This writing is noteworthy for its simplicity. Living Mary helps us understand God who is Love. If the Lord gave her to us as our mother, how can we not believe in his love?
A mother never ceases to love her wayward son; she never ceases to await his return when he has gone afar. She desires nothing but to see him again, to forgive him, to embrace him again: because a mother’s love fills everything with the scent of mercy.
A mother’s love is something that is always above any painful or difficult situation in which her son finds himself. Hers is a love that never fades in the face of moral, ideological or any other kind of turmoil that may overwhelm her son. Her love, because it rises above all things, wants to cover over everything, to hide his mistakes. If a mother sees her son in danger she does not hesitate to risk everything, to throw herself onto the train tracks if her son is about to be crushed, or into the waves of the sea if he is in danger of drowning.
A mother’s love is naturally stronger than death. I heard that recently a mother threw herself out of the window in the attempt to save a child who had fallen from her arms: a useless act, and a desperate one, but it shows how great a mother’s love is. If this is what a normal mother’s love is like, we can well imagine what it is like in Mary, the human-divine Mother of a child who was God, and the spiritual mother of us all! Mary is the Mother, par excellence, the prototype of maternity, and therefore of love. Since God is Love, she appears as an “explanation” of God, an open book that explains who God is. God’s love was so great that for us he died a most atrocious death.
And he did that to save us, with a love like a mother’s that seeks the good of her children. Mary, because she is the divine mother, is the creature that most copies God; she is the one who most shows us who he is.
We must revive our faith in Mary’s love for us; we must believe that this shows he loves us. And we need to imitate her, because she is the model of every Christian; she is the direct road to God.
In « Città Nuova », 16 (1972), n. 10, p. 21.
N.B. published in ‘Essential Writings’ p 136-7
