Mary Most Holy Mother of God
Readings: Nm 6:22-27; Gal 4:4-7; Lk 2:16-21
The Church makes us inaugurate the year by contemplating Mary, Mother of God. And I want to do so with you in the words of a beautiful prayer by Bishop Tonino Bello, whose cause for beatification is underway, and which really frames Mary’s holiness and richness. It is entitled “Mary, Woman of Service.”
“It may sound irreverent. And some will even smell sacrilege. I am not sure if it is because of the impression of seeing such a poor appellation attributed to the Queen of Angels and Saints, or because of the lack of consideration for the category of those who earn their bread by toiling in other people’s homes….
Yet, that appellation, Mary 1 chose for herself. Twice, in fact, in Luke’s Gospel, she calls herself a servant. The first time, when, responding to the angel, she offers him her calling card, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.” The second, when in the Magnificat she states that God “has looked upon the humility of his handmaid.”
Woman of service, then. In her own right. A title that she carries incorporated by birthright, and to which she seems to jealously cherish as to an ancient noble coat of arms. Was she or was she not, if not quite descended like Joseph, at least involved with “the house of David his servant”? A title that, by a kind of mirror symmetry, causes her to recognize at a stroke an equal professional qualification in old Simeon, and induces her to deliver the child Jesus into the arms of that “servant,” who can now, at last, leave in peace.
A title that, during the banquet at Cana, since we understand each other better among colleagues, authorizes her to address “the servants” with those words that, having remained a demanding delivery for us as well, sound like an invitation to go and join all of us to the same union: “Do whatever he tells you…”
Yet, that appellation, so self-referenced, has no place in the Lauretan litanies! Perhaps because, even in the Church, despite the much talk about it, the idea of service evokes specters of awe, alludes to downgrades of dignity, and implies declines in rank, which seem incompatible with the prestige of the Mother of God. Which makes one suspect that even the Virgin’s diakonia has remained an ornamental concept that intrudes on our sighs, and not an operative principle that innervates our existence.
Holy Mary, servant of the Lord, who gave herself body and soul to him, and entered his household as a family collaborator in his work of salvation, a truly equal woman, whom grace introduced into the Trinitarian intimacy and made a treasure chest of divine confidences, a servant of the Kingdom, who interpreted service not as a reduction of freedom but as irreversible belonging to God’s lineage, we ask you to admit us to the school of that permanent diaconate of which you have been our unparalleled teacher.
Unlike you, we struggle to place ourselves in God’s dependence… And the solemn assertion that serving God means reigning does not persuade us much.
Holy Mary, servant of the Word, servant to such an extent that, besides hearing and keeping it, you received it incarnate in Christ, help us to put Jesus at the center of our lives. Let us experience its secret suggestions. Give us a hand that we may know how to be faithful to him to the end. Give us the blessedness of those servants whom he, returning in the middle of the night, will find still awake, and whom, after girding their garments, he himself will cause to be placed at the table and pass on to serve.
Make the Gospel the inspiring norm of our every daily choice. Preserve us from the temptation to discount his exacting demands. Make us capable of joyful obedience. And put, at last, wings on our feet that we may render to the Word the missionary service of proclamation, to the ends of the earth. Holy Mary, handmaid of the world, who, immediately after declaring herself handmaid of God, ran to make herself handmaid of Elizabeth, confer on our steps the thoughtful haste with which you reached the city of Judah, symbol of that world before which the Church is called to gird her apron. Restore cadences of gratuity to our service so often contaminated by the dross of subservience. And grant that the shadows of power may never stretch over our offertories.
You who have experienced the tribulations of the poor, help us to make our lives available to them, with the discreet gestures of silence and not the commercials of protagonism. Make us aware that, under the disguise of the weary and oppressed, hides the King. Open our hearts to the sufferings of our brothers and sisters. And that we may be ready to intuit their needs, give us eyes swollen with tenderness and hope. The eyes that you had, that day. At Cana of Galilee.”