As the month of May — Mary’s month — comes to a close, our awareness of the Blessed Virgin’s significance in our own lives shouldn’t end with a time of the year. She is an example par excellence of living Christ’s gospel message, in every season and for every person.
The Mother of God enjoys many well deserved titles that aptly describe Her eternal role in salvation history: Gate of Heaven, Seat of Wisdom, Perpetual Help. But let me propose an additional title for meditation: Our Lady, The Faithful Initiator. This title emphasizes her willingness to lead the way, to initiate a role and serve as a model of holiness, always with the purpose of fulfilling the will of God and advancing Christ’s mission of the world’s redemption.
Our Lady has a way of starting things up, as evidenced throughout the Gospels. The sublime scene of the Archangel Gabriel appearing to young Mary of Nazareth leads to a response of complete self-donation as a pattern for us to imitate. The Faithful Initiator blazes a path for mankind’s generous answer to God’s call, weaving in the virtues of humility, trust and faithfulness to support our frequent lack of understanding. With her fiat, she answers for all of us throughout time, as we struggle to accept God’s will with fidelity. Then, from the moment Jesus is conceived in her womb, through the power of the Holy Spirit, Mary becomes the first tabernacle and unceasingly adores the Word Made Flesh. She initiates Eucharistic adoration.
Next, we find the Blessed Mother, filled with the gift of Christ, hurrying to the assistance of her cousin, Elizabeth, also with child. Long before the apostles traveled and preached the Good News, Mary did. She initiated missionary work. She responds to the Truth with a joy that compels her to bring the sacred gift to others, to spread the Word, to witness to Christ’s coming. She establishes the missionary tradition that is to become the hallmark of the Christian faith.
What a moment the Birth of Christ must have been for Mary and Joseph! Yet what does the new mother do? She makes Emmanuel immediately available to all who come to adore Him. Not just to family or close friends, but to poor, rough shepherds and foreign kings, to people of different faiths and no faith at all. This is Mary, the initiator of the role of the Church universal, the “Catholic” Church which cannot be confined by race or ethnicity but is available to all who come to adore the Christ Child, sinners and saints.
Later, when Mary and Joseph present Jesus at the Temple in accordance with the old covenant, the prophet Simeon foretells the fate of the Infant and His mother. She is told a sword will pierce her heart. Mary accepts her role as Co-Redemptrix and initiates the virtue of suffering alongside her Son for the sake of love, a role she would perfect at the foot of the cross and in the silent tomb.
An obvious example of Mary as the Faithful Initiator occurs at the wedding in Cana, where her gentle promptings result in Jesus’ first miracle and the beginning of His public ministry. The most enduring result of Mary’s actions here is her initiation of intercessory prayer. She teaches us to ask Christ for what we need, and her actions show clearly that she is our ally in prayer and in all of our needs. With her words, “Do whatever He tells you,” we find her motherly promptings leading to the fulfillment of all we require.
As Jesus, the High Priest, offers Himself upon the cross as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, Mary is there, suffering, praying, trusting, and participating in the Sacrifice at Calvary. She thereby initiates our faithful and wholehearted participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, showing us the unique opportunity we have for communion with her Son, a communion which defies natural laws and unites earth with heaven and time with eternity. Later, when she receives His lifeless body into her arms and presides over His burial, she is the initiator of the suffering Church, which looks with eyes of faith to the second coming of Christ.
Following the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, Mary initiates the first prayer cenacle in anticipation of the coming of the Holy Spirit. The apostles and disciples, still fearful of the authorities, and still not fully grasping Jesus’ words, flock to the Mother of God for guidance, for peace and for prayer, and she teaches them. Mary, already “full of grace” and the spouse of the Holy Spirit, nonetheless awaits the Paraclete’s arrival, setting an example for us to imitate.
Mary’s Assumption into heaven initiates the heavenly union of body and soul that awaits all of us who persevere in faith. As she is crowned Queen of Heaven, the faithful Handmaid of the Lord shows us the truth of God’s goodness and reality of our heavenly reward.
Of course, Our Lady’s role as the Faithful Initiator is always the direct action of the Father, who initiates all good and whose providence has brought about all of salvation history. But by creating Mary as the perfect receptacle of grace, God places in our midst a loving and tangible guide who forges a path for us to follow home.
