Ave Maria! For the first time in history, today the Virgin Mary has been celebrated as Mother of the Church in an Obligatory Memorial throughout the Universal Church. Pope Francis took the opportunity to reflect on the parallelism between the Church’s motherhood, Mary’s motherhood, and our souls’ femininity as spouses of Christ and spiritual mothers, citing the Church Fathers. He reminded all Christians that the first duty of any mother is tenderness.
Interestingly, St. Francis of Assisi’s first biographers, Thomas of Celano and St. Bonaventure, both described St. Francis as a mother, and friars who knew him during his life also called him “mother.” St. Francis said that a good friar should also be a mother, and in his extraordinary tenderness, Francis went blind because of shedding so many tears of love for Christ. His tenderness also toward the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, his fellow friars (especially those who were most vulnerable or treated him badly), and even the animals and nature is also well documented by his first biographers.
The Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, was observed for the first time on Monday; the movable feast is set for the first day following Pentecost. In his homily during Mass at the Casa Santa Marta, Pope Francis said the first virtue of a mom is tenderness.
“The Church is feminine,” Pope Francis said in his homily on Monday, “she is a mother.”
When this trait is lacking, the Pope continued, the Church resembles merely “a charitable organization, or a football team”; when it is “a masculine Church,” it sadly becomes “a church of old bachelors,” “incapable of love, incapable of fruitfulness.”
That was the reflection offered by Pope Francis during the Mass celebrated in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta for the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church. The feast is being celebrated this year for the first time, after the publication in March of the decree Ecclesia Mater (“Mother Church”) by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Pope Francis himself decided the feast should be celebrated on the Monday immediately following Pentecost, in order “to encourage the growth of the maternal sense of the Church in the pastors, religious and faithful, as well as a growth of genuine Marian piety.”
Source: Pope Francis: The Church, like Mary, is woman and mother – Vatican News
