Mary is model of the Church in terms of its missionary outreach and social engagement, writes Bishop Brendan Leahy
Mary is the woman most spoken of in Scripture. When key moments in the Christian story are presented in the Gospels the Evangelists include Mary and want us to see the significance of her role. She was clearly very important for the early Christian community.
Somewhat surprisingly, there is relatively little devotion to Mary in the first three centuries of the Church. Here and there we find references to her in the writings of the first theologians and in hymns. The oldest image of Mary is to be found in the Catacombs of Priscilla in Rome. Its early third century fresco depicts Mary nursing the infant Jesus. Nevertheless, Mary is very much in the background in these first centuries.
Why is that? It might help us answer the question by remembering that it was in the fourth and fifth centuries that a series of councils took place affirming clearly the divine-human identity of Jesus. All kinds of questions had been raised about Jesus himself. In a sense, it was only when his divine and human natures were clearly recognised and affirmed that focus on Mary could emerge more easily. Jesus is the one Mediator between God and humanity.
Recognition
Once that is clarified, from the fifth century onwards we see an explosion in attention to Mary in the form of prayers, churches and titles dedicated to her. This reflects recognition of how Mary is so intimately connected with Jesus’ mission and how God has done such “great things” for Mary. The many “privileges” God granted her were recognised – made mother of God, immaculately conceived, assumed into heaven.
An Italian series of volumes published by the Citta Nuova publisher, gathering some of the main writings on Mary throughout the centuries, has now reached 12 volumes with about 1000 pages in each. And that is probably only scratching the surface of the amount of theology and poetry, song and narrative about Mary in the two millennia of the Christian history. It would be well-nigh impossible to record the many, many insights the Church has gained concerning her.
There is so much that be said about Mary that it is legitimate to ask: what about today? Can we point to a typical focus on Mary for today? One direction in which the Holy Spirit is prompting us is to view Mary as the model of the Church, the model of how together we form the Church and evangelise.
Devotion
We see it, for instance, in Pope Francis. His devotion to Mary is well known. One of his first gestures was to visit the Church of Maria Maggiore, the Roman basilica dedicated to Mary. It was touching to see him carry a small bouquet of flowers as he approached the icon of Our Lady. In his Apostolic Letter, The Joy of the Gospel (paragraphs 284-288), he explains the profound link between Mary, the Church and each one of us. It is based on the fact that just like Mary brought Christ into the world, each of us is called to re-live Mary, as it were, and bring Christ to birth in our lives and around us.
In his Apostolic Letter, Pope Francis quotes the twelfth century writer, Blessed Isaac of Stella who picks up on many of the themes developed throughout centuries of meditation and contemplation and explains the link between Mary and the Church: “In the inspired Scriptures, what is said in a universal sense of the Virgin Mother, the Church, is understood in an individual sense of the Virgin Mary… In a way, every Christian is also believed to be a bride of God’s word, a mother of Christ, his daughter and sister, at once virginal and fruitful… Christ dwelt for nine months in the tabernacle of Mary’s womb. He dwells until the end of the ages in the tabernacle of the Church’s faith. He will dwell forever in the knowledge and love of each faithful soul.”
Mary is not only an object of devotion, the bearer of many privileges and titles. She is model of the Church both in terms of its own nature but also in terms of its missionary outreach and social engagement. We are more attentive today to what Pope Francis describes as the Marian “style” of the Church’s work of evangelisation. In a sense she is the mirror into which we look to see how we can be the people of the Gospel that God wants to see on earth.
In outlining the Marian “style” of the Church, Pope Francis invites us to look at Mary, “Mother of the living Gospel” (and, we could add, Mary, the Gospel lived). In reviewing what is like a Scripture litany of Mary’s attributes, Pope Francis helps us apply them to our lives as points of an ecclesial spirituality to be lived together in our daily lives.
By looking to Mary, we come to believe “in the revolutionary nature of love and tenderness.” In our dealings with one another and with others, humility and tenderness are important. Mary praised God for “bringing down the mighty from their thrones” and “sending the rich away empty” (Lk 1:52-53) and so she reminds us of the need to bring “a homely warmth to our pursuit of justice”.
Mary shows us how to be people of discernment and prayer, “able to recognise the traces of God’s Spirit in events great and small”. Mary is a woman of work in Nazareth. She is ‘Our Lady of Help, who sets out from her town “with haste” to be of service to others.’
Pope Francis concludes: “this interplay of justice and tenderness, of contemplation and concern for others, is what makes the ecclesial community look to Mary as a model of evangelisation. We implore her maternal intercession that the Church may become a home for many peoples, a mother for all peoples, and that the way may be opened to the birth of a new world.”
Dr Brendan Leahy is Bishop of Limerick.