Pope St. JPII's devotion to Mary

[MariaChristi]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Yesterday, my husband concluded a nine week series on Pope St. John Paul II’s Encyclical on the Holy Spirit . In the final paragraphs we read:

1. In the midst of the problems, disappointments and hopes, desertions and returns of these times of ours, the Church remains faithful to the mystery of her birth. While it is an historical fact that the Church came forth from the Upper Room on the day of Pentecost, in a certain sense one can say that she has never left it. Spiritually the event of Pentecost does not belong only to the past: the Church is always in the Upper Room that she bears in her heart. The Church perseveres … like the Apostles together with Mary, the Mother of Christ, and with those who in Jerusalem… the first seed of the Christian community… who awaited in prayer the coming of the Holy Spirit.

The Church perseveres in prayer with Mary. This union of the praying Church with the Mother of Christ has been part of the mystery of the Church from the beginning: we see her present in this mystery as she is present in the mystery of her Son. It is the Council that says to us: “The Blessed Virgin…overshadowed by the Holy Spirit… brought forth…the Son…, he whom God placed as the first-born among many brethren (cf. Rom 8:29), namely the faithful. In their birth and development she cooperates with a maternal love”; she is through “his singular graces and offices…intimately united with the Church… [She] is a model of the Church.” “The Church, moreover, contemplating Mary’s mysterious sanctity, imitating her charity,…becomes herself a mother” and “herself is a virgin, who keeps…the fidelity she has pledged to her Spouse. Imitating the Mother of The Lord, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, she preserves with virginal purity an integral faith, a firm hope, and a sincere charity.”…

I told a friend as soon as we completed this encyclical which the Pope wrote in 1986, I hoped to re-read his Apostolic Letter, written in 1988, "On the Dignity and Vocation of Women" as a meditation on Mary. If you’ve never read this beautiful document, please join in me reading and commenting on the true devotion to Mary which Pope St. John Paul II lived and about which he wrote.