Mater Ecclesia
No maternity is comparable to that of the Church for nobility, fecundity, tenderness, and strength. For nobility: issuing from the Heart of God and from the Heart of Christ, immune from the blight of evil and of age, she does not engender for servitude, she bears the honor of God himself. With what pride Saint Paul speaks of this maternity: But that Jerusalem which is on high is free, which is the mother of us all (Gal 4:26).
For fecundity: because her love is in proportion to that love which binds her to Christ, it is limitless and always in act. All have to be reborn through her: Except one be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God (Jn 3:5). But by coming to the true life they do not therefore leave her bosom. “To engender, for the Church, means to receive her children into her womb; their death is to go out from her” (Aquinas). At the very moment when we leave this world, on that birthday, the Church is more than ever our Mother: we belong to her perfectly in heaven. The maternity of the Church is as immense as the paternity of God.
For tenderness: it is the tenderness of the Bride who gives herself to her children; in them she loves Christ. But no one loves Christ like the Church, just as Christ loves nothing so much as the Church. That is why nothing is more pure, more disinterested than this tenderness…. The Church loves our persons and our souls directly, without abstraction and quite simply….
For strength: the strength of the Church comes from that jealous value for souls which she holds from God. In her eyes souls are worth more than all worlds: What shall a man give in exchange for his own soul? (Mt 16:26). They are worth, each and every one, all the blood of her divine Bridegroom. It is for the sake of the souls of her children that she is so constant in affirming the absolute character of the law of God, in denouncing scandals, in demanding justice. Sometimes she may be reduced to powerlessness or even silence when confronted with material injustice and bodily oppression, but she can never fail to make her claim for the right of souls.
Father Humbert Clerissac, o.p.
Father Clerissac († 1914) was a Dominican priest and beloved preacher, spiritual director, and author. [From The Mystery of the Church. © 2016 by Cluny Media, P.O. Box 1664, Providence, RI 02901.
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