#28 - St.JPII's Meditation on Mary

[MariaChristi]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I was a day ahead of myself yesterday, writing “Today is Saturday”, but today really is Saturday – and I hope you think of Mary especially on Saturdays. The Church has for centuries remembered Mary’s great faithfulness on the Saturday after Jesus died – she believed He would rise as He said. She kept His Word, believing, trusting and loving Him. Today we continue meditating with St. John Paul II as he wrote “Mulieris Dignitatem”, for the Church:

**VIII - “THE GREATEST OF THESE IS LOVE”

In the face of changes**

1. “The Church believes that Christ, who died and was raised up for all, can through his Spirit offer man the light and the strength to respond to his supreme destiny”. We can apply these words of the Conciliar Constitution Gaudium et spes to the present reflections. The particular reference to the dignity of women and their vocation, precisely in our time, can and must be received in the “light and power” which the Spirit grants to human beings, including the people of our own age, which is marked by so many different transformations. The Church “holds that in her Lord and Master can be found the key, the focal point, and the goal” of man and “of all human history”, and she “maintains that beneath all changes there are many realities which do not change and which have their ultimate foundation in Christ, who is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever”.

These words of the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World show the path to be followed in undertaking the tasks connected with the dignity and vocation of women, against the background of the significant changes of our times. We can face these changes correctly and adequately only if we go back to the foundations which are to be found in Christ, to those “immutable” truths and values of which he himself remains the “faithful witness” (cf. Rev. 1:5) and Teacher. A different way of acting would lead to doubtful, if not actually erroneous and deceptive results.

**The dignity of women and the order of love
**
29. The passage from the Letter to the Ephesians already quoted (5:21-33), in which the relationship between Christ and the Church is presented as the link between the Bridegroom and the Bride, also makes reference to the institution of marriage as recorded in the Book of Genesis (cf. 2:24). This passage connects the truth about marriage as a primordial sacrament with the creation of man and woman in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gen 1:27; 5:1). The significant comparison in the Letter to the Ephesians gives perfect clarity to what is decisive for the dignity of women both in the eyes of God - the Creator and Redeemer - and in the eyes of human beings - men and women. In God’s eternal plan, woman is the one in whom the order of love in the created world of persons takes first root. The order of love belongs to the intimate life of God himself, the life of the Trinity. In the intimate life of God, the Holy Spirit is the personal hypostasis of love. Through the Spirit, Uncreated Gift, love becomes a gift for created persons. Love, which is of God, communicates itself to creatures: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5).

I put the sentence about the Holy Spirit in bold because it reminded me of something St. Maximilian Kolbe wrote about Mary and the Holy Spirit. I’ll need to search it out to be sure I do not misquote the saint, but even before I find St. Maximilian’s words, just looking at what St. John Paul II has written we can appreciate what a unique relationship Mary had with the Holy Spirit in the Incarnation! Overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, Mary conceived in her womb the God-Man, Jesus’ Divine and Human Natures hypostatically united in the One Divine Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Mary, Icon of the Church, received Love by the power of the Holy Spirit and gave Him to the world in the birth of Jesus. Joy to the world! The Lord has Come…and He continues to come through His Church.