Mary, Mother of Love
Psalm 140
Deliver me, O Lord, from evildoers; protect me from those who are violent, who plan evil things in their minds and stir up wars continually.
Surely the righteous shall give thanks to your name; the upright shall live in your presence.
The Rector Major’s words
Mary, Mother of Love, reminds us that Christian love does not erase humanity, but rather exalts it, bringing it to its fullness. We are accustomed to thinking of Mary as a superhuman being, immune to the seasons of the heart. Yet, as Don Tonino Bello reminds us, she too “experienced that splendid season of existence, made up of wonder and tears, of startled moments and doubts, of tenderness and trepidation, in which, as in a crystal goblet, all the scents of the universe seem to be distilled.”
Mary loved. She loved with the very flesh of which we are made. She loved Joseph — that righteous, quiet man who stood by her side without understanding everything, but trusting.
She loved with the care of a mother who notices when the wine runs out at Cana.
She loved with the anxiety of one who searches for three days for a lost son in the streets of Jerusalem.
She loved with the trembling of one who stands beneath a cross and can do nothing but remain there.
Yet her love never took the place of God: it reflected him. Like a well that draws from a deep vein of water – clear precisely because it lies underground -Mary’s earthly love is pure not in spite of her humanity, but through it.
Her love for Joseph, for her Son, and for the nascent community springs from the very same flame of love for God.
This tells us something crucial about genuine love: it is always directed outwards. It does not take up space, it does not crush, it does not sever. It respects. It sustains. It makes itself small to make room for the other. It knows how to stand beneath the cross without fleeing, it knows how to keep in silence the words it does not understand, it knows how to give without expecting to receive. Mary does not love in order to be loved: she loves because Love has taken up residence within her, and she has learnt not to hold it back.
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