#30 - St. JPII's Meditation on Mary - "Mission"

[MariaChristi]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In reading this section of “Mulieris Dignitatem”, I’m again reminded of S. Maximilian Kolbe. Researching the words of St. JPII: “In the intimate life of God, the Holy Spirit is the personal hypostasis of love,” I found help in Chap, 4, entitled “The Holy Spirit’s Mission in the Immaculata” of the book Immaculate Conception and the Holy Spirit. I posted two quotes from the book in a new thread on the union between Mary and the holy Spirit. The word “mission” stood out for me this morning:

Awareness of a mission

1. A woman’s dignity is closely connected with the love which she receives by the very reason of her femininity; it is likewise connected with the love which she gives in return. The truth about the person and about love is thus confirmed. With regard to the truth about the person, we must turn again to the Second Vatican Council: "Man, who is the only creature on earth that God willed for its own sake, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of self". This applies to every human being, as a person created in God’s image, whether man or woman. This ontological affirmation also indicates the ethical dimension of a person’s vocation. Woman can only find herself by giving love to others.

From the “beginning”, woman - like man - was created and “placed” by God in this order of love. The sin of the first parents did not destroy this order, nor irreversibly cancel it out. This is proved by the words of the Proto-evangelium (cf. Gen 3:15). Our reflections have focused on the particular place occupied by the “woman” in this key text of revelation. It is also to be noted how the same Woman, who attains the position of a biblical “exemplar”, also appears within the eschatological perspective of the world and of humanity given in the Book of Revelation She is “a woman clothed with the sun”, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of stars (cf. Rev 12:1). One can say she is a Woman of cosmic scale, on a scale with the whole work of creation. At the same time she is “suffering the pangs and anguish of childbirth” (Rev 12:2) like Eve “the mother of all the living” (Gen 3:20). She also suffers because “before the woman who is about to give birth” (cf. Rev 12:4) there stands “the great dragon … that ancient serpent” (Rev 12:9), already known from the Proto-evangelium: the Evil One, the “father of lies” and of sin (cf. Jn 8:44). The “ancient serpent” wishes to devour “the child”. While we see in this text an echo of the Infancy Narrative (cf. Mt 2:13,16), we can also see that the struggle with evil and the Evil One marks the biblical exemplar of the “woman” from the beginning to the end of history. It is also a struggle for man, for his true good, for his salvation. Is not the Bible trying to tell us that it is precisely in the “woman” - Eve-Mary - that history witnesses a dramatic struggle for every human being, the struggle for his or her fundamental “yes” or “no” to God and God’s eternal plan for humanity?

While the dignity of woman witnesses to the love which she receives in order to love in return, the biblical “exemplar” of the Woman also seems to reveal the true order of love which constitutes woman’s own vocation. Vocation is meant here in its fundamental, and one may say universal significance, a significance which is then actualized and expressed in women’s many different “vocations” in the Church and the world.

By our Baptism, we are sent on “Mission” as members of the Body of Christ, His Church, His Bride. This meditation on Mary which St. John Paul II has written for the entire Church can help us better understand why Jesus promised His disciples in John 16:13, the Holy Spirit would bring us into ALL Truth. At Pentecost after Jesus ascended, He and the Father sent the Holy Spirit upon the Church to continue the Mission of Jesus. At the end of each Mass we are “sent” again to proclaim the Good News. Like Mary who was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit conceived Jesus, and went with haste into the hill country to visit her cousin – so we, the Church need to go, with haste. Come Holy Spirit, fill us and send us to bring Jesus to others!