Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church

Lectionary: 572

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.”
Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.”
And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

Notice two overlooked incidents in the life of the Church. After Jesus's death on Calvary, and after his Ascension into heaven, Mary remained. She was still there. She who had given the Word of God flesh so many years before, whose flesh was his flesh, remained. 

When Isaiah confronted the vacillating King Ahaz, a small, silent boy stood by his side. His name was Shear-Jashub, which means “a remnant will return.” A remnant is a piece of a cloth; perhaps of a sheet, blanket, or cloak. We learn more about that remnant in Isaiah 10:20

On that day

The remnant of Israel,

the survivors of the house of Jacob,

will no more lean upon the one who struck them;

But they will lean upon the LORD,

the Holy One of Israel, in truth.

A remnant will return,

the remnant of Jacob,

to the mighty God.

Though your people, O Israel,

were like the sand of the sea,

Only a remnant of them will return;

their destruction is decreed,

as overflowing justice demands. (Isaiah 10:20-22)

That strange, silent little boy named "Remnant" added nothing to Ahaz's reassurance. Desperate to survive an impending crisis and cowardly by nature, the king would take no comfort in Isaiah's message that only a few would return to the haunted ruins of a now prosperous Jerusalem. But the word is a promise, and Remnant is a sign of God's fidelity despite the king's fear and the city's chronic infidelity. 

However, there is another boy in this story, as Saint Matthew reminds us, quoting Isaiah from the Greek (Septuagint) translation: 

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means “God is with us.”

Neither Isaiah nor Ahaz could imagine that "overflowing justice" against the sins of Jerusalem and Israel, against the Church and all Christians, against the nations and their inhabitants, demanded the death of Emmanuel, the Son of Mary and the Son of God. He alone would be that perfect sacrifice who takes away the sins of the world. 

Departing from Calvary with John, Mary is a kind of remnant of Jesus. If she leaned upon the disciple's arm as she left that desecrated hill, she leaned more "upon the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth." Likewise, she remained in the Cenacle with the Peter and the disciples after his Ascension, awaiting the Holy Spirit and Pentecost. (The words remnant and remain have the same French source, remanant.)

She is that sign which Isaiah offered to Ahaz and the doomed city:

Even if a tenth part remains in it,

   it will be burned again,

like a terebinth or an oak

   whose stump remains standing

   when it is felled.’

The holy seed is its stump. Isaiah 6:13

She is the flesh of the Lord, joined to us through Baptism and Eucharist. She seemed a forlorn stump of a once mighty tree after his crucifixion. She was only a holy seed in the Upper Room, But she remains with us always as the Blessed Virgin Mary, worthy Mother of God and Mother of the Church.