After Jesus had been taken up into heaven,

   the apostles returned to Jerusalem

   from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem,

   a sabbath day’s journey away.

 

When the apostles entered the city

   they went to the upper room where they were staying,

   Peter and John and James and Andrew,

   Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew,

   James son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot,

   and Judas son of James.

All these devoted themselves with one accord to prayer,

   together with some women,

   and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

 

 

 

We have already indicated a close connection between the person of the Mother of God and the Church, when speaking of the Tradition which she personified, as it were, before the Church existed. She who bore God according to the flesh also kept in her heart all the sayings that revealed the divinity of her Son. This is a testimony concerning the spiritual life of the Mother of God. St. Luke shows us that she was not simply an instrument, who willingly let herself be used in the Incarnation, but rather a person who sought to realize, in her own consciousness, the meaning of the fact of her divine maternity. After having offered her human nature to the Son of God, she sought to receive through Him that which she did not yet have in common with Him: participation in the divine nature. It is in her Son that the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9). The natural connection which linked her to the God-Man did not yet confer upon the person of the Mother of God the state of a deified creature, although the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of the Annunciation made her fit to accomplish her unique task. In this sense, the Mother of God, before the day of Pentecost, before the Church, still belonged to the humanity of the Old Testament, to those who waited for “the promise of the Father,” expecting to be baptized with the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-5).

 

Tradition shows us the Mother of God in the midst of the disciples on the day of Pentecost, receiving with them the Holy Spirit, who was communicated to each of them as a distinct tongue of fire. This agrees with the testimony of Acts: after the Ascension, the apostles “with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the Mother of Jesus, and with his brothers” (1:14). “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place” (2: 1). The Mother of God received with the Church the last and only thing she lacked, so that she might grow “to mature manhood, to the measure of the  stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).

 

She who by the power of the Holy Spirit received the divine Person of the Son of God into her womb, now receives the Holy Spirit, sent by the Son. The two descents of the Holy Spirit upon the Holy Virgin may be compared, in a certain sense, to the two communications of the Spirit to the apostles, one on the evening of the day of Resurrection and the other on the day of Pentecost. The first of these conferred on the apostles the power to bind and to loose. This is a function independent of their subjective qualities, due solely to a divine decree which selects them to play this particular role in the Church. The second communication of the Spirit, at Pentecost, gave to each of them the possibility of realizing his personal holiness-something which will always depend on subjective factors. But the two communications of the Spirit, the functional and the personal, are mutually complementary. One can see this in the apostles and  their successors: no one can fulfill his function in the Church well unless he is striving to acquire holiness; on the other hand, it is hard for anyone to attain holiness if he neglects the function in which God has placed him. The two should coincide more and more as life goes on; one’s vocation normally becomes a way by which one acquires selflessness and personal sanctity. We can see something analogous in the otherwise unique case of the Mother of God: the objective function of her divine maternity, in which she was placed on the day of the Annunciation, will also be the subjective way of her sanctification. She will realize in her consciousness, and in all her personal life, the meaning of the fact of her having carried in her womb and having nourished at her breast the Son of God. It is thus that the words of Christ, which appear to abase his Mother in comparison with the Church, receive their meaning of supreme praise: blessed is she who not only was the Mother of God but also realized in her person the degree of holiness corresponding to that unique function. The person of the Mother of God is exalted more than her function, and the consummation of her holiness receives more praise than its beginnings. 

 

The function of divine maternity is completed in the past; but the Holy Virgin, still on earth after the Ascension of her Son, remains as much as ever the Mother of Him who, in his glorious humanity, taken from the Virgin, is seated at the right hand of the Father, “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come” (Ephesians 1:21). What degree of holiness able to be realized here below could possibly correspond to the unique relationship of the Mother of God to her Son, the Head of the Church, who dwells in the heavens? Only the total holiness of the Church, the complement of the glorious humanity of Christ, containing the plenitude of deifying grace communicated ceaselessly to the Church since Pentecost by the Holy Spirit. The members of the Church can enter into a family relationship with Christ; they can be his “mother, brothers, and sisters” (Matthew 12:50) in the measure in which they accomplish their vocations. But only the Mother of God, through whom the Word was made flesh, will be able to receive the plenitude of grace and to attain an unlimited glory, by realizing in her person all the holiness of which the Church is capable.

 

The Son of God came down from heaven and was made man through the Holy Virgin, in order that men might rise to deification by the grace of the Holy Spirit. “To possess by grace what God has by nature”: that is the supreme vocation of created beings and the final destiny to which the sons of the Church aspire here below, in the gradual development of the Church in history. This development is already consummated in the divine Person of Christ, the Head of the Church, risen and ascended. If the Mother of God could truly realize in her human and created  person the sanctity which corresponds to her unique role, then she cannot have failed to attain here below by grace all that her Son has by His divine nature. But if this be so, then the historical development of the Church and the world has already been fulfilled, not only in the uncreated person of the Son of God but also in the created person of his Mother. This is why St.Gregory Palamas calls the Mother of God “the boundary between the created and the uncreated.” Alongside the incarnate divine hypostasis there is a deified human hypostasis.  

 

We have said above that in the person of the Mother of God it is possible to see the transition from the greatest holiness of the Old Testament to the holiness of the Church. But if the All-Holy Mother of God has consummated the holiness of the Church and all holiness which is possible for a created being, we are now dealing with yet another transition-the transition from the world of becoming to the eternity of the Eighth Day, the passage from the Church to the Kingdom of God. This last glory of the Mother of God, the eschaton realized in a created person before the end of the world, henceforth places her beyond death, beyond the resurrection, and beyond the  Last judgment. She participates in the glory of her Son, reigns with Him, presides at His side over the destinies of the Church and of the world which unfold in time, and intercedes on behalf of all before Him who will come again to judge the living and the dead.

 

 

 

 

Mater Ecclesiae, O Maria
Mater Ecclesiae, pray with us each day
Mater Ecclesiae, O Maria
Mater Ecclesiae, pray with us each day

With Mary we pray to our God
To God, the creator of all
Receive our prayer

With Mary we ask of our God
Through Jesus our life and our hope
Receive our prayer

With Mary give praise to our God
In God's Holy Spirit
Receive our prayer

Mater Ecclesiae, O Maria
Mater Ecclesiae, pray with us each day

With Mary we sing to our God
To God be glory and praise
Receive our prayer

With Mary proclaim to our God
Through Jesus our saving Lord
Receive our prayer

With Mary rejoice in our God
In God's living Spirit
Receive our prayer

 

 

God and Father of mercies,

as your only Son hung on the cross,

he gave his Mother, the blessed Virgin Mary,

to be our Mother also.

Grant that under her loving care

your Church, growing daily more fruitful,

may rejoice in the holiness of its children,

and draw to its bosom all peoples of the earth.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

God for ever and ever. Amen.  (Mary, Mother of the Church; Monday after Pentecost)