10.05.2008 @ 14:50

Our Lady, Mediatrix of Graces - Homily

Mary: disciple and missionary
(Our Lady, Mediatrix of Graces, Rome, 10th May 2008)
Esther 8, 3-8. 16- 17; Acts 1, 12- 14; Lk 1, 39- 56
Br. José Rodríguez Carballo, ofm - Minister General
Dear Brothers: May the Lord give you peace.

Today we celebrate the feast of Our Lady, Mediatrix of Graces, titular of this church of the Fraternity at the General Curia and of our street. We celebrate it, as in other years, in the family, the family which is extended to all those who have seen it fit to accompany us on this day. Thank you for being here with us, the members of this fraternity, in order to live these moments of communion around our Mother, whom we invoke under the title of Mediatrix, so closely linked to the franciscan tradition.

We know little about the Blessed Virgin Mary, yet we know all that is necessary. She was the woman disposed towards and open to the will of the Lord, the believer who said YES to the project of God, receiving Him fully into her life: “Let what you have said be done to me”(Lk 1, 38). Elizabeth rightly declared: “Blessed is she who believed” (Lk 1, 45). She is the woman who was always there where she should have been: in Bethlehem, when the shepherds or magi came to adore the new born child (Lk 2, 16; Mt 2, 11), in Cana (Jn 2, 3) and on Calvary (Jn 19, 25). She would also be in the cenacle, beside the community being born (Lk 1, 14). She who said Yes to the Lord at one time maintains this Yes at all times: in happy and difficult times. Mary is, in this way, the faithful woman. She is the woman of service. Her cousin was more in need than she and she didn’t hesitate in placing herself at her service (Lk 1, 39. 56). She was the first evangelist: she set out to bring the Good News, He who would be the blessed fruit of her womb, to Elizabeth and to John, still in his mother’s womb (Lk 1, 41). Mary was the believing virgin, the faithful woman, the young maiden of Nazareth at the service of whoever needed her, the first disciple and missionary. She, therefore, is the symbol per excellence and the living image of the Church and of all those who opt to be disciples and missionaries. She is also, therefore, as the document of Aparecida recognises: the teacher of every disciple and missionary.

God visited His people through Mary, become obedience to the Word, and His people, personified by Elizabeth and John, recognised Him. The Visitation was an anticipation of all that would happen at the end of time: when the Lord will be merciful to all those who were under the sign of disobedience (Rm 11, 32) and He will be manifested as the Saviour. The Visitation is an anticipation of the final happiness of the encounter, so yearned for yet so obstructed by sin, between the spouses of which the book “The Song of Songs” speaks. Elizabeth was pregnant with two thousand years of waiting, Mary bore the hoped-for Eternity in her womb. The Old and New Testaments embraced in the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth.

Everything began through the initiative of Mary, the “blessed among women” (Lk 1, 42). Mary went “quickly” to meet Elizabeth to bring her “the fruit of her womb” (Lk 1, 42). It is not normal to go quickly in the East. When one goes quickly it is because something important has occurred and the need to communicate it is felt: the shepherds went quickly to find the new born child (Lk 2, 16), the disciples ran to the Sepulchre, for they would be witnesses to the resurrection of the Lord (Jn 20, 4), the two disciples of Emmaus ran for they had to tell the disciples of their meeting with the Risen One (Lk 24, 33), Mary went as quickly as she could to meet Elizabeth (Lk 1, 39) because she had something important to communicate, the presence of Him who was the hope of nations in the midst of humanity.

This is the dynamic of mission: whoever has encountered the Lord cannot keep Him to himself, but feels an urgency to communicate Him, to bring Him and give Him to others, as Paul affirmed when he said: “I should be punished if I did not preach!” (1Cor 9, 16). This is the attitude of one who has found a lost coin. When he has found it, he does not hesitate to tell all he meets about what has happened (Lk 15, 8ff). It is the response of one who has definitively satisfied his thirst at the fountain of living water, like the Samaritan woman (Jn 4, 4ff). The satisfied thirst is then turned into a message (LSR 17), and always with joy and happiness. The story of the Visitation transmits joy and happiness: John exulted in his mother’s womb (Lk 1, 41. 44), Elizabeth exulted in the visit of Mary (Lk 1, 42), Mary sang the praises of the Lord (Lk 1, 46ff). The desert of Judah was transformed into the garden of the Song of Songs. Happiness is part of an authentic encounter, an occurrence of something precious and, therefore, of the mission, the announcement and witness.

The gospel text we have listened to places us before our responsibility to let others know Whom we have met, like Andrew (Jn 1, 41), Who has conquered our heart, like Paul, to Whom we have handed ourselves over to, like Francis, and Whom we have promised to follow “more closely”, He who gives meaning to our lives until we, with the Apostle, can say: “I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2, 20). It is right, therefore, that we should ask: What is the rhythm of my life? Is it happy or tired, motivated or unmotivated? Is whoever sees me aware of the treasure I have within me? Do I live my life as a Friar Minor with the passion of one who has been allowed to neet Christ? Am I capable of transmitting the beauty of the discipleship of Christ? It is said that the face expresses the heart. Let us remember once more: a discipleship full of sadness is a sad discipleship, just as a joyful discipleship is the best testimony of a full life.

Today, the vigil of Pentecost, Mary invites us, first of all, to receive the Spirit, to be filled with the Spirit in order to go out of our “cloisters” that are closed because of fear, false securities, egotism, etc., and to go out to meet the other, to share what our eyes have seen, what our hands have touched and what makes our heart burn within: Christ, the Son of the Most High, the blessed fruit of the womb of Mary, Mother and Virgin. Recalling the first reading, we also are invited to “intercede” for our people, for those who suffer, to be the voice of those without voice, to place ourselves at the service of the least of men and the most needy. We, like Esther and Mary herself when faced by the situation of Elizabeth or of that in Cana of Galilee, cannot just fold our arms in the face of situations found in “the forgotten cloisters, the inhuman cloisters where the beauty and the dignity of the person are continually sullied” (LgP 37).

Dear Brothers: Let us rejoice and jump with joy, like the people who, thanks to Esther, saw they weresaved from extermination. Let us go from this celebration with our hearts overflowing with joy, for the light has also dawned for us in Mary. Let us go out and place ourselves in a state of mission, like Mary, whom we invoke today as Mediatrix, and let us contemplate her as disciple and missionary. She will accompany us on our journey.