Duty Calls, 'To Each One His Work': ἐξουσία

 

'Christ the Judge,' Fra Angelico, 1447.

Take heed, watch; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Watch therefore--for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning--lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Watch."

Mark 13:33-37 (RSVA)

W

hat is the meaning of our Lord’s injunction, “Watch,” “Stay awake,” “Keep alert,” “Be on guard,” all fitting translations? What do we actually have to do in order to heed this command to attentiveness, to awakefulness, alterness? Clearly it matters, our Lord is emphatic. He will return, both at our dying and the end of the world, and we will be found either ready and pleasing to Him, or asleep and displeasing, or any manner of imperfect degree in-between the two states.

 I briefly want to draw attention to one phrase: “and he put his servants in charge, each with his work”. In this single phrase we can draw something of the meaning of what it means to keep alert in the spiritual life. What it means to possess a soul that is awake, infused with the energy of grace, alert to spiritual snares, and attuned to the things of God.

 To translate the Greek more literally:

Watch, keep awake, for you know not when the time is. Like a man going on a journey, having left his house, and given his servants authority—to each one, his work.

 The Greek word for authority here is ἐξουσία (exousia). It is a broad term, and in New Testament usage denotes a sense of governing power, a delegated authority with full rights to exercise such authority by the one who granted it. Implied by the term is the fact that the one who has exousia has also the power, means and ability to carry out their charge.

 We are the Lord’s servants and He the Householder has left the House of the pilgrim Church in our charge. For some, this charge looks like four walls with screaming kids. For some, a parish congregation, or a religious community. For others, a pile of paperwork and fellow employees. For others, the care of patients, or students. We all have our domains to which we have been appointed and entrusted, in the words of our Lord in the Gospel: “to each one, his work”.

 The married man has his work. The married woman, hers. The priest his. The religious sister, hers. The monk, his. The widow, hers. The youth, theirs; and on top of this, we are all unique with different gifts, callings, charisms and jobs and/or tasks assigned to us.

 Every person that ever has been, or will be, has been given his work and will be judged accordingly—from every peasant and slave, to every king and pharaoh. There is no parent who will not be held accountable for their parenting, no priest who will not be held accountable for their ministry, no grown adult not held accountable for fulfilling the duties assigned to them. The same applies to peoples of any and no faith.

 Is the Householder harsh? Why would he judge us poor folks? Well, judgement is the means by which punishment is determined, it is true, but it’s also the only way of assigning appropriate reward. It is good to recall that our judge died for us, naked, humiliated, on the cross. So this judge will not be without perfect mercy. But mercy can only be perfect if it is true mercy, based on truth. The greatest truth being that God is Love and that this God has forgiven us in mercy. Should our judge find this splendid truth alive, awake in our hearts, and evidenced in the deeds we have done to our neighbours, then to the degree in which He finds it, to that degree shall He judge us favourably. As we read in James: “There will be judgement without mercy for those who have not been merciful themselves; but the merciful need have no fear of judgement.” (James 2:13).

 We Christians have it good (worse too, if we squander our spiritual-privilege). Baptised into Christ we are given an explicitly spiritual task on top of our temporal duties, such that they blend into one. Not to mention supernatural grace to help us live the life of grace. ‘To do what we gotta do.’ In baptism we are given the exousia, the power, authority and ability of Christ Himself, to live as Christians according to our state of life.

 Those who have received the power of the Holy Spirit in Confirmation have yet another advantage. This is the Sacrament of exousia, the Sacrament of holy anointing unto power. A Sacrament that gives vitality to the life of Christ received by the soul in baptism.

 What we must do in order to keep awake, alert and watchful is quite simple, even if in practice it is hard. It is to carry out the duties which God, and indirectly, life, has appointed to us; and to do all of these duties in accord with the greatest of all our duties. A duty that underlies, animates and gives purpose to them all: the duty to love. To love God, by doing all for his sake; and to love neighbour, because our Lord takes such love as done unto Himself.

 We don’t need anyone to tell us what our duties are.

 In our duties God’s Will for us is made blatantly obvious.

 The modern world, so ensnared by Satan, the original shirker of duty, hates the word duty. In other ages, and still present to some degree in our own age, the Devil can twist duty to become an end in itself, something done for vanity’s sake, social propriety, self-image, all cut off from love. The classic and revivalist stoic, although we can learn much from him, falls into this latter error. The sloth and the ‘liberated’ moral rebel falls into an opposite kind of error. All alike share one trait: they are spiritually asleep.

 We know our duties. We could write a list of them in our heads. Let us tend to these, each according to the priority of their moral weight, and the need of the moment, and let us do so as prayerful people. People who walk from Mass and the chapel, from rosary-beads in-hand and bedrooms, out into the field apportioned to us and to no other. Let us do, and do dutifully, complaints and fumbles, notwithstanding, but always in love.

 For we can do, do, do, but if we do not do in love, we do not do at all—we be mere sleepers walking. But if we do in love, we shall be awake and watchful, for the love of the Lord awakens the soul. Such love never sleeps, not even the sleep of the body can overcome it, nor the languor of our tired limbs and will.

 We read in the Song of Songs: “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it” (8:7).

 We could be impaired, locked-up, constrained in a straight-jacket, dosed-up on numbing agents, and thus outwardly prevented from doing any of our external duties, but should we still will the fulfillment of our duties in love, with eyes fixed on God who is our Exousia, our Power, and be thus joined to the secret and mystical work of the Crucified and Incarnate Christ operative within the Church and the world, then we are more active, watchful and awake than a whole army on amphetamines who serve some earthly exousia could ever be.

 This is a consolation, and not just to those deemed fit for nothing but euthanasia by the modern utilitarian world. For how sucky we are at doing our duties. Even if we tick the external boxes, how hard it is to get a full score for the overriding duty to love to the point of loving those who hate us.

 We could analyse our duty-fulfillment to the hills until the point we start to neglect our duties. So let us focus on doing what we can with what’s in front of us, repenting when we stuff-up, moving on, discerning, and acting again. Putting our faith not in our own doing, nor capacity to do—our own exousia—but in the Power, the Exouisa of He who is our strength and ability. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9).

 Our actions matter, “but the Lord looks on the heart” first (1 Sam 16:7). Before any action, comes the extent of our will to love and fulfil our duties. We must rouse ourselves to such love (Isa 64:7). Ask of God to expand the holy desires of our heart. To wed our will to His Will of perfect love. We won’t grow into His love if we don’t ask for it! Then, the will aligned in the right place, if genuinely aligned, will flow into dutiful action.

 Often the action falls short, not reflecting what we really wanted to do. That’s part of our weakness. We’re not perfect parents, priests, religious, nurses, or teachers. But Christ is, and a sleepless faith and love, that always wants to increase, and stands on the humility of repentant trust to get what it wants—the fulfilment of His Will—can make up with Christ’s Exousia for what we lack. 

 By faith, in love, we unearth in our baptised soul the riches of Christ, the Resurrection and the Life, the Awakener, the Living One, who has delegated us with tasks already accomplished and made perfect in Him. Already crucified, resurrected and glorified in Him. The mother will find in Christ all the perfection of the motherhood she lacks, the father, the father, the priest the priest etc. The Spirit, working to the extent we let faith and love reign in us, then weds our doings to the doings of Christ. 

 Thus, may it be so, as long as we still do what we can, the Householder will find us awake and ready, and when he returns, at our own mortal end, and the end of the age, we shall find a smile somewhere on that mighty face. Even better, may it be a big fat grin.

Life with the Trinity “There” on the Mountain, in the Garden, through the Blood

'The Trinity (Troitsa),' Andrei Rublev, 15th century.

THE LORD DESCENDED in a cloud and Moses stood there with him” (Ex 34:5). There? Where? On Mount Sinai. This is where Moses stood when the Lord revealed Himself in giving the commandments a second time. But where is “there” for us? That “place” and “space” upon which we too can encounter God? We don’t need to climb high to enter the craggy peaks of a lifeless mountain like Moses in order to encounter God, we need to enter the depths of a living Person, the One Who climbed down to us.

The first reading for Trinity Sunday (Year A) comes from the book of Exodus. In holy rage, Moses has destroyed the tablets of the law after witnessing the idolatry of his people. God calls Moses once again to the top of the mountain, commanding him to bring a new set of tablets. Moses ascends the mountain alone and there God reveals Himself as “a God of tenderness and compassion” (Ex 34:6). This is the context of our selected verse: “The Lord descended in a cloud and Moses stood there with him” (Ex 34:5).

The Hebrew places greater emphasis on the word translated “there” (שָׁם) which is placed at the end of the clause. At the same time seeming to highlight the preposition “with” and its attached pronominal suffix: “with him” (עִמּוֹ). In wooden English we could thus read: “The Lord descended in a cloud and Moses stood with him there.”

The first use of the adverb “there” (שָׁם) is in Genesis 2:8:

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east and He put the man there whom He had formed.

So far we have two places that constitute “there”. The “there” of the garden of Eden and the “there” of Mount Sinai. The “there” of the garden of Eden is descriptive of the beginning of man, the primordial start of humankind, our original creation. The “there” of Mount Sinai marks the beginning of the Old Covenant, the creation of God’s Holy Chosen People.

Adam had already received the living power of the breath of God before being placed in the garden (Gen 2:7-8). But it was “there” in the garden that Adam received his dual vocation “to till and keep” the garden, and to abide by God’s Will encapsulated in the command to eat freely of every tree in the garden, but to not eat from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:15-17). The commandment of God here is not simply negative. We often forget to notice that Adam is also positively commanded to eat freely of all that has been allotted to him. The “there” of the garden is the place where humanity is commissioned for a mission: to serve creation in love, above all in our fellow brothers and sisters, and to serve God.

So too with the “there” of Mount Sinai. Here Moses received the commandments of God, the vocation of especial holiness, and the covenantal promise of God’s abiding Presence. The “there” of the mountain is the place where humanity in the Nation of Israel is commissioned anew for the mission of loving God and neighbour, symbolised by the dual tablets of the law.

We have in Christ the New Adam and the New Moses, a fulfilment of both.

Jesus was crucified on Mount Calvary (“Calvary” from the Latin Calvariæ Locus, “Place of the Skull,” from the Aramaic Golgotha; Greek, Kranion Topos). John tells us that “in the place where he was crucified there was a garden” (19:41). In the “there” of Calvary we find a fulfillment of the “there” of Eden and the “there” of Mount Sinai.

By approaching Calvary, the Cross of Christ, the Crucified One, we receive the vocation of communion and the law of love in its full power, given as the Spirit and grace in place of stone tablets, flowing out to us as blood and water.

Here at the “there” of Calvary we receive our supreme vocation, our commissioning for a mission: to join together with Christ Crucified in death, so that we might join together with the risen Christ and live with Him in the unity of the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father.[1]

We apprehend this from the words of Christ: “If you want to follow me, take up your daily cross and follow me” (Lk 9:23) and “I pray that they all may be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us” (Jn 17:21). There is no other way to this Trinitarian life, admittance into this oneness between Father and Son in the Holy Spirit, except through Christ, and Christ Crucified. As Moses on Mount Sinai stood “there with him,” the Lord, it is in standing “there with him” on Mount Calvary that we become one “with him”—one with the Son, with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. In the words of St. Paul, “For if we have died together with him, we shall also live together with him” (2 Tim 2:11). And if we live together with Him Who is Son, we live together with Them Who are One.

Literally speaking, we find a garden and a mountain at Mount Calvary, but our “there” in which and by which we come to live in God is not a thing but a Person. Mount Calvary the place is only special because of Who we find “there”. It is not Mount Calvary that transports us into communion with the living God. It is Christ Jesus, the Son of God—He is our Garden, He is our Mountain, our “there” where we find God.

In an audience preceding the Angelus on Trinity Sunday St. Pope John Paul II invoked similar imagery (2003):

The Triune nature of God is the principal mystery of the Catholic faith. With it, we come to the end of the journey of revelation which Jesus fulfilled through his Incarnation, Passion, Death and Resurrection. From the summit of the "holy mountain" which is Christ, we contemplate the first and last horizon of the universe and of history: the Love of God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.[2]

By faith we climb the “holy mountain” who is Christ, entering upon the peak of God’s love for us made flesh in Him. We enter Christ our “holy mountain” when we put on the faith of the Church and repeat with our hearts, even more than with our lips: “I believe…” Credo.

We stand on lowly ground, stuck in the mire of our sins, incapable of rising to greater heights of righteousness because of our ineptitude. But by faith we enter Christ and rise with Him to the supreme heights of His Righteousness which He gives to us as our own (2 Cor 5:21). Established in this Righteousness of the Son we come to share in His right and perfect relation with the Father, and this right and perfect relation is none other than the Spirit of Righteousness (Rom 6:11).

On Mount Sinai God established His Chosen People as a Holy Nation, with the vocation to love Him with unique fervour. In Christ our “holy mountain” we have been spiritually established as the Chosen People, as the People of God, a Trinitarian People, a People reborn from the pierced side of Christ, as Eve was born from Adam’s side. We have been commissioned with the mission of loving God and neighbour, of serving the world in spite of itself, in loving enemies even unto death. We have been set apart in Christ our “holy mountain” to live in the world, but not of the world, to not become sucked-up into the fleshly, political, ideological modus operandi of the world’s inhabitants, but to live in the Spirit, the Modus Operandi of God’s Self. It is a mission to live again the life of the Son in the world, bringing the love of the Father to all, the love Who is the Spirit of Peace that binds all together (Eph 4:3).

In our summit Who is Christ we find the “holy garden”. Not where man was first created in flesh, but where man was first recreated in Spirit—the place of our rebirth. In Christ the “firstborn from the dead” we were reborn, in Christ we are being reborn, who we really are and were made to be is a mystery already fulfilled in Christ, through faith it is actualised in us, through love, it grows (Col 1:18; 1 Pet 1:23). “For [in Christ] you have died, and your life has been hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3).

As Adam was created and placed “there” in the garden of Eden to till it and watch over it, in the “holy garden” who is Christ, “there,” in Him, we were placed by the Father to live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).

To be placed in Christ is to be placed in the Church. For the Church is "Christ's body" (1 Cor 12:27). Thus in Christ our “holy garden” we have received the vocation to serve and watch over the garden of His Holy Body the Church. To cultivate the life of the Trinity within, and to watch in holy awe in contemplation beneath, in beatific vision above, and all in the Communion of the Saints.

The fruits of our “holy garden” are the infinite riches of Christ, the infinite sum of the merits of the Christus Totus (Christ the Head in union with all the Saints of His Body), which includes the fruits of the Holy Spirit. These fruits line the river that gushes in the Sacred Heart of Christ, borne upon the trees of His Saints that grow there (Jn 4:14; Ez 47; Rev 22). His Godhead is the true “river that flows out of Eden to water the garden” (Gen 2:10) of His humanity, and from whose pierced side the river of God’s abundant life divides, while remaining one, as it goes out to water the souls of God’s Holy People who open their hearts to receive this divine life (Jn 19:34; 10:10).

In Christ we hear repeated the call to eat freely from the trees of His garden. “Let my beloved come to his garden, and eat its choicest fruits” (Song 4:16c). Most importantly the command to eat the Fruit of His Paschal Sacrifice. “Take and eat; this is my body” (Mt 26:26). “Whoever eats this bread will live forever” (Jn 6:51). For this is the Fruit of the Tree of Life—Christ’s Holy Cross. Whoever puts forth his hand and eats from it will live forever (Gen 3:22). The hand is our will, our reaching, our faith-filled desire.

If we search the Scriptures to find the first use of the preposition “with” (עִם) we find ourselves in Genesis at the moment of the sin of Adam. Eve “took of its fruit and ate, and she gave to her husband also and he ate with her” (Gen 3:6). This was the forbidden pseudo-communion of sin, an unholy “communion” that fractured Trinitarian love of God and neighbour and self in man’s heart, and nourished only the self-love of the ego, the love of “I” cut off from “Other,” in the heart of fallen man.

To restore us to communion with the “Other,” to restore Trinitarian love in the heart of human beings, God in the Person of the Son instituted the Sacrament of His Body and Blood. A holy communion meal to undo what the unholy “communion” of our foreparents brought about. This “fruit of the vine and work of human hands” has become the Blood of the New Covenant, shed not at the foot of Mount Sinai from bulls and lambs, but shed on Mount Calvary from the Incarnate Son, the Lamb of God. Shed to wash us of the power of sin, to cleanse the “I” of its selfishness, and so enable us to enter the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, the Trinitarian banquet where the “many” are made “one” in the Three Who are One (Rev 7:14, 19:7; 1 Cor 10:17). A fulfillment of the prayer of Christ that the Father hears crying out from His Son’s Blood: “Father, forgive them… make them one, and make them one with us” (Gen 4:10; Lk 23:34; Jn 17).

What is the Blood of Christ but the life of Christ. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood. And I have given it to you,” says the Lord, “upon the altar to make atonement for your souls. For the blood,” the Blood of Christ, “it makes atonement for the soul” (Lev 17:11). “The cup of blessing that we bless,” writes Paul, “is it not a communion in the blood of Christ?” (1 Cor 10:16). To put the two verses together: 'The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a communion in the Life of Christ?'

What then does it mean to drink and partake of the Blood of Christ, but to drink His Life. The Life of Christ is not mortal, but immortal, not merely human, but divine. The Life of Christ is not His own, but He shares One Life with the Father in the Spirit. Their Life is One. The Trinitarian Life flows in the Blood of Christ. When we drink Christ’s Blood we drink the Mystery of the Holy Trinity, the Life of the Godhead. ‘The cup of blessing that we bless is it not a communion in the life of the Holy Trinity?’

Eve “took of its fruit and ate. She gave to her husband also and he ate with her” (Gen 3:6). Now instead of Eve, in holy reparation, in a sharing of Holy Communion, it is the Church who takes “the fruit of the vine,” transubstantiated into Christ’s Blood, and gives it to her children who suck from the overflowing abundance of her breasts, “carried upon her hip, and dandled upon her knees” (Is 66:11-12).

The Virgin Mary is the preeminent instrument of Holy Church. The Blood of Christ which Christ out-pours, which the Church receives and distributes, flows through the Virgin Mary from Christ the Head, as She once gave it to Him in the womb; and now the Church through Mary gives the Blood of Christ to Christ again, but this time to the members of His Body. The ministerial priests, in communion with the episcopate, like Adam in the garden of Eden, are the ones charged with cultivating this Holy Fruit of the Vine from above, and in safeguarding it. Having received it in persona Christi the New Adam, through Mary the New Eve, they are commissioned to share the Blood, the Life of God, with all the People of God.

Once we have received the Blood of Christ, the Life of the Holy Trinity, it is not as if it dissipates completely unless this Life is killed through mortal sin, and even then, the Life of Christ’s Blood is poured out anew in the Confessional. Since even when the accidents of the Body and Blood of Christ are gone from our bodily systems, through faith, by hope, the Life we have received in the form of bread and wine remains in our souls. The Life we receive from without is already within. The Life already in us is thus nurtured by our communion with His Blood so that His Life in us increases. Life receiving Life.

Faith can even reach for the Cup of the Lord when it remains beyond our sensory grasp. The martyrs did not receive viaticum from a priest before they died, and yet, their final breath was a draught from the Blood of the Son of God, from the wellspring of Life Itself. This privilege is not reserved to the martyrs alone but to all the faithful in the secret sanctuary of the heart where only God ministers. There are no obstacles to the one who has been placed “there” in Christ the “holy mountain,” the “holy garden.” “Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life” (Rev 22:17). The invitation is explicit. Faith makes present the Life of God to be possessed, hope takes possession, and love is the power that possesses this Life and makes one possessed by It.

“The Lord descended in a cloud and Moses stood there with him” (Ex 34:5).

“And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east and He put the man there whom He had formed” (Gen 2:8).

Our “there” is Christ, we have been put “there” by the Father, placed into His Son to share His Life. In this Life of the Son we encounter not a solitary life but a Holy Communion. We live this Life “in a cloud,” that is, through faith, without the capacity to see clearly the Trinity whose Life we share. 

Nevertheless, in Christ we discover the Loving Father who has placed us “there” in Him, His Son, and we discover this by Their Same Spirit, for “the Spirit is the witness, because the Spirit is the truth” (1 Jn 5:7), and this Spirit sent into our hearts makes us cry out “Abba, Father” just as it makes us acknowledge at once that Christ Jesus is His Only-Begotten Son (Gal 4:6; Rom 8:15; 1 Jn 4:2).  The “holy mountain” of the Son, the “holy garden” of Christ our Lord, is “there” “where” we receive this Spirit from the Father, the Spirit who brings His Relatio to us in the form of a vocatio amoris, a vocation of love, to be one “with Him” who is Three Persons in One God. To join the Life of the Loving Father, with the Beloved Son, in the Holy Spirit - Who is Their One Love, Their One Life.

“What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity” in this life, when lived apart from the Life of the Triune God (Ecc 1:1-2).

‘What does man gain by all the toil of Christ at which He toiled under the beam of the Cross?’ “Wonder of wonders, says the Preacher, wonder of wonders! All is wonder” in this life when lived in God the Son, for the Father, in the Holy Spirit—Their Communion of Love and Life.

The testimony of the Son is sure. “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mk 11:24) and “How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (Lk 11:13), a share in the Life of the Triune God to those who ask Him?

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[1] Lumen Gentium, 39-41; see also CCC 201.

[2] John Paul II, Angelus Audience, Solemnity of the Blessed Trinity, 15 June 2003, http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/angelus/2003/documents/hf_jp-ii_ang_20030615.html

Mary - Mother, Sister and Midwife

 This article focuses on the vocation of motherhood and womanhood (looking also at fatherhood and manhood), in light of Mary's role as Mother, Sister and Midwife, drawing on the Visitation account.

"Visitation," at the Museo Matris Domini, 1320-30, Wikicommons.

WHEN MARY was visited by the Archangel Gabriel, receiving the revelation and the concrete realisation of her motherhood of the Word, she was also informed about the pregnancy of her cousin Elizabeth. We read that she went “with haste,” animated by zealous sisterly charity, to help in the preparation for the birth of the Baptist.

Luke tells us that Elizabeth “was advanced in years,” “in her old age,” thus at the very least comfortably past the years of fertility (Lk 1:7,36). This explains why Zechariah her husband doubted the news when Gabriel told it to him. Elizabeth was not just barren (1:7) but had gone through menopause.

Mary’s visitation to Elizabeth is animated by a desire to assist a fellow sister in the Semitic sense, and faithfully fulfils the cultural norm whereby a woman relation would help another in the role of moral support and midwife, even if Mary might not have been the only one. Mary’s haste in going to visit Elizabeth is likely motivated in part by the added need of Elizabeth for help. After all, Elizabeth is “in her old age”. Old age plus pregnancy equals a lot of support needed!

The gift of Mary’s motherhood was realised once she pronounced “Yes” to the proposal to conceive the Word by the Holy Spirit. The fact that in the same revelation whereby Mary received the gift of her motherhood that the secret motherhood of Elizabeth is also revealed, teaches us something about the gift of motherhood. This in addition to the interconnected revelations of Zechariah and Joseph concerning their respective paternity. Motherhood does not exist in isolation. Like any vocation, it is not an individualistic vocation, it is not something merely bestowed upon an individual woman. Motherhood is intrinsically relational. It includes not just the bond between mother and child—the child the simultaneous fruit and source of motherhood; a relational horizon to which modern society often reduces motherhood to; but it also includes the bond between husband and wife, father and child, and the trinal dynamic between all three.

According to the natural order and ideal ordained by God, a wife receives the gift of motherhood from her husband, in the same very act in which she receives that part of the life needed to form the child in her womb. Alas, this can sound shocking to modern ears! A secular blasphemy against the individualistic and reductionist view of motherhood. But hang on… in turn, the wife gives to her husband the gift of his fatherhood. In this view no one can claim their maternity nor paternity as a self-created phenomenon that exists outside of relationality and the integral complementarity between the sexes. Thus neither maternity or paternity are brought into existence with warring rights, as though ordered toward hostility against one another as the cultural Marxist narrative would have us believe, but rather, with a shared and common responsibly, with shared and common rights, and a shared dignity resting on a single foundation.

Motherhood is given to woman by God, through man, and fatherhood is given to man by God, through woman. The perfect objective exercise of these parental vocations depends upon the loving cooperation between both parties, relying on the gratitude of man for woman, and woman for man, honed-in as such gratitude is on a concrete “wife” and “husband” and on the fruit of their union—the child.

In Mary’s instance the physical agency of man was substituted with the moral agency of Joseph, God working super-naturally, beyond the natural order. In Elizabeth’s, and all other mothers’ instance, the physical agency of a man is involved.

We live in a fallen world. Thus, unfortunately, without there being any place for us to judge, things do not always go according to the natural design nor does reproduction always transpire in a context of love, but sometimes in fractured relations, the laboratory, or through sexual violence. Then there's simply instances of one parent dying prematurely. In all such cases the perfect objective exercise of motherhood and fatherhood cannot be realised, and instead, a perfect subjective exercise of either vocation remains possible, with or without mutual cooperation between natural parents, but the exercise of either a mother or a father will not attain relative perfection if hatred and resentment abides between the parents of a child and/or of one sex against the other.

Only the rock of love and forgiveness serves as a stable foundation for a relationship, including the relation between mother and child, father and child. To build such a relation on envy and bitterness against anyone, especially of a mother against the father of her child, and a father against the mother of his child, even when humanly justified, will only be to build one’s relationship with their child on sand. The child will grow insecure, since a parent’s love, if poisoned by a lack of forgiveness, cannot be fortified by God’s love which can only enter in power within a forgiving heart.

Nevertheless, through the mystery of the Crucified Christ the absence of one parent’s love or even both, can serve as wounds through which a child can grow in receptivity to the love of God as Father who pours out His love in the full maternal and paternal power of His Spirit. Ideally however, the love of two parents, a mother and a father, nurtures a child and through natural parallels disposes their child to the higher and supreme love of God.

However, motherhood does not exist in the vacuum of the nuclear family. Of course, the “nuclear family” consisting of the trinal relational of mother, father and child, is its sanctuary, but just like the temple of old, the sanctuary formed only a part of the temple, the main part, but not the only part.

As mentioned previously, Mary’s motherhood was revealed to her simultaneous to Elizabeth’s motherhood. This reveals to us that the vocation of motherhood (the same with fatherhood, but we’ll focus on motherhood here) is intrinsically shared: first with God, the Maker of all things, and secondly, with fellow women who are mothers. The motherhood of one woman is intrinsically ordered towards a communis sororitas, a common sisterhood, a sisterly communion, what could also be called a communio matrum, the communion of mothers. Such a communion is of course not divorced from the Communio Sanctorum, the Communion of Saints, nor is it somehow separated from or at odds with the unique sub-communion/s between men, but simply describes a sub-communion, a special shared relation between those called to motherhood—and all woman are, at least spiritually, if not, physically.

Indeed, the Body of Christ is One, and there is one Communio, but this does not take away from the unique and distinct relations, communiones, friendships if you will, that abide between various members of this Body, who while all One, are also many. Each member of Christ’s Body shares in unique relations with each and every other member of this Body and some of these relations can be grouped and are likewise shared with others. The martyrs share a unique small “c” communio with other martyrs. The holy virgins with their fellow virgins. Priests with their fellow priests. Those who are mothers with other mothers, and so on. These communiones are concrete relational horizons of participation in the Communion of Saints, and since each communio is part of a concrete participation in the Communion of Saints, it is not something that must wait for heaven. It is a reality within our mortal lives too, integral to our identity and vocation. We must seek it out, and nurture such fellowships in order to grow as persons.

Thus, without denigrating the fraternity between men and women, men should also seek fellowship with other men, fathers with other fathers; and women should seek fellowship with other women, mothers with other mothers. This is how we are strengthened to grow as the men and women, fathers and mothers (physical and/or spiritual), we are called to be.

As Mary came to Elizabeth’s aid so too Mary comes to each woman’s aid to help her live out her maternal office. Mary comes to mothers to help them be mothers after God’s own heart. To become both mothers and saints.

Mary comes to all women, perhaps yet to have their natural vocation to motherhood fulfilled, or who have been called to fulfil it only spiritually along the path of consecrated religious life or in a single life of godly dedication or in a marriage stuck with the heavy cross of infertility.

Mary is there for every woman. Yes, Mary is there for every person, every human being, man or woman. But human beings do not exist in the abstract (although, human nature as a universal does exist in the mind of God), instead, in concrete reality, human beings exist as either men or women. “Male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). Even those born with intersex organs or who are confused about their biological sex are either one or the other (pastoral care, patience and sensitivity are needed to help guide such persons towards a direction of understanding their own innate, natural and God-appointed sex). Thus, just as Mary comes to each man as a woman coming to assist a man; Mary comes to a woman as a woman coming to a woman, as a Mother coming to a mother. She comes as a sister to work alongside her sister to help her love the Lord Jesus and to raise children in the faith—whether biological children, or other souls. Mary comes as a midwife to help each woman in her time of pregnancy and birth, but more importantly, to help each woman in giving birth to the love of Christ in the world, in each woman’s home, family, workplace and community. Mary wants to teach each woman the art of nurturing love in the hearts of men. From their fathers, to their husbands, to their sons, and in all souls, male or female, nurturing such love through a life of service and prayer.

Both Mary and Elizabeth shared peculiar circumstances. The gift of their motherhood was given in unusual contexts. Mary was a virgin, her motherhood was substantially a divine gift, and its existence was precarious in view of the misunderstanding of human minds. Thus, Joseph was appointed to veil the gift of Mary’s unique motherhood, to help it grow freely in hiddenness.

Elizabeth on the other hand was a barren woman past the age of child rearing, and yet beyond the dictates of nature she received the gift of motherhood, having to struggle with the difficulty and nuances "old age" brings to such a vocation.

Throughout the Old Testament we come across various mothers whose motherhood was intricately tied to suffering and difficulty. We need only think of the matriarchs, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah. All these suffered with barrenness, and each in their turn was healed and brought forth offspring. Elizabeth shared literally in the lot of her maternal forbears, and Mary too in respect to relying on the miraculous intervention of God the Father, working through the Holy Spirit, in the Person of the God the Son.

Then there’s Eve. Eve suffered the loss of a son, the innocent and righteous Abel. Mary too suffered the loss of her Son, the Righteous and Innocent One.

All the matriarchs, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah, including Eve, all these also suffered the maternal pain of experiencing divisions between their biological and/or legal children. Cain against Abel, the descendants of Cain against Shem’s, the tension between Isaac and Ishmael, the animosity of Esau against Jacob, of the sons of Leah against each other, and above all against Joseph, the son of Leah.

Mary too suffers the maternal pain of seeing her children at odds with one another. The world is not a peaceful place, and the division that fractures the communion of Christians from the Catholic Church, and the internal divisions on top of that, breaks Mary’s heart as a Mother.

There is no experience of any mother, any woman, that at its core, Mary has not suffered. She suffers in communion, in solidarity, with every man as a woman, as a fellow human being, and so too with every woman as a fellow human being, a fellow woman.

Whoever we are, man or woman, Mary comes as Mother, Sister and Midwife. The way a woman shares with Mary, and receives God’s grace through Mary, according to these three aspects will be a little different to how a man does so, paralleling the different role Elizabeth played compared to Joseph or to Zechariah, and vice versa, in the visitation narrative.

Regardless, we are all called to invite Mary into our hearts, homes and lives, and she will come. Not that she isn’t already present, but how much more actively can Mary fulfil her God-appointed role in our lives if we let her and ask her to.

Whatever the difficulties of our lives, no matter whether we are male or female, called to be mothers or fathers, called to live this vocation out naturally and supernaturally, or only supernaturally, if we welcome Mary into our lives, as God so wants us to, we will come to enter into the joy of the One whom Mary infallibly brings—Christ the Lord. It is God who sent Mary to Elizabeth through her conviction of love of neighbour, and it is God who sends Mary to us through the conviction of her love for us. In turn, Mary brings the one who sent her, even as the one who sends her already abides in us.

Those who call upon Mary, in vocal prayer or in the silence of their heart, can be confident that Mary and the fruit of her womb is with them in a special way, and so too her hidden spouse, St. Joseph, all three mediating and witnessing to the presence of the Holy Trinity.

For those who pray the Rosary, the Rosary is as it were, a sign of the umbilical cord that ties the child to its Mother, a bracelet shared between siblings, the hand of a help-maid. Those who pray the Rosary are nourished by Mary as Mother, accompanied by Mary as Sister, and strengthened by Mary as Midwife in enduring the labour pangs of the cross, appointed to every Christian. 

However we do so, those who call on Mary, whether they feel Mary’s maternal presence or not (because the reality is, she is there), can exclaim in faith:

“And why is this granted me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy.” (Lk 1:43-44).

Yes, man or woman, male or female, a pregnant woman or not, all Christians share in the blessing of bearing the life of Jesus in the womb of the heart, and this babe leaps for joy, sanctifies and consoles, and increases in stature within the soul that calls on the name of Mary and opens their heart to her maternal love.