Wednesday 12 September 2018

Homily by His Eminence Joachim Cardinal Meisner, Archbishop Emeritus of Cologne (in English)


 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

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