Woman, Behold Your Son!
Son, Behold Your Mother!
The chasm between Mary and ourselves created by her singular purity
and our defilement finds her alone on one side and all humankind—without
exception—on the other. Even the greatest of our saints, save only Mary, at
one time or another have been averted from God: be this said unto our
consolation. Indeed, as the eagle-preacher [John] reminds us, Christ
entrusted the highest offices within His gift to sinners. The supreme charge
over His flock He gave to Peter who denied Him. The first of His evangelists
was the Publican, Matthew. The favored watcher at His Cross, the first
recipient of His Easter blessing, was the Magdalen. The foremost of His
preachers was Paul, who persecuted the Church of God and who
acknowledges on his every page his guilt before God and men. So has it
been in the history of His Church ever since. Not the just and innocent but
converted sinners are typically chosen to serve Him. All those closest to
Him—save only Mary, His Mother—were from among them. She alone was
conceived holy in the sight of God, cleansed from the first primeval moment
when God Himself first thought of her.
Again, why? Christ chose penitent sinners, even for high places in
His apostolate. There are literally none among all mankind, not even saints,
who are not penitents. He did not call into being a special breed of men to
be His priests and prophets and co-workers because in one subtle sense, a
sense of which the Holy Saturday Liturgy so beautifully reminds us, it was
better, so to say, that those who would be His apostles be themselves
sinners. He chose them for others; … He chose Mary for Himself. … But for
Himself the God in Christ could fashion only an extraordinary being of
privileged purity. Those who would be the human channels of the life of our
souls He would providentially choose from among the defiled but she who
would be the channel of His own humanity must have a purity somehow in
conformity with the purity of Himself. Two loves were destined to be
blended in the heart of Mary: She was to give her Son the love due to God,
and her God the love due to a son. The love for her Son would be an
impulse of nature; the love of her God an impulse of grace. And just as her
Son was one with her God, so nature and grace, the two loves in Mary,
unlike, alas, those which war in us, were intimately blended, and grace was
present from the first moment that nature existed in her: Both were united
in the single love of her Most Pure Heart.
(Cardinal John Joseph Wright, MARY OUR HOPE, Ignatius Press, San
Francisco, CA, Pgs. 31-33.)
http://ourladyofamerica.com/whatsnew/WomanBeholdYourSon,SonBeholdYourMother.pdf
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