Aurelio Porfiri
It is of great consolation to know that the Blessed Virgin Mary is the Mother of God and our Mother. She is our Mother who protects us and remains with us in the hour of our trials in life. She has another significant mission from heaven, apart from being our stronghold and strength.
The Virgin Mary helps us to contemplate the face of God. In one of his homilies in 2013, Benedict XVI stated: “For sacred Scripture, contemplating the face of God is the greatest happiness: ‘You gladden him with the joy of your face’” (Ps 21:7). From the contemplation of the face of God, joy, security and peace are born. But what does it concretely mean to contemplate the face of the Lord as it can be understood in the New Testament? It means knowing him directly, as much as possible in this life, through Jesus Christ, in whom he revealed himself. Enjoying the splendor of God’s face means penetrating the mystery of his name, manifested to us by Jesus; understanding something of his intimate life and his will so that we can live according to his plan of love for humanity. The apostle Paul expresses this in the second reading, taken from the Letter to the Galatians (4:4-7), speaking of the Spirit who, in the depths of our hearts, cries out: “Abba! Father!” It is the cry that flows from the contemplation of the true face of God, from the revelation of the mystery of the Name. Jesus says: “I have made your name known to men” (Jn 17:6). The Son of God made flesh made us know the Father, made us perceive in his visible human face the invisible face of the Father; through the gift of the Holy Spirit poured into our hearts, he made us know that in him we too are children of God, as St. Paul affirms in the passage we heard: “That you are children is proved by the fact that God sent into our hearts the Spirit of his son, who cries: ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal 4:6). This being linked to the Incarnation is a fundamental element of our faith.
Mary is Mother and Teacher, and she is the one we must look to always – to remember the foundations and mysteries of our faith. When we seem to lose balance, we look to Mary and seek in her the help we need.
(Image: PatriciaJ at pixabay.com)
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