The First Disciple

With this month of September, as if taking a clue from the glorious Feast of the Assumption, the Marian Feasts appear. September 8th, the Birthday of Mary; the 12^th, the Holy Name of Mary; the 15^th, the Sorrows of Mary; the 24^th, the ancient feast of Our Lady of Ransom. The Marian tribute flows into October with the Feast of the Rosary on October 7. Why does the Church do this? Ask this of the readings…

Nestled in this Green Formation-in-DiscipleshipTime, what role does the Mother of Jesus play in the fostering of our own discipleship? In our own formation? In our own spirituality? In the life of the Church? Fear not that she will replace her Son in our lives. But don’t miss the fact that she is given to us as the model of our own formation in discipleship. We look to our mother to see what we shall be. We look to her to see how one becomes a true disciple.

Yes, she was conceived without the sin of Adam. The blood her Son would shed would intercept it…the blood she gave Him, because with God there is no time. And we? We will have an immaculate completion…freed at last from all sin by that same blood. Then there was the Virgin Birth…His body formed in her by the Spirit’s power in her DNA. And how else will you also give Christ to the world? How else does the Church give Christ to the world if not by a virgin birth? Mediatrix of all graces? The Sacred Humanity came from her, and that humanity was the sacrament of our saving. Is not your humble humanness, and that of the Church, the means of reaching out to others? And finally, in her Assumption, that humble God-bearing body becomes transformed by the very love that burned in her from Him. And you? What will your transfigured humanness look like, fed by His Risen Life in the Eucharist? Our mother shows us what discipleship looks like, and what it does to our humanness. She shows us what the Church will look like when the struggle is over, when there are no more tears.

 

Lovely Lady, dressed in blue, 

teach us how to pray…

God was just your little Boy, 

and you know the way.