9.
Mother of Mercy
These words
of the Church at Easter re-echo in the fullness of their prophetic content the
words that Mary uttered during her visit to Elizabeth, the wife of Zechariah:
"His mercy is...from generation to generation."101 At the
very moment of the Incarnation, these words open up a new perspective of
salvation history. After the resurrection of Christ, this perspective is new on
both the historical and the eschatological level. From that time onwards there
is a succession of new generations of individuals in the immense human family,
in ever-increasing dimensions; there is also a succession of new generations of
the People of God, marked with the Sign of the Cross and of the resurrection
and "sealed"102 with the sign of the Paschal Mystery of
Christ, the absolute revelation of the mercy that Mary proclaimed on the
threshold of her kinswoman's house: "His mercy is...from generation to
generation."103
Mary is
also the one who obtained mercy in a particular and exceptional way, as no
other person has. At the same time, still in an exceptional way, she made
possible with the sacrifice of her heart her own sharing in revealing God's
mercy. This sacrifice is intimately linked with the cross of her Son, at the
foot of which she was to stand on Calvary. Her
sacrifice is a unique sharing in the revelation of mercy, that is, a sharing in
the absolute fidelity of God to His own love, to the covenant that He willed
from eternity and that He entered into in time with man, with the people, with
humanity; it is a sharing in that revelation that was definitively fulfilled
through the cross. No one has experienced, to the same degree as the Mother of
the crucified One, the mystery of the cross, the overwhelming encounter of
divine transcendent justice with love: that "kiss" given by mercy to
justice.104 No one has received into his heart, as much as Mary did,
that mystery, that truly divine dimension of the redemption effected on Calvary
by means of the death of the Son, together with the sacrifice of her maternal
heart, together with her definitive "fiat."
Mary,
then, is the one who has the deepest knowledge of the mystery of God's mercy.
She knows its price, she knows how great it is. In this sense, we call her the
Mother of mercy: our Lady of mercy, or Mother of divine mercy; in each one of
these titles there is a deep theological meaning, for they express the special
preparation of her soul, of her whole personality, so that she was able to
perceive, through the complex events, first of Israel, then of every individual
and of the whole of humanity, that mercy of which "from generation to
generation"105 people become sharers according to the eternal
design of the most Holy Trinity.
The above
titles which we attribute to the Mother of God speak of her principally,
however, as the Mother of the crucified and risen One; as the One who, having
obtained mercy in an exceptional way, in an equally exceptional way
"merits" that mercy throughout her earthly life and, particularly, at
the foot of the cross of her Son; and finally as the one who, through her
hidden and at the same time incomparable sharing in the messianic mission of
her Son, was called in a special way to bring close to people that love which
He had come to reveal: the love that finds its most concrete expression vis-a-vis the suffering, the poor, those deprived of their
own freedom, the blind, the oppressed and sinners, just as Christ spoke of them
in the words of the prophecy of Isaiah, first in the synagogue at
Nazareth106 and then in response to the question of the messengers of
John the Baptist.107
It was
precisely this "merciful" love, which is manifested above all in
contact with moral and physical evil, that the heart of her who was the Mother
of the crucified and risen One shared in singularly and exceptionally - that
Mary shared in. In her and through her, this love continues to be revealed in
the history of the Church and of humanity. This revelation is especially
fruitful because in the Mother of God it is based upon the unique tact of her
maternal heart, on her particular sensitivity, on her particular fitness to
reach all those who most easily accept the merciful love of a mother. This is
one of the great life-giving mysteries of Christianity, a mystery intimately
connected with the mystery of the Incarnation.
"The
motherhood of Mary in the order of grace," as the Second Vatican Council
explains, "lasts without interruption from the consent which she
faithfully gave at the annunciation and which she sustained without hesitation
under the cross, until the eternal fulfillment of all
the elect. In fact, being assumed into heaven she has not laid aside this
office of salvation but by her manifold intercession she continues to obtain
for us the graces of eternal salvation. By her maternal charity, she takes care
of the brethren of her Son who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers and
difficulties, until they are led into their blessed home."108
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