Today the Mother of Life, the Mother of all the
living, addresses the “culture
of death” with her witness to life and its sanctity.

Mother of the living

By Father Joseph

    “Now, O children, listen to me . . . . He who finds me finds life, and wins favor from the Lord” (Prov. 8:32, 35). As every true Catholic knows, and as we are taught from our youth, Mary, the Mother of God, is our Mother too. Those who believe and live from this truth find a depth of life in the Lord which is otherwise unattainable.

    When asked why we assert that Mary is our Mother, we usually refer to the dying words of Jesus directed toward the anonymous (and hence representative) “disciple whom Jesus loved”: “Behold, your mother” (John 19:27). This is quite correct, of course, and his command is in itself a sufficiently compelling reason to believe. But is there not still more to this mystery? Scripture bears at least one other revelation about the basis of Mary’s universal motherhood which we would like to reflect upon here. We will also add a reflection upon the consequences of this revelation for one important aspect of Mary’s motherly mission in our own times.

Woman: Eden, Cana, Cross, and Apocalypse

    Before we arrive at any conclusion about the Bible’s bequeathal of Mary as our Mother, let us look at the wider scope of Scripture to see the plan of God, especially as it is understood and brought to greater clarity in the writings of St. John. To do this we must be aware of certain important facts about Mary. The first is that her role in the “mystery hidden for ages in God” (Eph. 3:9) far transcends the relatively few details about her life recorded in the Gospels. The second is that who she was personally, and her involvement in historical events, are taken up into a broader and deeper context involving salvation history, biblical typology, theology, and mysticism. An essential biblical term for understanding Mary’s role in these various dimensions, and in linking them together, is “Woman.”

    The first female human being was called “woman” by the first man because “she was taken from man” (Gen. 2:23). Eve, along with Adam, spoiled the unmitigated bliss of God’s original creation through their disobedience. But God was undaunted by this blight on his beautiful plan for the happiness of man, and he immediately promised a Redeemer. Yet this promise was not without a price. The woman and her offspring would be at unrelenting enmity with the serpent and its offspring (Gen. 3:15).

    Why does Jesus address Mary as “Woman” in the Gospel of John? It was an unusual, though not disrespectful, address of son to mother. In reality, the New Adam was addressing the New Eve; the Woman and her Offspring were about to crush the head of the serpent.

    St. John has invested the first two chapters of his Gospel with a theme of the “new creation.” “In the beginning” announced the first creation, as it does the Prologue of John’s Gospel. Seven days can be counted as Jesus prepares the first manifestation of his glory. The first creation (and the Old Covenant as well), still bearing the curse of the unredeemed, and hence unable to usher in salvation, is signified by Mary’s words: “They have no wine” (John 2:3). As the unique icon of the new creation, the New Eve is called “Woman” by the New Adam. The wine of the New Covenant will soon be poured out from his pierced side. Jesus’ first manifestation of his glory—making water wine—indicates that his hour had indeed begun, that the promised Redeemer had come to undo the curse. God was beginning to “recapitulate” (anakephalaiosasthai, Eph. 1:10) all things in Christ, through the gentle urging of his Mother.

    On Golgotha the New Eve, Mary, is the “bridal partner” of the New Adam, Jesus. Suspended between heaven and earth, he “loved the church and gave himself up for her . . . that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25, 27). Our Lady stands here for the whole Church, the Bride of Christ. She is at the same time Mother of all disciples whom Jesus loves. Her universal motherhood was publicly proclaimed from the Cross with the word which brings the first creation (Eden) and the anticipation of the “new creation” (Cana) to their climax: “Woman, behold your son!”

    Mary plays an important role in showing forth the inner unity of Cana and Calvary, a unity derived not only from the use of the term “woman,” but also from the term “hour.” The use of hora is obviously theological in John 2:4, but it may be objected that in 19:27 (“from that hour the disciple took her . . .”) it carries the ordinary temporal meaning. I think it is quite likely that John intended a theological meaning here as well. Since Jesus solemnly gave his Mother to the Beloved Disciple as his Mother at the moment of his “lifting up,” it is reasonable to think that John was careful about his use of the term “hour.” Before Jesus’ hour had come—an “hour” which transcended all time and space—Mary was the mother of Jesus only. But “from that hour,” i.e., the hour of his glorification which had now fully arrived, and because of that hour, Mary became the spiritual Mother of the whole Church as well.

    But the climax is not yet the conclusion. If the “woman” of Genesis and the “woman” of Cana find their fulfillment in the “woman” of Calvary, this is still but a beginning of the life of the Church, signified by the “woman” of the Apocalypse. In chapter 12, verse 1, is given the great sign of the “Woman clothed with the sun,” who manifests various signs of cosmic sovereignty as she prepares to give birth to the Messiah-King.

    There are several layers of interpretation to this great sign. On a literal and personal level, it is uncontestable that Mary is in fact the Mother of the Messiah, despite the attempts of some interpreters to eliminate all reference to the historical Mother of Jesus in this text. On the salvation-history level, the Woman represents the New Israel (12 stars in her crown = 12 tribes of Israel) giving birth in time to the Timeless One, the Fulfillment of all messianic prophecies. Jesus Christ, in all his mysteries, is the climax point of salvation history, to which all past events looked forward, and to which all future events must refer.

    From the perspective of biblical typology and theology, the Woman represents the Church of the New Covenant (now 12 stars = 12 apostles), both in its present struggle and its ultimate and glorious victory. The Church Militant is at war with the Red Dragon, but is specially protected by God. As Type of the Church, the role of the Woman also is interpreted on a spiritual and mystical level. The offspring of the Woman are “those who keep God’s commandments and bear witness to Jesus” (Rev. 12:17). Hence Mary is also personally Mother of the Church. Her heavenly state of the realized perfection of our redemption and salvation enables her to be the Church’s intercessor and protectress, as well as the mystical icon of its eschatological fulfillment.

The life and all the living

    It is important to note that in all the above-mentioned biblical events concerning the “woman,” the dimension of motherhood is present and inseparable. The woman of Genesis is the “mother of all the living.” At Cana (as well as throughout John’s Gospel), Mary is referred to by the evangelist as simply “the mother of Jesus,” though Jesus calls her “Woman.” The Mother of Jesus, present on Golgotha, is again called “Woman” by Jesus, but at the moment of the bestowal of spiritual motherhood/sonship, the evangelist simply calls her “the mother” (ten metera, te metri). Finally, the Woman clothed with the sun is not only described as the mother of the Messiah, but as the Mother of all the followers of Jesus.

    We come at last to the basis for Mary’s universal motherhood that draws its meaning from mysteries which precede the word of the Cross. In the Greek text of Genesis, it says that the first woman was named Zoe, “Life,” because she was the mother of all the living. “Eve” means the same thing in Hebrew, but here the Greek text translates the term into a proper name, rather than simply transliterating it (Eva) as it does elsewhere, and as is usually done for proper names.

    Paradoxically, “Zoe” brought death into the world through disobedience. The “New Zoe” brought the Life Himself into the world through obedience, and hence is the new and definitive “Mother of all the living.” Because Mary is the Mother of Jesus Christ the Life, she is the Mother of the living, that is, the Mother of all those who live with the life of Christ. We live because Jesus lives; we live because he is in the Father and we are in Jesus, and Jesus is in us (cf. John 14:19-20). “Without him nothing came to be. What came to be in him was life . . .” (John 1:3-4).

    Jesus’ word from the Cross made explicit what was implicit: the very fact that we have life because of Christ’s power to give life, and from his own life in us, makes us spiritual children of Mary. We cannot live in isolation from the mystery of Christ in us. In the light of grace we cannot conceive of ourselves as even existing independently of him. When we are baptized into Christ, the Holy Spirit takes what is Christ’s and communicates it to us (cf. John 16:14). His Father becomes our Father, and his Mother becomes our Mother as well.

    Thus, as Mother of Jesus and hence of those having life in him, and as type and figure of the Church which gives birth to children of God in Christ—who are begotten not by flesh or carnal desire but by God, i.e., by water and the Spirit—Mary is without doubt the spiritual Mother of every Christian, and in a wider sense, of every human being. Since everything that went before the Cross was summed up in it, and everything after the Cross draws life and meaning from it, Jesus took that opportunity to unite prophecy and its fulfillment. He united with it all future centuries of living Tradition concerning the Mother of God with the words: “Woman, behold your son . . . [Son], behold your Mother.”

The Mother of Life is still living and active today

    Today, the Mother of the Life, the Mother of all the living, addresses the “culture of death” with her witness to life and its sanctity. She has to watch through tears as her children of the present generation choose death instead of life and succumb increasingly to the primal temptation to “be like God” (Gen. 3:5), to decide who is to live and who is to die.

    The devil is “a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44), and as such is the constant adversary of the Mother of the living. He has been able, in significant measure due to the lukewarmness, indifference, and culpable ignorance of Christians, to enshrine the mentality and mechanisms of death in every “developed” country of the world.

    Even so, according to the mind and heart of her Lord, the Mother desires not the death of the sinner but that he repent and live. More deaths, even as a matter of just punishment, will not heal or transform the culture of death, or remove the sting of death from those who must endure its consequences. King David’s son Absalom was a traitor, and he plotted to kill his own father. David knew well his wickedness, yet when he heard of his execution by a heartless military commander, he could not rest contentedly in the accomplishment of justice. Rather, he wept, “My son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you, Absalom, my son, my son!” (1 Sam. 19:1). How much is David here a “man after God’s own heart” (1 Sam. 13:14)—God, who would not be content with strict justice but who out of love would send his only Son to die instead of us, that we might not perish in our wickedness but have everlasting life!

    The promise made to the first woman in Eden still holds and, though already fulfilled in the first coming of Christ, its ultimate manifestation is still to come. The words of the Woman at Cana still remind us that to “do whatever he tells us” is the only sure way to perceive the revelation of the glory of the Lord. Suffering at the foot of the Cross, the Woman received the word which still proclaims through the ages that we are her children. The victory of the glorified Woman is secure, yet destined still to be fully accomplished by the power of God, when the dragon and its infernal legions will be definitively sealed up in the “sea of fire.” Our grasp of the lessons of divine revelation, as well as our faithfulness to the Gospel and to the relentless call of our Mother to conversion, is literally a matter of life and death.

    The miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe gives visible expression to the “great sign” of the Woman clothed with the sun, witnessed by the seer of the Apocalypse. She is depicted in a position of power and authority over the symbols of the pagan gods to whom human sacrifices were repeatedly and mercilessly offered by the Aztecs. Today she is invoked as the Patroness of the unborn and of the sanctity of human life. And so her mission as Mother of Life, Mother of the living, continues: “Am I not here who am your Mother? . . . Am I not your fountain of life?” (Our Lady to Juan Diego, 1531).

    Only repentance, prayer, and sacrificial sufferings will bring about the necessary renewal of the face of the earth and the full realization of the promised victories. There is a woman named Julia Kim in Korea who has been chosen by God to witness, with her own body and soul, to the sanctity of life, and to be a living act of reparation for sins against life. She has often endured pains of childbirth and the sufferings of unborn babies being dismembered and torn from their mothers’ wombs. She has also experienced other mystical sufferings and extraordinary phenomena. Her statue of the Blessed Mother has wept tears and tears of blood over the inhuman cruelty of people who murder their children, who view them merely as obstacles to their own selfish pursuits. Without the heroic self-sacrifice of “victim-souls” like Julia Kim for the sake of the defense of life and for the salvation of souls, death’s “domino effect” would continue without restraint.

    As Mary’s children begin to wake up from the numbing sleep cast over the conscience of society by the mass media and other instruments of the “father of lies and murderer from the beginning”; as they begin to say “no” to the virtually uncontested enthronement of the evil one in our society, the heart of the New Eve will begin to be consoled. And, as a bit of grass can eventually split a sidewalk, the irresistible thrust of life will crack open and break through the heavy weight of death, unmasking the deceits produced in its shadow. Then the culture of death and ultimately death itself “shall be no more . . . for the former things have passed away . . . . Behold, I make all things new . . . .” It behooves us to believe in his promise of life, here and hereafter, “for these words are trustworthy and true” (Rev. 21:4-5).

Father Joseph is a monk of the Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Redwood Valley, Calif., a Byzantine-Ukrainian Catholic community. He was ordained a priest in 1991 and is currently the monastery guestmaster and econome. His last article in HPR appeared in January 1995.

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