Mother of Christ and Mother of all Christians. As St. Augustine said, “Indeed she is mother of all Christians in a spiritual sense, but nevertheless she is truly our mother.”

Mary's motherly heart began its motherly beat for us when she spoke her fiat, when her heart began to beat for Our Lord. The very moment that she became the physical Mother of the Head, she also became the spiritual Mother of the members of Christ; she became my Mother. Cinder the cross her heart spiritually bled to death for me...

Mary is our Mother not only because she loves us in a motherly way, but also because we owe to her motherhood our real and genuine life in the order of grace. In accordance with God's plans, we cannot be children of God without this very life. Christian popular piety has always viewed Mary's motherhood in this light.

Mary is our Mother in the true sense of the word: that is, she is the Mother of the divine life within us. From this it follows that, as any true mother, she has a threefold task toward us. Cinder the cross she participated in meriting the divine life; through her mediation of grace she continuously nourishes it, she is to make us Christ's perfect images until we are one with him in all situations and even hang with him on the cross of Calvary. She is and remains our Three Times Admirable Mother.

However, she cannot lead us to this high level unless we love her sincerely and fervently, unless this very love for her makes us receptive to her education even if she must prune and hurt us. Therefore, she wants us to love her just as God demands it of us; she cannot act in any other way.

As our Mother she walked the very way which all of us without exception must follow every day. Ecce mater tua! - Behold your Mother! Our Mother is at the same time our educator, who has become great through Our Lord's strict education. She herself now has a perfect insight into God's mysterious plans. She knows that God permits the insecurity and anxiety which people today suffer so that they will more quickly become images of the crucified Lord and useful and fruitful seed for a new world.

Theologians tell us that Mary's dignity as the Mother of God is so exceedingly great and sublime that she actually touches the utmost limit of what is possible for a created being. This means that God could have created a greater and more perfect world but not a greater mother... Just as in a certain sense her greatness as the Mother of God has no conceivable limits, it seems that her greatness as the Mother of the human race has none either. Yet, she does not go beyond the limits to which she as a created being is subject. Mary is and remains a created being. Even though she is the masterpiece of God's omnipotence, wisdom, and kindness, there is an infinite distance between her and the infinite God. In any case, the question is justified whether Mary as our Mother could possibly be more powerful, merciful, and wise than she is, whether she could have been endowed even more perfectly and more completely with motherly love, motherly duties, and motherly rights.

God pours his attributes, such as his kindness or his justice, as it were, like little drops into some vessels. In this way, he also created the Mother of God. With a certain one-sidedness she should embody his omnipotence, his mercy, his kindness, and his faithfulness. By being attached to her, I slowly ascend to a deeper, more vital understanding of the Father and his omnipotence, mercy, kindness, and faithfulness.

Mary is the mother of mercy. Her mercy is so great that no one can fathom its length and width, its depth and height. Its length extends to the last day, its width embraces the globe, its height reaches up to the City of God, and its depth reaches down to those who are waiting in the shadow of death - in purgatory - in order to bring redemption to them.

If we ponder over the magnificent gifts of Mary's motherly power, motherly kindness, and motherly wisdom, which God lavished upon the Mother of Christendom, we will understand why she is able to fulfill her motherly task in a perfect way, to nourish us with gifts and graces of every kind. She is able to educate us and to make us as similar to Christ as possible to the glorification of the Father until we say, “Life to me is Christ...” (Phil 1:21); “I live not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:19). In the battle against the devil and the world, she will lead us as her instruments to victory and establish Christ's kingdom on earth.

As the mother of Christ, Mary is formed in the image of Christ to an unparalleled degree. As our mother, she stands before us as the great educator forming us into images of Christ. By Christ's last will, she received the task of forming and molding her children who are open and willing to be formed, as perfectly as possible, into the crucified and transfigured Christ.

Since her being and all her actions center on Christ, since all her interest ultimately focus only on him and his cause (she has no private interests), it is a matter of course that she will only use her influence to lead her followers in Christ to the Father. She is very much like every true Christian mother who, in accordance with God's plans, considers it her favorite task to lead her children to the father and to direct the hearts of the children who are devoted to her to the father's heart.

I wonder whether we can imagine the tenderness with which the Mother of Divine Graces cares for the life of grace within us. And for this life of grace, which makes us truly children of God and heirs of heaven, she and her divine Son paid a very high price.

Mary has accepted the task of being our mother as well as her motherly duties and motherly rights. She is, therefore, in her very being dependent on us, her children, and on our childlike attitude and behavior. Our Lady does not tire of appearing on earth, of drawing attention to her person; that is, of demanding of us a true, childlike love and an inner openness and willingness to be educated by her. She does not tire of repeating in one way or another the words which refer to her own person: “Ecce mater tua.” - Behold your Mother.

Through sincere love for Mary, a child receives a nest in a warm, motherly heart. In a technological, materialistic, and brutal age, love for Mary in a young woman safeguards her inner riches of heart and mind, and in a young man the moral purity and masculine, chivalrous strength despite an erotic and sex-oriented environment. Love for Mary complements the soul of man in a healthy way and gives woman a healthy awareness of being equal to man in value despite manifold differences.

Even if our nature were not fulfilled and enriched, even if it did not mature to perfection, we still should not ignore or do without Our Lady on our way to God. We cannot reaffirm the reason too often and impress it too deeply upon ourselves: Just as Christ came to us in and through Mary, so we are to go to him in and through her. This and nothing else is God's holy will.

We cannot esteem Mary highly enough; we cannot love her warmly enough and we can never be sufficiently open for her to form us into Christ's image and likeness.

If I belong completely to Our Lady, then I also know she takes care that the Holy Spirit will fill me just as he filled her. She takes care that I become the Father's child in a unique way.

Together with Mary, protected and led by her, we walk to the altar in order to offer ourselves to the heavenly Father each day anew, without any reservation, as a self-oblation in and with her only-begotten Son.

We know that Our Lady has only one task, namely to educate us for Christ and for the Father. We give ourselves totally to her so that she can transform us into images of Christ.

We again choose Mary as our Mother and Queen; that is to say, we on our part also give her the right to educate us; a right which is already hers by virtue of a divine decree. We promise our readiness to be unreservedly and willingly formed and molded into perfect images of Christ. By virtue of this new title, she then takes our education once more into her hands.

When we give ourselves to Our Lady, we do so only because the Father and Our Lord want us to do it; we do so only because Our Lord has given us the great example of genuine childlikeness. We do not give ourselves to her for her own sake, but because of her basic relationship to the heavenly Father and to Christ. She should educate us to the very childlikeness which the only-begotten Son possesses par excellence.

If I simply surrender myself to Our Lady, my love for her will make her attitude my own because love is a power which creates likeness. Her attitude toward the Father was an outspoken childlike attitude. Our childlike self-surrender to Our Lady leads to our self-surrender to the Father.

In the future I would like to have greater faith than before. I will confidently keep close to Our Lady in all situations and go with her, hand in hand, heart in heart, to Christ and to the Father... Such an attitude is in keeping with her position in God's kingdom.

When we reflect on our past lives, many of us might have to admit that we owe our childlikeness toward God to a childlike, simple relationship to Our Lady. We ask you, then, Three Times Admirable Mother, take care that all of us without exception may learn to pray wholeheartedly every day: “I am yours, Mother. Amen.”