Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church

Lectionary: 572A

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers;

He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.”
The man called his wife Eve,   because she became the mother of all the living.

 

After Saint Paul discovered Adam as a type of Christ, Christian scholars combed the Hebrew scriptures for other types, or prefigurements, of Jesus; and there were many.  The Patriarch Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses the Lawgiver, King David: all bear some resemblance to Jesus; along with the prophets, especially Elijah who was taken up into heaven, and Jeremiah who was called before he was born. They soon found types for John the Baptist, Mary, and Joseph also. With this typology, which was a traditional Jewish way of reading the scriptures, the Fathers of the Church demonstrated the roots of our faith in the Jewish religion. Christianity was neither a revolution from, nor a reformation of, Judaism; but its natural blossoming. It was foreseen and foreordained from all eternity. 

The earliest prophecy of Jesus, in Genesis 3:14, might seem vague to modern ears but the Church fathers saw it clearly in the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. Because the word offspring is singular, it must refer to the One who is Mary’s only offspring. The serpent is obviously evil and the Lord is the Holy One of God. When his heel is struck with a poisonous bite he is crucified. But in the same fatal moment, he strikes at the serpent’s head, crushing and killing it. (Director Mel Gibson described it in The Passion of the Christ.)

The enmity between the serpent and the woman appeared brilliantly in the apocalyptic Revelation 12 as the dragon, a flying serpent, pursued the woman who had given birth to one who would rule with an iron rod. She is obviously the Church, but she is also Mary, the Virgin miraculously pregnant. (Miraculous pregnancies like those in Luke 1 are also apocalyptic signs.)

On this Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, which follows Pentecost, we honor Mary, “the mother of all the living.” Just as Eve is the mother of all human beings, Mary is mother of all who live in Christ. We are born of her body in the womb of the baptismal font. This is the obvious intent of John 19:27, 

“Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.”

This final command of Jesus is more than a last-minute expression of concern for his mother. With it we finally understand the meaning of that much anticipated hour.  When we obey Jesus’s final command and accept her as our Mother, his mission is complete.

His Mother, who is not named in John, and the Beloved Disciple (also unnamed) comprise the new congregation born from the dying body of Jesus with a rush of blood and water. As Eve was born of Adam’s chest, so is the Church born of the Lord on Calvary.

When we gather as Church, whether on the Lord’s Day, in a planning meeting for a church festival, or "when two or three agree on anything," we come to our mother. She is family and we are sisters and brothers. Each one is a beloved disciple. Our assemblies are family reunions; our quarrels are resolved by the necessity of insoluble bonds. If we must wander the earth we find one another and a familiar home in our worship.