O Mother, You are the Valiant Woman!: Saint Peter Claver, Wednesday, September 9, 2020

 

 J.M.J.


From Our Lady and the Church by Father Hugo Rahner, S.J., translated by Father Sebastian Bullough, O.P. (Bethesda, Maryland: Zaccheus Press, 2004), pages 93-94:


     It is in the mystery of the Blood of Christ, prepared by Mary in the flesh, and scattered sacramentally by the Church, that the day-to-day perseverance of the valiant woman is recognized. When Mary accepted the motherhood of the Redeemer, she not only accepted His death, but also the daily trials throughout life, in particular the more and more frequent and more and more painful loss of her Child and parting from Him during His life on earth, a kind of daily death during those last years, and her enforced solitude and hidden life, her complete loss of Him in the fullness of His manhood, her reitrement into obscurity--and all the time a truly motherly readiness to be at hand when the terrible trial of the Death of her Son began.

     And the same pattern is seen in the Church: her whole history is a meeting with death, she is forced into retirement, despised and forgotten, and yet has an ever-present anxiety about her Heart's beloved Child: in a word, she is a true mother.

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