Ave Maria Meditations
How perfect the story is of Our Lady at Cana. So gently she reminds her son: “They have no wine” (Jn 2:3). In the course of our Christian lives, we often run out of things, maybe even the faith that would let us tell God about it ourselves. But she is there, still present at his side, “they have no love, they have no faith, they have no humility ….”
In the Church we are all living off one another’s faith in this way, but especially off the faith of Mary. It was her faith that made our redemption possible. In a very literal sense her faith is the source of the Church’s faith, for without her faith Christ would not have been born. From all eternity God had prepared her to make that act of faith from which all salvation would flow. This is why we call Mary our Mother, and this is also why it is meaningful for us to regard the Church as our Mother.
Faith never means simply your faith or my faith. In one of the prayers of the Mass we say “look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church”. To invite God to look simply upon our individual faith might be little better than offering him our splendid virtue! It is not our faith, but the faith of the Church that we present before him, and that means the faith of Mary, the faith of all those many people who have made the Body of Christ healthy and glorious; we, when we are weak and poor, can live off their faith. “Jesus, looking upon their faith, said to the man, “Son, your sins are forgiven”.
+
Father Simon Tugwell, O.P
