On Being Children of Jesus and Mary.

 It was sad that the Year of the Eucharist was largely forgotten when we had the Pandemic.    Then we had the Year of St Joseph, still at a time when the corona virus was sweeping the country.   So what will it be like in England during the Year of Our Lady?   But maybe I am getting ahead of myself.   Was there to be a Year of Our Lady?   Or am I just one of those nasty 'traditionalists' who believe there should be?   Certainly when I organised the 'Rosary on the Coast' about two years ago, I found myself in difficulties which were challenging since 'paying for people from other Basingstoke parishes to go on a coach to pray to Mary was not received charitably by some.    Even giving talks on Mary after Mass was an affront to many.  And at a local ecumenical meeting someone who told of how she prayed to Mary was told off afterwards.   So Mary is very much an 'ecumenical matter'.

Yet how misinformed many Catholics are on Mary.   I have spent many hours on my blog quoting the early Fathers and how in response to Christ being called the New Adam, Mary was called the New Eve, and how they studied the writings of St John, and Jesus referring to her as 'mulier' and not 'mater', remember Genesis and how God spoke to the serpent 'I will put enmity (hostility) between thee and the mulier (woman)', and between thy seed and hers, she will crush your head and you will lie in wait for her heel'.    Not being a scripture scholar we could argue that it was 'his heel' and not 'her heel', but the truth is they both crushed the serpent.   She by her faithfulness to God and He by his very presence as the God-man.    It was at the Council of Ephesus that Mary was hailed not just as the Mother of the human Jesus but as the whole person the God-Man, she was, as processions after the Council acclaimed 'the Mother of God'.

Now I am not a scholar, I quote scholars and learn from them, as most ordinary Catholics should, but as I have said before Jesus still looks at his Mother in Heaven as his Mother, and she still looks on Jesus as her Son.   Mary was the one person who knew who he was, and indeed prepared him for the Cross.   She is special to Jesus, and before he was born, she told Elizabeth "From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed, for He that is mighty has done great things to me"    Indeed as the Early Fathers tell us 'unlike Eve who was born immaculate but sinned, Mary was born immaculate but kept faithful to God, with no sin on her.   Indeed it was impossible that Jesus could inherit from his mother our fallen human nature, so that is why she was born as, we would say today following the words of the Early Fathers, she is the Immaculate Conception.   And by consenting to born and raise Jesus, she played a small part in our Redemption. "Behold the Handmaid of the Lord be it done unto me according to Thy Word"   Without her consent Jesus could never have become fully man, taught his Gospel, and died on the Cross.   Should our ecumenical friends not be just a little bit grateful?

But are we children of Mary?    Certainly he proclaimed to St John in Scripture as her son, and told St John she was his Mother.    But was this just sentimentalism, a token gesture.    From the time of the Apostles the bread was consecrated and people were given the flesh of Jesus.   Indeed there was a group of people in the very early Church who would not receive the consecrated bread because as St Ignatius of Antioch revealed 'they did not believe the bread had changed into the flesh of Jesus'.   They were called Docetists.    But during that week in the upper room it seems the Apostles had unlocked the full meaning of what Jesus said in John 6, "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you cannot have life in you" when they had linked it to the Last Supper and were called to "Do this in memory of me"    Now Jesus was the Son of Mary who had no earthly Father, so his flesh was from the flesh of Mary.    So by eating this flesh at Mass we receive not just the flesh of Jesus, the New Adam, but this flesh also comes from Mary, the New Eve.   So at Holy Communion our flesh is joined to the flesh of Jesus and Mary, the New Adam, and the New Eve, and in a very positive sense we become the children of Jesus and Mary.    The flesh of Jesus makes all who receive it worthily brothers and sisters, children of Mary.   We become the family of Jesus and Mary.   He that is Mighty has done great things for us, and Blessed be His Name.