May 21 - Mary, Mother of the Church

+ Today the Church rejoices as it celebrates a wonderful new feast day in the Church’s calendar year:  it corresponds to the title “Mary, Mother of the Church” that Pope Paul VI, promulgated in 1964 – during the Second Vatican Council.

And, falling now as it always will on the Day after Pentecost – it is in fitting proximation to that feast which is of the day of the birth of Church – when the Holy Spirit fell upon not only the Apostles, but also Mary, and about “120 other persons” – the Upper Room must have been a veritable banquet hall!

Since Mary is the Architype of the Church itself, it is most appropriate to call her its Mother – as our gospel passage tells us that she most certainly is when Jesus gives his mother, Mary, to the Beloved Apostle John – as they both represent the Church – her, in its fullness already, and he, in its pilgrim journeying that will be the lot of all those born into its Mystical Reality by baptism, until the end of time.

And so we Hail Mary as not only Mother of God, but also of the Church – the new Real Presence of her Son in the world, vivified and impelled to works of charity and mercy until the end of time. May we count ourselves truly blessed to belong to such a living mystical entity, with such a humble, unassuming and focused on the Will of God model and Mother, the Blessed Virgin of Nazareth!

As our alleluia verse proclaims, so let us proclaim to at least one person we meet today: “O happy Virgin, you gave birth to the Lord: O blessed mother of the Church, you warm our hearts with the Spirit of you Son Jesus Christ, which you received yet once again, fresh fallen, yesterday in the grand illumination and launching of the “Bark of Peter,” our Spiritual Home forever. The Catholic churches who subsist under the Roman Pontiff: Francis, Bishop of Rome. Amen.