From Archbishop Donoghue

Dear Friends in Christ,

If we are to understand even a part of the great mysteries revealed to us in the Gospels, in the life of our Lord, then we must attempt to do so from the divine perspective - the perspective from which He operated. We cannot consider only the events in themselves, but everything that preceded them, and everything that followed. We need to examine the culture, the background - or better, the prophecies that foretold and that illumine every event in the life of our Lord. And we need to consider the history of everything that has resulted from His words and actions - in other words - the history of our beloved Church, the record of how the Holy Spirit has lived and lives in our world.

And so, if we examine the events of today's Gospel with these rules in mind, it becomes easier for us to see the unparalleled chain of events that began with the moment described in today's Gospel. St. John recalls for us, perhaps the most moving incident of Christ's Passion - the moment when Mary, His mother, drew near to the Cross, to witness the death of her Son - to feel the pain which the prophet had promised her, those long thirty-three years before, when she had brought her new-born baby to the temple - to know now, with His dying words, the place God had prepared for her in the future.

At this moment, Mary became all those things that we revere in her person - our mother, our teacher, our model. And the becoming was not an isolated moment of instant transformation - it was the culmination of events preceding by long years, the Passion of our Lord - and it was, that moment of recognition from the Cross, a prophecy and promise of all that would be - all that we know of Mary, and all that will be known from now until the end of time.

For certainly, contained in this brief dialogue - "Woman, there is your son". . . and to the Apostle, "there is your mother. . . " - within these few words are to be heard the clear prophecy of the Church's future and the future of Mary's life with the Church. From the Cross - the threshold of eternity - Christ turns back a moment from His glorification - to gaze once more from the vantage of the pain He was suffering for them, upon the needs of His brothers and sisters - to feel once final time the terrible ache of human love - and to enunciate, as a dying command, the care that Mary would and does lavish upon the Church, and which try to return to her through our devotion and love.

"Woman, there is your son. . . " and behind these few words, so many more that we can imagine Ð ÒÉwoman, there now, in this apostle, and in all who will follow me, is my Spirit - for now, I will ascend to the Father - and if I am to walk upon the earth, it will be my Spirit at work in the person of my Apostles - and it will be my Spirit in the zeal of those who preach my Faith, and it will be my Spirit in the love of those who gather to eat my Body, and to keep the compassion of my soul alive in the world from this time on. And woman, these will be your children - and you their mother.Ó

Mary may have thought, at the foot of the Cross, but she did not need to repeat those words which had sprung from her lips so many years before, "Be it done unto meÉ" For when those words were spoken, God made her not only the Mother of His Son, but the Mother of all who find life in her Son. And thus, she became, she is, and she always was, our Mother.

And in the words to the beloved disciple John, "there is your mother," do we not hear the beginnings of the oldest of our devotions, the oldest recognition of our dependence upon the saints to help us from heaven - and above all, how we depend upon the highest and most exalted of the saints of God - Mary, the Blessed Mother, preserved from original sin, and raised bodily into Heaven, as a conduit for our prayers and supplications, and as a sign of what awaits all devoted followers of Jesus Christ after their earthly lives are over? And so, with this instruction to His beloved friend John, Christ also instructs us from the Cross, that Mary is the one to whom we must look for guidance - Mary is our teacher.

Who could be a better teacher, than the one who taught our Lord Himself? Remember when He stayed behind in Jerusalem, to converse with the elders in the Temple? - Remember when our Lady spoke to Him of her worry, saying, "Son, why have you done this to us? Your Father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety." Our Lord explained why to His Mother. But the Gospel also tells us what He learned that day - to return home, to be subject to the authority of His mother and His foster-father, and to grow in the ways of wisdom. Surely, at this moment before the dying Christ, and at this moment of the acceptance of Motherhood for the Church, Mary also speaks to us and says, "My children, I have been looking for you with great anxiety. Come home now, and learn from me, and grow in the ways of wisdom." And so, she is our teacher, our Mother-Teacher, and here in the Church, here in the home of our souls, we find the peace of good children, mindful children, who know they are doing what they should do.

Truly, brothers and sisters, the love we feel in our hearts, for Jesus and for His mother, and the love which we express for them, before one another, and before the unbelief of the world around us, - this love tells the truth of what is expressed in the few words that come from the dying Jesus - from the Lord, giving His life for us - and from Mary, His mother, the person He has appointed above all others, in Heaven and on earth, to pray for us - to "pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death." And thus, do we see that Mary, above any actions she may take, as mother or teacher - above any understanding we may bring to her from our meager knowledge and experience - above anything but the revelation of the Holy Spirit, do we see that Mary is the perfect model of what God wishes us to be, the model of what God will make us, if and when we find our way to Him in Heaven - immaculate in our being, a privilege she enjoyed from them moment of her conception, but something that we will have to suffer intensely to achieve, whether here or in the burnishing fires of Purgatory - and assumed into Heaven, a gift she was given at the time of her death, so strong was the affection of God, of Christ, of their Spirit, for the Mother - a gift for which we must wait upon the culmination of Creation, when the Judge, the Lord Jesus Christ, will separate the goats from the lambs, and take the lambs home with Him, to dwell, assumed in their risen flesh, into Heaven, for eternity.

In all these visions which were real and present in the life of Mary, and which spring up before us from the pages of the Gospel, we perceive the model of our destinies, if we remain, the children, the students and the vassals of God. For we perceive all the He gave to Mary, and all that through her, He gives to us.

And so, in a parallel trinity of love, we come to understand in the life of Mary, not just how she is our mother, not just what she teaches us, not just what a perfect model is her being Ð but we come to understand how much God loves us, and how much He does for us. For it was from His wisdom and love, that God created Mary Ð and gave us her, the second-most precious gift of Heaven, the Mother of that most precious gift, our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ.

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