Meditation for October 11, The Maternity of Mary

Today is a special feast to celebrate the incomparable privilege of Mary's divine maternity.

The Gospel for the day is the same as that for the Feast of the Holy Family and, quite naturally, for the Mother is the whole family. *

In reality the maternity of Mary is at once double and single in character.

Double, for Mary is the Mother of the Whole Christ; not only of the Child Jesus, but of the Man Jesus in His fulness, the Head and the members. She is the Mother of the Savior according to the flesh and our mother according to grace. And because the Head and members, that is, Our Lord and we make but one Christ, the complete Body of Christ, plenarium corpus Christi, as St. Au­gustine says, the maternity of Mary, although dual in character, is nevertheless one. She is mother of the whole Christ.

Consider that Mary, having thus two types of children, her First Born, Jesus, the Son according to her flesh, and us the second, born according to grace, she was willing to sacrifice her First Born to save us her second born. Therein lay her mission, to prepare Jesus for the sacrifice and to offer Him to the Father at the foot of the Cross for our salvation, as she had already done in the Annuncia­tion and throughout her whole life, ratifying at every instant her Ecce Ancilla, as if to say, "Someone must serve, I am the one."

Today's liturgy speaks above all of the human maternity of Mary and of her role in connection with Jesus our Elder Brother: Behold a Virgin will bring forth a Son and He shall be called Em­manuel, but I will complete the thought, and not separating myself from Jesus, will understand that Mary is my own Mother also, since she is the Mother of the whole Christ.

"O Mother of beautiful love and of holy hope in whom is every grace of strength and of truth and every promise of virtue, I come to you. Be my Mother as much as possible for despite my desire, I can hardly dare claim to be your child."

* [Old calendar]
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Adapted from Meditations for Religious
by Father Raoul Plus, S.J. (© 1939, Frederick Pustet Co.)