Mary, Mother of the Church

Homily for the Memoial of Mary, Mother of the Church

In creating this new memorial to be celebrated on the Monday after the Solemnity of Pentecost, Pope Francis is actually returning to an ancient tradition and devotion. 

His decree reflects on the history of Marian theology in the Church’s liturgical tradition and the writings of the Church Fathers. He cites both Saint Augustine and Pope Saint Leo the Great who reflected on the Virgin Mary’s importance in the mystery of Christ. “In fact St. Augustine says that Mary is the mother of the members of Christ, because with charity she cooperated in the rebirth of the faithful into the Church, while St. Leo the Great says that the birth of the Head is also the birth of the body, thus indicating that Mary is at once Mother of Christ, the Son of God, and mother of the members of his Mystical Body, which is the Church.”

The decree also states that these reflections are a result of the “divine motherhood of Mary and from her intimate union in the work of the Redeemer”. Scripture, the decree goes on to say, depicts Mary at the foot of the Cross (cf. Jn 19:25). There she became the Mother of the Church when she “accepted her Son’s testament of love and welcomed all people in the person of the beloved disciple as sons and daughters to be reborn unto life eternal.”

In 1964, Pope Paul VI “declared the Blessed Virgin Mary as ‘Mother of the Church, that is to say of all Christian people, the faithful as well as the pastors, who call her the most loving Mother’ and established that ‘the Mother of God should be further honored and invoked by the entire Christian people by this tenderest of titles’”.

By placing the memorial on the day after Pentecost, Pope Francis is linking the devotion to the day on which we celebrate the birthday of the Church through the coming of the Holy Spirit. The formulary for the new memorial had already been included in the various votive Masses of the Blessed Mother. Now it is to be universally celebrated.

As we approach the table of the Lord today, we give thanks for such a wonderful mother who, by giving birth to God’s son, has participated in the grace of everlasting life won for us through the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator