This text was copied from https://www.de-vrouwe.info/
May 21, 2016
Dear sisters, dear brothers!
One of the most used and most often misused words
is love. Love seeks proximity to man, not with noble or academic distance, but
rather love wants to be in the middle, between men. In Latin, to be between is
“inter-esse”, or interest. Interest is therefore another word for love. The
Word of God, the Eternal Son, went forth from the blessed communion of the Most
Holy Trinity and has dwelt among us in the world. This is because God has a
burning interest in us. The first and most important coworker in this going-forth
was Mary. Since God is love, God truly took Mary into the middle of this act
and interested her in living between heaven and earth. As we profess in the
Creed, the Word was made flesh by the Holy Spirit through Mary, the virgin. God
is so interested in man that He has taken Mary into His interest. She answered,
“I am the handmaid of the Lord” (Lk 1:38). In the parable of the good
Samaritan, Mary becomes visible in the form of this merciful man. There, the
priest and the Levite pass by the man who has been attacked by robbers. They
had no interest in him. Yet the Samaritan stopped. He bent down to the one who
had been robbed and poured oil upon his wounds because that person was
interesting to him. In Mary, God also gave such a merciful Samaritan to the
world. She stops and bends down to pour oil on the wounds of everyone who has
been attacked by robbers.
1. Mary has been drawn by God into the
middle of His path towards mankind. Since it pleases God to be with mankind, He
needs someone who shares His joy in mankind and who allows themselves to be
taken into service in as much as everything that concerns and moves man
interests Him. Mary therefore lives among mankind everywhere upon this broad
world wherever they live. Mary has become at the same time a fellow comrade and
a co-inhabitant of the peoples of every region in the world. In Bethlehem, she
was a Bethlehemite, in Nazareth, a Nazarene, in Egypt, an Egyptian, in
Jerusalem, a Jerusalemite. In Częstochowa, she is a Pole for the Polish, in
Altötting, she is a German for the Germans, in Kevelaer she is a Rheinlander
for the Rheinlanders, in Mariazell, she is an Austrian for the Austrians, in
Guadalupe, a Mexican for the Mexicans. We could go thus through all the
countries of the world and declare them Marian.
In the Family of
Mary, we have been given a concise description of her presence among all people
in that we honor Mary here as the “Lady of All Nations”. God has deliberately
settled Mary among all nations in that from the Cross the Lord Himself binds us
to Mary. Regarding Mary, He said to the Apostle John beneath the Cross, “Behold
your mother!” (Jn 19:27). From the beginning, Mary was the solution to the many
problems of man. I remember my own childhood very well. My father was lost in
the war and my mother had to go to work every day to support her four children.
When my oldest
brother, who was already doing his apprenticeship, would return home and saw us
three younger brothers without our mother in the apartment, he would ask, “Is
no one home?” The three of us were but that apparently did not count. Our
mother was missing! She was the soul of our family. Just by being there, she
created an atmosphere of comfort and good will. We therefore waited every
evening until she finally came home from her hard work. Only then did we feel
like we were home and safe. She gave us the certainty that we were accepted and
loved. “Is no one home?” is something often asked in our families and cultures.
There is no substitute for a mother. Therefore we, as Christians, cannot do
without Mary.
The spirit of
Europe and of the world is Mary. She is truly here! She lives in the individual
nations among the people. She is especially visible and tangible in our places
of pilgrimage. In the Russian church, there is a Marian icon with the title
“Assuage My Sorrows” or “Warm My Coldness!” Even her simple presence blesses
and sanctifies man. God really is interested in them. That is why He Himself
became man, and for that process, He placed Mary in the middle. She is in our
midst as a sign of His affection for us men. She is the visible and tangible
interest of God in our world. It is therefore that we honor her as the Lady of
All Nations.
2. Mary is also the ladder between
heaven and earth, between grace and nature. She truly gives the Word of God her
flesh and blood, so that it may take on a human face. We discover in our faces
similarities with those of our father or mother. Since Jesus had no earthly,
biological father, His human form was entirely influenced by Mary. He is the
very image of His mother. At the same time, Mary is the hollow mold or the
negative of the Word of God made flesh. In her, there is not just one word or
moment of the life of Jesus present. She is the “living with Him” in person.
Mary is the ultimate creation: she is the mirror image of the entire Word of
God, in which all is created and redeemed. Her path is a part of His, but for
her it is always a new one of not knowing and not being able. God is and
remains a mystery. Mary learned in each moment what God’s providence wanted.
Her way is marked by her own inability to plan from one moment to the next. God
is a mystery which Mary decodes for us through her obedience in faith. There is
nothing else found in Mary than the Word of God, and it is precisely therefore
that men find themselves in her. And so, in spite of all our
incomprehensibility we know that she recognizes and understands us. She is the
interpreter of God and His decisions for us.
Here we can
understand the blessing spoken by the woman on the street to Mary: “Blessed is
the womb that carried you and the breast at which you nursed” (Lk 11:27). Now
the eternal Word of the Father, looks at us with the facial characteristics of
Mary. And if a loving look is the shortest path between two people, then truly
the loving look of Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, is the shortest path
between the living God and us poor people. The expression, “Pray together, stay
together”, is then valid for Mary. In the Gospel of Mark we read, “He went home
again, and once more such a crowd collected that they could not even have a
meal. When His relations heard of this, they set out to take charge of him;
they said, ‘He is out of his mind’” (Mk 3:20-21). Mary is and remains among her
foolish relatives, as the scriptures say. Perhaps this way was even more bitter
for her than the way of the cross later.
It can happen
that people go mad with Jesus. It happened with His own relatives and also His
disciples. I have the impression that the same is happening with some representatives
of the Church today. What we hear from some people today is madness. Mary
remains unswerving in their midst. She patiently bore her importunate relatives
and did not distance herself from them but remained unswerving with her Son.
She is God’s path to mankind, and therefore also mankind’s path to God. For the
sake of her relatives, Mary goes with them so that they may arrive at their
goal, Jesus. They should go to Him not as to one who is crazy, but rather to
the Redeemer of the world, which He truly is and whom they necessarily need.
The Church has her archetype in Mary. She is man’s path to God. She therefore
remains in the middle, which is to say she is also among those who reject Jesus
and who consider Him insane. There is no alternative to Him, for He is the only
one who has descended from heaven and who said to us: on earth as it is in
heaven. He is therefore also the only one who has ascended to heaven. And for
this ascent, He has left us Mary as our ladder, so to speak.
3. Nowhere on earth is heaven so
clearly realized as in Mary. “On earth as in heaven,” is synonymous in her. The
Eternal Word of the Father became man. Nature and grace have grown together in
union in Mary. From sinners, she makes sons and daughters of God and they are
thereby made into brothers and sisters of each other. Their happiness and their
joy are found in this. In that way, they grow together into the family of God,
into the Church. Most of the saints became what they are with Mary, for in her
God has come to be always among and between men. Whoever speaks of Mary, thinks
also of Jesus Christ. Whoever sees Mary, also sees the Church, for the angel
specifically said to her, “The Lord is with you” (Lk 1:28). Therefore we are
always at home where Mary is.
Mary heals us
from all schizophrenia and from a double life: for example to be a Christian on
Sundays and just a regular citizen during the week. Sundays we go to church
with God and during the week without God to the factory. In the house of God we
count on God; during the week in a research laboratory we begin with the
assumption that God does not exist. This division of consciousness destroys us
as Christians and as men. Schizophrenia divides our consciousness and thereby
also our faith.
Christ is God and
man at the same time. Mary therefore is also the Mother of God. She shows us
that our faith in God has to be completely embraced by our daily life and that
our daily life must be borne entirely by our faith in God. There may be nothing
left over that is just a part of our faith without also being a part of our
life. Otherwise it is not worthy of the designation “faith”. There can also be
no part of our lives that remains as just a part of life, for then it is not
worthy of the word “life”. Faith and life are one, which has become visible in
Mary.
Mary is the
personified interest of God in man and his world. Interest is nothing more than
another word for love and means “to be among”. In Mary, God is always among us,
in our midst, back then and now. We are therefore not lost creatures who are
handed over to the storms of the world. God does not handle us and our worries
with kid gloves. He lets us stand, there where the storms blow, and often does
not protect us. But He has given us His mother to be our mother. That is
enough! We do not need more than a mother, more than the Mother of God! Amen.
+ Joachim Cardinal
Meisner
Archbishop Emeritus of
Cologne
