Beloved in Christ, it is a heresy to say that Jesus is a human person. He is not. He is a Divine Person who united himself to human nature. So in Christ, God joined himself to the whole human race, and because his Person is Infinite, he is able to contain all of us.
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Yet this connection to the entire human race – this bond that God formed with the human family – it took place when the Divine united himself to the Blessed Virgin Mary. For the Mystical Body of Christ, for the entire human family, the Blessed Virgin is the point of junction with God.[i]
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Jesus Christ possessed not only a physical body, but also his Mystical Body. Therefore, Mary, who bore the Savior in her womb, may also be said to have given birth to all of us, whose lives are contained in Christ. Mary is therefore the true Mother of all the Living.[ii]
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Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And this Heart of our Mother – well, we cannot live without it. Maternal love is so inseparable from life, that we see it reflected even in the animal world. The need for our mother is an instinct of life, which we see from the first cry of an infant in the cradle to the last appeals of a dying man for his mother. And God did not intend that the supernatural life should be less human, than natural life, so he created Mary.
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The Divine Maternity, says St. Thomas, belongs to the order of infinite things. In some sense, the maternal love of Mary is infinite.
Because of Mary, Christianity has a unique spirit of hope and joy. Because of her it remains a religion of freshness and youth. Because of her it is a religion whose great mysteries are perfectly accessible even to little children. Their mothers on earth still tell them about the little Jesus and his mother, who is also their mother in heaven, and this was the same with St. Augustine, and St. Thomas, and all the rest.
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After the children and their innocence come the sinners; the sinners – For them especially, Christianity would lack some of its goodness if this Blessed Mother, were not there. The more wretched men may be, the more merciful is her response; she knows how to change their hearts by the goodness of her Immaculate heart.
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Just look at religions where Mary is lacking, or where she is not known. There, God does not seem to be so much a Father, and Christ is not so close; the Church is less of a family. Without Mary, our religion would resemble a Protestant church which has no Living Presence; a system that is well-ordered but cold: because there is no longer a Mother in the home.
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In reality, mothers are often servants, handmaids, of their children, giving their all to help them. Mary was the handmaid of the Lord, and of her Son, and really of all her children – helping them, praying for them, serving them – all because, of her Immaculate Heart.
[i] Theology of the Mystical Body, Mersch, pp. 172-173.
[ii] ibid, p. 187.
