Mary, in Time and Eternity

The Assumption presents us with Mary mothering us, both in time and eternity. This is possible only because she is everywhere God is. Were that not true, she could not be on earth and in heaven. In the first reading we see Mary first of all in the eternal heavens: She is the “great sign that appears in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars”.

Then the image shifts, and we next see Mary with us on earth: “She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth”. Time and eternity intersected in her womb as she birthed Christ into our history, bringing the Father's Son into our world.  As Mother of the Church, she continues to birth us into the People of God, the Church, generation after generation, until the end of time, and into eternity. She does the in the face of all present and future dangers, all the suffering and evil we face while we journey through life towards God.

As the reading tells us: “the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth, to devour her child when she gave birth.” That child  is now every one of us born into time from the beginning of the world to its end.  Mary is the New Eve, the Mother of all the living, Mother on earth of the New Creation's beginnings and its cosmic fulfillment in the age to come.

When the Christ child “was caught up to God and his throne” where now in glory he “rules all nations with an iron rod”, “the woman herself fled into the desert where she had a place prepared  by God”.  Until the end of time, the Church remains under Christ’s and Mary’s protection as it wanders in the desert, this “valley of tears”.

Mother Mary remains with us, her children,  even as she reigns with her Son in glory.  His most precious possession, she was given to us by him before he died, when he also gave us to her. Christ told John “behold your mother”. And he told Mary: “behold your son”.  He did not also need to tell her that she is to love us as his precious gift to her. She knew the price he paid for us, and so cares for us with very love, intensity, and total devotion she poured out on him. Could she do less with the gift that cost her Son his life?

She mothers us now, we sinners,  part of the old creation groaning and struggling on the way to becoming the New Creation. Mary mothers us from both perspectives, that of the Resurrection in which she shares, and that of the Cross which she helps us carry.

She sees us from eternity and from time.  She rejoices with those of us in glory as she also helps us who are on the way.

She sees all of us in our individual, unique, lives, in our isolation and loneliness. She sees us in our timid, weak, and fearful attempts at communion with one another. She sees us growing in our identity as Church, as the Body of Christ her Son on earth. She also sees us as the New Israel, the Heavenly Jerusalem, participating in His Risen Life of Glory.

She sends us the graces we need on the way to become the New Jerusalem that her Son is transforming us into. She sees the interconnections between all our lives and destinies, as we grope to work them out, confusedly helping one another as we fall and rise on the way, and she sees our lives purified, perfected and fulfilled, as we celebrate the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb who was slain.

She walks with us in time, and she glories in the embrace of the triune God who holds time, cosmos, and his Church in his hands as we travel to him.

Mary is the living memory of the Church on earth and in glory. A mother never forgets the details of her children’s lives. Mary loves each child as the individual, unique person it is, and ponders her Son’s workings in that child’s life. She mediates his graces to each and every one of us and watches over us as we grow in the awareness of our new identity as Christ’s little ones and children of the Father.

She witnesses our many failures and falls as she mercifully inspires us to turn and return to him. She is the Mother of all grace, Mother of every yes we say to her Son, mother of our conversions and continued growth, mother of our repentance and contrition, mother of our on-going, inner purification and transformation, mother of our prayer and contemplation, mother of our spiritual life.

All of our lives, the life of every one of her children, is part of her living memory. She is the living memory of the Pilgrim Church and the Church  in glory. She is the live, divine history book, the repository and record of the all the Trinity’s actions and graces which brings her Son’s sheep into the one sheepfold of heaven. 

Mary is prototype and exemplar of all consecrated religious. Her motherly body that has birthed so many children into the kingdom is ever young and endlessly fruitful because of her consecrated viginity. Completely surrendered, body and soul, flesh and spirit, to God alone, He has used her as the infinitely fertile vessel of his Holy Spirit and the free-flowing channel of his graces to all mankind.