MARY AND THE CHURCH - II

FROM THE PONTIFF
At the beginning of his pontificate more than a quarter of a century ago, Pope John Paul II wrote, "Since Pope Paul VI, inspired by the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, proclaimed the Mother of Christ to be the Mother of the Church, and that title has become known far and wide, may it be permitted to his unworthy successor to turn to Mary as Mother of the Church... She is the Mother of the Church because, on account of the eternal Father's ineffable choice and due to the Spirit of Love's special action, she gave life to the Son of God, for Whom and by Whom all things exist (Hebrews 2:10), and from Whom the whole People of God receives the grace and the dignity of election. Her Son explicitly extended His Mother's maternity in a way that could be easily understood by every soul and every heart, by designating, when He was raised on the cross, His beloved disciple as her son (John 19:26-27)."

"The Holy Spirit inspired her to remain in the Upper Room after our Lord's ascension, recollected in prayer and expectation together with the Apostles, until the day of Pentecost when the Church was to be born in visible form, coming forth from darkness (Acts of the Apostles 1:14). Later all the generations of disciples, of those who confess and love Christ, like the Apostle John, spiritually took this Mother into their homes, and she was thus included in the history of salvation and in the Church's mission from the very beginning...."

IDIOMS
The German theologian Sheeben, has noted, "Mary is figured in the Church and the Church is figured in Mary. There is, in fact, a constant mutual exchanging and interpenetration between the two, which provides for a certain exchange of idioms." Cardinal Henri de Lubac researched how, from the early years of the Church through the High Middle Ages, the same biblical symbols in the Church's Tradition are applied to both Mary and the Catholic Church with "ever increasing profusion". Both the Catholic Church and our Lady are called the new Eve, the Mother of all the spiritually living, the tree of Paradise Whose fruit is Christ, the Ark of the New Covenant, Jacob's Ladder, the Gate of heaven, the Fleece of Gideon, the Tabernacle of the most High, the Throne of Solomon, the valiant Woman of the Book of Proverbs, and the Sign in heaven and the Crusher of the serpent from the Book of Revelation and the Book of Genesis.

Other titles bestowed equally on Mary and on the Catholic Church are: the Garden enclosed, the sealed Fountain, the Tower of David, the immaculate Virgin and City surrounded by angels, the Mystical Vine, the Scepter of orthodoxy, the new Earth, the Dawn heralding the Day of Salvation, the Bush that burns but is not consumed, etc. Father Charles de Journet noted that in Mary the whole Church is outlined, since she comprises in an eminent degree all the graces and perfections of the Church. Paul Claudel remarked that "it is from Mary and the Church, forever in place before His gaze, that the Eternal takes the measure of all things." REMARKS Saint Ambrose said, "Our Lady shows forth in herself the figure of holy Church." Some more modern writers have called the Blessed Virgin Mary "the ideal figure of the Church" and "the mirror in which the whole Church is reflected". She is "the type and model of the Church in point of origin and perfection". The "form of our Mother the Catholic Church is according to the form of the Mother of Jesus." Our present Holy Father has written, "Mary is totally dependent upon God and completely directed toward Him. At the side of her Son, she is the most perfect image of freedom and of the liberation of humanity and of the universe. It is to her as Mother and model that the Church must look in order to understand in its completeness the meaning of her own mission."

The Bishop of Rome also says, "Built by Christ upon the Apostles, the Church became fully aware of the mighty works of God on the day of Pentecost, when those gathered together in the Upper Room "were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Acts of the Apostles 2:4). From that moment on there also begins the great journey of faith, the Church's pilgrimage through the history of individuals and peoples, through time and space. We know that at the beginning of this journey Mary is present. We see her in the midst of the Apostles in that Upper Room, prayerfully imploring the Gift of the Holy Spirit (as the Second Vatican Council points out)."

Charles Peguy said, "In her youthful splendor Mary is already the new universe which the Church is yet to be. The long panorama of the People of God climbs slowly and painfully to the peak which our Lady already occupied at a stroke." He also said that we must remember that at the end of time the Church will be ultimately "all fair", in accordance with her destiny as Christ's Spouse, as Mary was by the work of the Holy Spirit from the first moment she sprang into existence.

MAGNIFICAT
Pope John Paul II said, "The Virgin Mother is constantly present on the journey of faith of the People of God towards the Light. This is shown in a special way by the Canticle of the "Magnificat" (Luke 1:46-55), which, having welled up from the depths of Mary's faith at the visitation, ceaselessly re-echoes in the heart of the Church down through the centuries. This is proved by its daily recitation in the Liturgy of Vespers (Evening Prayer) and at many other moments of both personal and communal devotion. The Church, which from the beginning has modelled her earthly journey on that of the Mother of God, constantly repeats her words in the "magnificat".

From the depths of the Virgin's faith at the annunciation and the visitation, the Church derives the truth about the God of the covenant, the God Who is mighty and does "great things" for man and Whose name is holy. The Church, which even amidst trials and tribulations does not cease repeating with Mary the words of the "magnificat", is sustained by the power of God's truth, proclaimed by her with such extraordinary simplicity. At the same time, by means of this truth about God, the Church desires to shed light upon the difficult and sometimes tangled paths of man's earthly existence. In contrast with the suspicion which the Father of lies sowed in the heart of Eve, the first woman, Mary, whom Tradition is wont to call the new Eve, the true Mother of all the living, boldly proclaims the undimmed truth about the holy and almighty God, Who, from the beginning, is the Source of all gifts..."