by
Damien
F. Mackey
“The Marian dimension of the life of a disciple of Christ is expressed
in a special way precisely through this filial entrusting to the Mother of
Christ, which began with the testament of the Redeemer on Golgotha. Entrusting
himself to Mary in a filial manner, the Christian, like the Apostle John,
"welcomes" the Mother of Christ "into his own home"130 and
brings her into everything that makes up his inner life, that is to say into
his human and Christian "I": he "took her to his own home”."
Pope John Paul II:
“Redemptoris Mater”
(# 45)
Just possibly, John Paul II may have picked up this
phrase, “The Marian Dimension”, from a one-time mentor of mine, Frits Albers,
who used the description twice in titles of books that he wrote, one of which
was apparently part of the Offertory at the pope’s Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne (Australia) in 1986. Frits’s book, The Marian Dimension in the Apocalypse of St.
John (1982) preceded John
Paul II’s sixth encyclical letter, Redemptoris
Mater (1987), by some 5 years.
Frits Albers, philosopher and maths
teacher, was an extraordinary and controversial character, who studied for ten
years to become a Jesuit at the Catholic University of Nijmegen in Holland. He claimed to have lost
his vocation, but never his faith, and he blamed his loss of vocation on the
teachings of Father Teilhard de Chardin that were rampant at the time. Moving
later to Geelong in Victoria (Australia), Frits married and he and his wife together
had ten children.
Frits was a relentless warrior in defence
of the Catholic Faith, and launched many broadsides against de Chardin. Some of
it must have rubbed off on me. See my:
Pope John Paul II makes another mention
of “the Marian dimension” in the same part of his encyclical, when writing:
It can be
said that motherhood "in the order of grace" preserves the analogy
with what "in the order of nature" characterizes the union between
mother and child. In the light of this fact it becomes easier to understand why
in Christ's testament on Golgotha his Mother's new motherhood is expressed in
the singular, in reference to one man: "Behold your son."
lt can also
be said that these same words fully show the reason for the Marian dimension of
the life of Christ's disciples. This is true not only of John, who at that hour
stood at the foot of the Cross together with his Master's Mother, but it is also
true of every disciple of Christ, of every Christian. The Redeemer entrusts his
mother to the disciple, and at the same time he gives her to him as his mother.
Mary's motherhood, which becomes man's inheritance, is a gift: a gift which
Christ himself makes personally to every individual. The Redeemer entrusts Mary
to John because he entrusts John to Mary. At the foot of the Cross there begins
that special entrusting of humanity to the Mother of Christ, which in the
history of the Church has been practiced and expressed in different ways. The
same Apostle and Evangelist, after reporting the words addressed by Jesus on
the Cross to his Mother and to himself, adds: "And from that hour the
disciple took her to his own home" (Jn. 19:27). This statement certainly
means that the role of son was attributed to the disciple and that he assumed
responsibility for the Mother of his beloved Master. And since Mary was given
as a mother to him personally, the statement indicates, even though indirectly,
everything expressed by the intimate relationship of a child with its mother.
And all of this can be included in the word "entrusting." Such
entrusting is the response to a person's love, and in particular to the love of
a mother.
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