Two women, as different as night and day: The first and the most blessed among women.
One represents original darkness and sin, while the other is original sinlessness and grace. One is old, while the other is new. One takes, while the other gives. One is entrapped by a web of lies, while the other breaks free with a courage born of her womb. One breaks God’s command, while the other embraces his Word.
What is it that makes Eve and Mary so different? Fundamentally the difference lies in their relationship to God. Eve chose her own way, while Mary chose God’s way.
If we choose to imitate Eve, we will be impressed with ourselves and we will obsess our accomplishments, our successes and our hopes and dreams. and our lives will be a never-ending search for self-sufficience.
If, however, we imitate Mary’s, our lives will be an endless striving for obedience to God’s will, a never-ending work of self-emptying and self-effacement. One way draws us in, and other draws us out, uniting us with Jesus, so that what we sing is not our glory, but his, not our will, but his, not me but God.
Which is why the Lord looks down from the Altar of the Cross at the one disciple who has not run away and says "Behold, your mother.” While he looks at his Blessed mother, the most blessed among women and says, "Woman, behold, your son.”
“And from that hour” the Apostle John took the Mother of God into his home. For from above their heads, there flowed blood and water from the side of their crucified Lord, so that the Church might be born Baptismal waters and the Precious Blood.
This is why, in promulgating the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Pope Paul VI declared Mary to be “the Most Holy Mother of the Church,” to which the Council Fathers spontaneously rose and applauded.
For, in the words of our beloved Pope emeritus, “Mary is so interwoven in the great mystery of the Church that she and the Church are inseparable, just as she and Christ are inseparable. Mary mirrors the Church, anticipates the Church in her person, and in all the turbulence that affects the suffering, struggling Church she always remains the Star of salvation.
“On this Feast Day, let us thank the Lord for the great sign of his goodness which he has given us in Mary, his Mother and the Mother of the Church. Let us pray to him to put Mary on our path like a light that also helps us to become a light and to carry this light into the nights of history.” (Pope Benedict XVI, 8 December 2005)
