The Mother of the Sabbath's Lord

The Mother of the Sabbath’s Lord

The love of God is infinitely condescending, for we know how far his humanity goes in giving us Mary as our Mother; but he is, he can only be, totally demanding, because he wishes us solely for himself…. The remarkable promises which the saints make in the name of God, to those who are devoted to Mary, must make us realize that the Blessed Virgin is a wonderful way for us to give all to Christ and to receive grace from him in return.

Marian spirituality strengthens us in our earnest attempt to make our wills one with God’s. It leads us to give to Mary, in our personal life, the role which she has in the plan of God. We may say with Dante that to do without her would be to want to fly without wings….

The plan of God is to “restore all things in Christ.” Christ is our Head and Sovereign Lord. For this reason, all must be submissive to him, related to him and endowed by him with life. All must go to God and receive from him divine life. It is God who has willed that Christ, the center of all things, should become man in Mary and through Mary. It is because of this unique link with the mystery of the Incarnation that Mary’s place is at the center of the divine plan. God who, through her, has given us Christ, wishes through her, to give us all things through her Son….

We may say that God who keeps her forever in his presence and on his own level lets her appear only that she may fulfill her role which is to receive and to give Christ: the Annunciation where her Fiat welcomes the Incarnation; the Visitation, in which she brings the grace sanctifying the precursor; the Nativity, where she gives Christ to the world; Cana, where her act of intercession opens the door to the public life, manifests the glory of the Son of God and awakens faith in his first disciples through this, the first of his miracles; the cross, where she is associated with the Redemption; finally, the Cenacle, where the members of the first community as the Church in visible form are united in prayer with “Mary the Mother of Jesus,” as they wait for the coming of the Spirit…. “God has thus willed that we should have all through Mary,” says Saint Bernard.

Father Joseph-Marie Perrin, o.p.