In this section you can find a daily commentary on the Gospel of the Day.

Wednesday 15 September 2021

Our Lady of Sorrows

Word for today
The Gospel of John 19:25-27

Much more than this

In excruciating pain and with His last remaining strength before He suffocated to death, Jesus opened His mouth and spoke His last words placing his mother in John's care. From that moment the apostle would be her son and she would be his mother. Jesus entrusted John’s life, his history and his protection to Mary and with him all of God's children on their earthly journey so that human beings, thanks to Mary, would never be alone, would always be accompanied, cared for and loved, and much more than this. Jesus calls His mother Mary to be forever the mother and co-redeemer of mankind in the history of salvation, and much more than this. Jesus gives us Mary as the Queen of Heaven and earth, because she will crush the head of the Evil one and she will drive him, his servants, and his angels to the lake of fire, and much more than this. Jesus gives us Mary who will act as the defense lawyer par excellence for all human prayers and invocations, as our noble and sublime leader, as our tender mother, powerful against evil, and much more than this. Jesus gives us Mary as the mother of the community of believers,  a safe bridge to heaven, a generous and unsurpassed waterfall pouring the gifts of the Holy Spirit on all mankind, a bright beacon for our earthly journey, and much more than this. Jesus, on the cross, with his last words, did all this, and much more than this. Jesus, to whom God the Father gave all authority on heaven and on earth, before His death on the cross he performed a creative act beside which creation itself fades. God the Father and the Paraclete had been waiting since creation itself for that day when the Son Jesus, from the throne of the cross, would recreate everything and make all things new saying: Woman, behold, your son (...) Behold, your mother. It was as if the universe had been created again. In that moment Jesus did not ask Mary or John, He simply did it, he created it. From that moment on Mary is the true mother of all God's children forever, even of those who had lived before Jesus' death on the cross, and not only symbolically. From that moment on Mary will never, ever, say, under any circumstances, for any reason, referring to any man or woman on earth, s/he is not my son, I do not know him/her.
From that moment on, John and all mankind throughout history have only one mother, Mary, and not only symbolically. From that moment on John will never, ever, ever say, under any circumstances, for any reason, consciously or not, she is not my mother, I do not know her. The creative sound of Jesus's Word created a bond that did not exist before, a definitive, invincible extraordinarily invigorating pacifying link between Mary and mankind, between mankind and Mary.
The amazingly extraordinary nature of that link is that it is an unbreakable bond between created creatures, not between a creature and the Creator. In the name of the divine absolute respect for man's freedom and his free choice, Jesus would never have established a similar link between Himself and men a priori, as a creative act, as a given fact. From that time on even if a man does not believe in and does not recognize God, he/she is already firmly connected and united to Him forever thanks to Mary.
That bond, created by Jesus on the cross, as He breathed his last, made Satan go crazy. Satan knew that he could not defeat Jesus, that he could not keep him locked up in the tomb, he knew perfectly well that it was impossible to convince Jesus not to forgive everyone for all the evil they were doing to Him. He had no doubt that even after Jesus he would still be able to deceive and win over numerous souls, but he could never have imagined what Jesus invented on the cross. Not an unbreakable bond between God and man, because it is a bond that man must choose out of love, but an unbreakable bond between creatures, between Maria and mankind which does not violate any divine law about human freedom and free will. It is not a constraint, it is the creation. Because of God's creative act the Sun cannot say to the earth, this is not my earth, and the Earth cannot say to the sun, this is not my sun. Mankind, thanks to Mary, is forever united to God.
By prompting men to kill Jesus on the cross, Satan thought he would be able to detach humanity from God and God from mankind. Indeed, from Jesus' dying heart and the sound of His last word, a bond of love and tenderness was created between Mary and mankind and between mankind and Mary which will never be defeated by division and separation. Mary's supreme power is born out of Jesus' creative act and one day, only with the pressure of her heel, she will crush forever the head of the fallen angel, the Evil great divider.

Holiest Mary, Queen of Peace, Mother of all men,
we offer and consecrate our whole person and all of our life.
We consecrate ourselves to you for love and to love.
We entrust ourselves to your maternal care and to your protection,
so that you can fill our hearts with the gifts and the power of the Spirit,
and so that our hearts can be useful to our Lord Jesus,
according to will of God the Father.
Amen