The Gift of Mary’s Motherhood
“Woman, behold your Son... Behold your Mother.”
“When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son.’
Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.”
John 19:26–27
As we begin this third year of prayerful preparation for the Solemn Holy Year of 2033, we reflect on this great gift of the Crucified Christ to His Church and to His Mother: “Woman, behold your son”; “Behold your mother.” That which Our Lord treasures so deeply, His Church and Mother, are given to each other in this most sacred and tender moment. We ask that same Lord who gave these gifts to grant us a deeper understanding and devotion throughout this year so that we may more greatly receive the gift he died to give us, the gift of Mary’s motherhood.
Mary’s Motherhood
Each September, we begin a new year of the Great Novena on the 14th because it is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross of Our Lord. The following day, September 15th, is the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. We celebrate these two Feast Days because Our Lady was a unique participant in the Cross of Her Son. All disciples are called to offer their trials and sufferings in union with Our Lord, to fill up “what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ” (Colossians 1:24). In and of itself, nothing is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, who made Himself a perfect offering pleasing to the Father and merited our salvation. Even still, Our Lord invites us into the work of Redemption as we offer our own lives for the salvation of the world.
Part of the vocation of every disciple is to “take up your cross” (Matthew 16:24) and follow the Lord in his redemptive work throughout our lives. Our efforts do not add to the value of the Life of Christ offered on the Cross, but rather, our sharing in the Redemptive Work of Christ extends the effect of salvation throughout the world until He comes again. This is uniquely true of Our Blessed Mother, Our Lady of Sorrows. Not only did she most perfectly unite her sufferings to the sufferings of her son as she stood by the Cross, but she also made a different kind of offering to the Father than any of us could. We, as disciples, offer the same Jesus back to the Father with her as stand by the Holy Cross, but she offers her own son. Mary’s motherhood is a unique grace God gave to Mary, and she offered our motherhood back to God at the foot of the Cross of her Son.
Christ Gave the Disciple to Mary
Our Lord saw in the sacrifice of His mother the depth and beauty of both her misery and love. He gave to her Immaculate heart, from His Sacred Heart, the greatest thing he could give her that he had left to give. He gave her His Church as a son. “Woman, behold, your son.” This is the Church he died to save, the Church he spent His life on earth to found, form, and send into the world, the Church that he will present to his Father at the end of time “without spot or wrinkle” (Ephesians 5:17).
Jesus gave his Church to his mother so that she would be our mother and queen. Part of the glory of the Virgin Mary is that she is the mother not only of her son Jesus but also of “the rest of her offspring, those who keep God’s commandments and bear witness to Jesus” (Revelation 12:17). We, the Church, are a gift to Mary from Jesus. She who bore one son is now, through him, the mother of all humanity.
Christ Gave Mary to the Disciple
Our Lord also gave Mary to the Church as a gift to all disciples. The gift of Mary as mother is a vast and beautiful gift that the Church has pondered and loved for 2,000 years since this moment on the Cross. As with all great gifts, we deepen our experience of Our Lady’s motherhood by participating in it.
The more we treat her as our “mother of mercy,” who is “our life, our sweetness, and our hope,” the more fully we receive the gift Jesus gave to us from the Cross. This is what His Sacred Heart wanted for us in his last moments: to know the gift of the motherhood he created and crafted for himself. Our Lord bestowed on the Blessed Virgin Mary all the gifts He could in both nature and grace so that she would be fitting for her vocation as mother of God, but even this he empties out on the Cross by giving his own mother to us as our mother.
Christ Gives Mary to Us, and Us to Mary
We are now seven years away from the 2,000-year anniversary of this moment on the Cross when Christ gave His Church to His mother and his mother to His Church. This is the year during our Great Novena to increase, in particular, our understanding of and devotion to this great gift of the bond between the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Church, between Our Lady and ourselves.
What can I do this year to better accept the gift of Mary in my life? What can I do to be a better gift to her as a beloved son or daughter? How can I share with others the beauty of this great gift of Mary’s motherhood? May the Lord grant us all this grace, to receive and be received, to live in the gift of Mary’s motherhood.