The Disciple Took Her to His Own
Who has heard of such a thing?
Who has seen such things?
Shall a land be born in one day?
Shall a nation be delivered in one moment?
Yet as soon as Zion was in labor
she delivered her children.
Isaiah 66, 8
When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple
standing whom he loved,
he saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son. After
that, he saith to the disciple:
Behold thy mother. And from that hour, the
disciple took her to his own.
John 19, 26-27 (DRB)
All true disciples
of Christ, those who faithfully keep God’s commandments and bear witness to
Jesus in their lives, take their Blessed Mother Mary to their own, or accept
her as their own mother in the depths of their hearts, as she leads the way in the
order of grace, taking them by the hand to their heavenly home. Mary must have
assured John that she would never leave his side while his soul lived. She
likely took him by the hand and led the way to his home never to separate
herself from him during his apostolic ministry until her dormition. The Gospel
of John bears testimony to the traditional belief of the infant Church that our
Lord entrusted his mother to his faithful bride, which is the Church.
In the Roman
catacomb of St. Agnes, there is an extant fresco depicting Mary between the
apostle's Peter and Paul with her arms outstretched towards them. The image of
these two chief apostles situated together has always symbolized the Church
from the earliest time. Thus, it is evident that the early Christians invoked Mary
as the Mother of the Church by the third century. The early tradition of Mary being
the spiritual mother of all her Son's faithful disciples was just as vibrant in
the nascent church as it has been until now in the same Catholic Church.
Jesus redefines
Mary’s motherhood from the Cross. He does not renounce his own filial bond with
her but adds a new dimension to her maternal role in the economy of salvation.
This should explain why he has chosen not to place his mother in the care of
the Disciple until this pivotal moment in salvation history. Mary’s motherhood
must be redefined at the Cross because it draws its raison d’etre from her
intimate association with her divine Son in his work of redemption (Lk.
2:34-35). By her suffering, in union with the suffering of her Son, our Blessed
Mother helps give new life in grace to all fallen Eve's offspring like a woman
in labor.
It appears no names
are mentioned, save the appellations “Woman” and “Disciple” to underscore how
it is that Mary is a mother to John and him her son. The beloved Disciple
represents all of Christ’s disciples who belong to his Church, and Mary is
their spiritual mother in the order of grace. Not unlike Mother Zion, she must
now “enlarge [her] tent” and “strengthen [her] stakes” because of the sudden
influx of returnees from exile or slavery to sin (Isa. 54:2-3). Jesus has made
his blessed mother Mary the mother of all people, who live their lives in the
state of grace, by saying to his mother, “Woman, behold your son,” and to the
Disciple, “Behold your mother.” Jesus means much more than that his beloved
disciple should look after his mother in his home after he has gone to the
Father. He certainly isn't making a practical request in literary fashion, not
that it has any significant bearing from a soteriological perspective.
We mustn't overlook
the symbolic importance of the expression “the disciple” used by the Evangelist
when referring to himself. He intends to identify himself with all true
followers of our Lord. Not unlike Jacob who represents Israel, the Disciple is
a "corporate personality." Mary is the spiritual mother of all
Christ’s disciples. She has adopted us no less than the Father has by our
partaking of the divine life in faith (Eph. 1:5; 2 Pet.1:3-4). In his divinity,
our Lord is the Son of the Father, and in his sacred humanity, he is the Son of
Mary his mother. We cannot be adopted sons and daughters of the Father while
excluding our spiritual mother Mary who was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit,
since all the faithful are true brothers and sisters of Christ (Lk. 1:35; Rom.
8:29).
Through Mary’s womb,
the baptized are "a new creation in Christ; the old is gone, and the new
is here" (2 Cor. 5:17). They are no longer the seed of fallen Adam but of
the promised “Woman” and advocate of Eve who, in her original innocence, helped
forfeit the life of grace for her offspring (Gen. 3:13, 15). That this was how
the early Church understood the Gospel narrative is evident in the teaching of
St. Augustine: “Therefore, this woman alone, not only in spirit but also in
body, is both Mother and Virgin. She is Mother in the Spirit, but not of our
Head, the Saviour himself, for it is she who is spiritually born from him,
since all who believe in him, among whom she too is to be counted, are rightly
called children of the Bridegroom. Rather, she is clearly the Mother of his
members … because she cooperated by her charity, so that faithful Christian
members might be born in the Church” (De sancta virginitate 6).
.webp)
In different words,
the Bishop of Hippo means what St. Irenaeus professes in the late 2nd century:
“The Word will become flesh, and the Son of God the son of man—the Pure One
opening purely that pure womb, which generates men unto God. (Against Heresies,
4, 33, 12). The designation of Mary being the New Eve or spiritual “mother of
all the living”, and thereby the Mother of the Church, was part of a Marian
tradition for centuries leading up to the time of Augustine. St. Epiphanius
wrote in the 4th century in his defense of the Catholic and Apostolic faith:
“True it is . . . the whole race of man upon earth was born of Eve; but it is
from Mary that Life was truly born to the world, so that by giving birth to the
Living One, Mary might also become the Mother of all the living” (Against Eighty
Heresies, 78, 9). The new birth of the Christian faithful receives its origin
from the hypostatic order of Christ’s incarnation which could not have occurred
without the Virgin Mary’s moral participation in the common activity of the
Holy Trinity.
In this sense, all
the faithful disciples and brethren of our Lord proceed from the same
sanctified womb he did as reborn offspring of Eve. Mary stands with all those
who are born again at the baptismal font. Father Hugo Rahner (Our Lady and the
Church: Zaccheus Press) tells us that the sacrament of Baptism is "forever
a continuation of the birth of God-made man, born of the Virgin, conceived by
the Holy Spirit." He adds that "the Church as the Mystical Body of
Christ is ever born again in the sacrament of Baptism" (1 Cor. 12:13). The
faithful are thus one mystical body in Christ who is the Head of this body.
They have been born children of God and of the Virgin Mary by being conceived
mystically in her womb through the power of the Holy Spirit together with God
incarnate who was conceived physically by supernatural means. The mystery of
Mary in the economy of salvation intertwines with the mystery of the Church,
and so, the sacrament of Baptism has a Marian character.
In the prayer for
the Blessing of the Font at the Easter Vigil, the faithful acknowledge the
Church's power of rebirth through the Holy Spirit and her custodial endowment
with grace. It is the Holy Spirit, through His hidden presence, that bestows
sanctifying power to the water of baptism. A holy child is conceived in the
womb of the baptismal font and reborn in the Spirit just as Christ is conceived
in the womb of Mary and made the God-man by the power of the Holy Spirit. The
divine womb of the baptismal font is as immaculate as the womb of the Blessed
Virgin Mary. New heavenly offspring are conceived in holiness and reborn new
creatures in the likeness of their Lord and brother Jesus. The Church is called
Mother because, not unlike Mary, she nourishes her offspring with grace and
gives them a new life, so that they all grow as one family in God in one
spiritual childhood.
Mary is the Mother
of the Church which is comprised of all members of her divine Son's mystical
body, for she is the prototype of the Church. The Church receives her character
from the Blessed Virgin Mary. As a corporate entity, the Church finds its
fulfillment in the person of Mary. The Church is first realized in Mary when
she declares: "Be it done to me according to thy word" (Lk. 1:38).
For mankind to be conceived in the womb of the Church, Christ must first be
conceived in the womb of his mother. All catechumens must first receive Jesus
in their hearts before they can be conceived in the womb of the baptismal
water, but only if Mary physically conceives Jesus after she has first
conceived him in her heart. In this sense, then, Mary is the Mother of the Church
through the Incarnation. By having conceived and given birth to Jesus, who is
both Head and Body, our Blessed Lady has conceived and given birth to its
members in a spiritual sense - her Son's brothers and sisters (Rom. 8:29).
ἔλαβεν ὁ μαθητὴς αὐτὴν εἰς τὰ ἴδια.
Returning to the
Gospel of John, in which we read "the Disciple took her to his own", the Greek
word for “took” is lambanō (λαμβάνω). This term connotes “take in the hand,”
“take hold of, grasp.” It also encompasses the meaning to take away, take up,
receive, or remove, without the use of force. Moreover, the term has mental or
spiritual aspects when it is translated as “make one’s own,” “apprehend,” or
“comprehend” as Jerome has translated it in the Latin Vulgate. Roman Catholic
Biblical scholar John McHugh builds upon the spiritual connotation of the word.
He argues that the Disciple accepts Mary as his very own mother, and as part of
the “spiritual legacy bequeathed to him by his Lord.” The use of the verb lambanō
indicates something important that moves beyond the death scene being played
out on Golgotha and is connected to it. Thus, the verb indicates something
which has soteriological significance.
The author says, “If
we take careful notice of John’s vocabulary, a more meaningful rendering
emerges. In the Fourth Gospel, the verb lambánō has two senses. When applied to
material things, it means simply ‘to take hold of,’ ‘to pick up,’ ‘to grasp,’
etc. (e.g. 6.11; 12.13; 13.12; 19.23, 40); when applied to immaterial things,
it means “to accept,” or ‘to welcome,’ usually as a gift from God (e.g. his
witness, 3.11; his word, 17.8; his Spirit, 14.17; 1 John 2.27). Secondly, the phrase eis ta idia which certainly can mean “to one’s own home” (in a purely
physical sense), can also mean ‘among one’s own spiritual possessions’ (compare
John 8.44 and 15.19, in Greek). The phrase is found in the prologue with
this double meaning of ‘physical home’ and ‘spiritual possession,’ and in close
conjunction with the verb ‘to accept or welcome.’ ‘He came to what was his own…
and to all who accepted him, he gave them the power to become children of God’
(John 1.12-13). John 19.27 seems to demand a translation which includes both
the purely physical and the deeper, spiritual sense” (The Mother of Jesus in
the New Testament, New York: Doubleday, 1975). The use of the verb lambanō
indicates something important that moves beyond the death scene being played
out on Golgotha but is connected to it. Thus, the verb indicates something
which has soteriological and eschatological significance.
In other words, this
spiritual or cognitive connotation implies that there is a tacit understanding
that occurs between Jesus, Mary, and the Disciple which must do with something
more significant than the fact Jesus is about to die as anyone else might by
being crucified and consequently must leave his widowed mother behind who is in
dire need of being looked after. What is significant isn't merely the temporal
death of Jesus and any temporal circumstances that might ensue because of it,
but rather what shall entail eschatologically from it as one of many consummations
and higher expressions of his death, having soteriological benefits for human
souls with respect to our Lord's mother in the hypostatic order of Christ's
incarnation.
The Mother and the
Beloved Disciple thus understand that this event marks a beginning – the start
of something new that shall continue in this life and eternally in the Kingdom
of Heaven. The original Greek text literally reads “to the own” (εἰς τὰ ἴδια),
though modern Protestant and Catholic Bible English translations have “to his
own home.” This Greek phrase means much more than the Disciple taking Mary to
his home to look after her. Rather, it means the Disciple took her into his
heart as a loving son of hers in their newly established spiritual filial bond.
He received her in the deepest core of his being as her spiritual offspring.
Certainly, Mary did not have to become an adopted mother for John to look after
her as a caregiver. Jesus wasn't speaking figuratively of her. She became the
Disciple's very own mother in the family of God in a spiritual and mystical
way, as much as Mary was morally the spouse of the Holy Spirit, having been
overshadowed by Him and begetting Jesus together.
John is somewhat
more mystical and symbolic in his literary style than are the authors of the
Synoptic Gospels. His narratives contain deeper meanings and lend more
theological insight into the Divine mysteries than what appears at first glance
in the written word of God, and so they should often be read in a spiritual
sense (1 Cor. 2:4-5). What the Evangelist presents to his readers in the
Crucifixion scene is a reciprocal re-enactment of what has transpired in the
Garden of Eden. We have the two principal protagonists: Jesus (the new Adam)
and his mother Mary (the new Eve).
In the background,
the Disciple represents all people who have cast off the old self and put on
the new. Jesus and his mother are in the act of finally crushing the head of
the serpent by their obedience to the will of God and undoing what it has
worked since the beginning (Gen. 3:13-15). Unlike Adam and Eve, neither of them
succumbs to the temptation of the serpent. Jesus does not come down from the
cross and save himself in opposition to the will of his heavenly Father (Mt.
27:40). Mary is valiantly standing at the foot of the Cross enduring terrible
sorrow at the cost of her joy in being the mother of our Lord, which fulfills
the portentous words of Simeon that point to her crucial trial of faith on
which rests her motherhood of mankind (Lk. 2:35).
On Golgotha, Mary
perseveres in that same faith she possessed at the Annunciation, a total
surrender to God out of pure love and humility which helped make the
Incarnation happen. She joyfully became the mother of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ in the shadow of the Cross; she became our mother and merited her
dual maternity by standing beneath the Cross, at this crucial point sorrowfully
giving birth to us like a woman in labor (Rev. 12:2).
The imagery of the
Gospel narrative dismisses any temporal and morally practical explanation of
Jesus’ words to his mother and the Disciple. What Jesus has in mind when he
addresses his mother and the Disciple is something of great soteriological and
eschatological importance. John the Evangelist has the Mother figuratively
stand at the foot of the Cross – the Tree of victory over the serpent – as the
moral channel of her divine Son’s grace which Adam forfeited by listening to
Eve, who thus morally contributed to the fall of ‘mankind’, the loss of the
original state of holiness and justice; whereas Mary morally contributes to
mankind’s spiritual regeneration and justification by her perfect obedience to
the will of God and willingness to suffer in union with her Son for man's
transgressions against Him.
His Gospel message
is that the Son (the new Adam) wills to dispense his saving grace first and
foremost through the mediation of his mother and helpmate (Gen. 2:18). Our Lord
does not wish to act alone in his work of redemption, but rather desires that
his mother is with him by her moral cooperation. And so, in this capacity, Mary
has become the mother of all his disciples in the Spirit and, of course,
redeemed humanity. It is she who has nourished the faithful with the blessings
they have received through God’s grace by a mother’s dying to self in sorrow
because of her love for her Son on the Cross, the only means of salvation. Mary
is our spiritual mother because she helped restore fallen mankind to the life
of grace with God through suffering, which Eve helped lose for her biological
offspring in her selfish pursuit of personal gain and disobedience.
Hence, by using the
epithet 'Woman,' Jesus is alluding to his mother Mary as being the new Eve –
the “spiritual mother of all the living” as opposed to Eve who is the primordial
mother of all who are conceived deprived of sanctifying or justifying grace and
thus born spiritually dead. (Gen. 3:20). It is before the Fall that Adam refers
to his wife as the 'woman' (Gen.2:23). So, what Jesus means by transferring
this title to his mother is that she is to be a mother to the Disciple as Eve
was intended to be before she fell from grace and the preternatural state of
innocence.
If Adam and Eve had
not sinned against God, they would have passed on spiritual life to their
descendants along with immortal physiological life. Since God has decreed that
human life should emerge from the conjugal union between a man and a woman, but
our primordial parents had forfeited the spiritual gifts He bestowed upon them,
God has ordained from all eternity, in view of the Fall, that spiritual life
should be restored through the intimate union between a man (the new Adam) and
a woman (the new Eve).
On Golgotha stands the Tree of Life in the form of the Cross as opposed to the tree in the middle of the garden which bears the forbidden fruit (Gen. 2:15-17). On the Cross hangs the fruit of Mary’s womb (Lk. 1:42) who radically opposes all things that are forbidden by God and offensive to Him (Gen. 3:16-20). Eve manages to entice her husband to partake of the forbidden fruit on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Mary, on the other hand, co-operates with her Son and offers mankind the fruit of her womb, in whom the Father is well pleased (Mt. 3:17). By partaking of this fruit and being nourished and fortified by its grace, mankind is free of the snares of worldly wisdom and vain pleasures of life that lead to the death of the soul and the loss of true happiness in life with God.
On God’s initiative,
the tree of life is no longer guarded off-limits by the cherubim with the
flaming sword (Gen. 3:24). From now on, the way to the tree of life is the
Church, the custodian of all saving grace which has been merited for everyone
by the Son of Mary, whose gates are open to all who desire to gain peace and
reconciliation with God through the blood of the Cross (Isa. 35:8; 62:10-12;
Acts 2:22; Col.1:20; Rev. 22:17). All baptized Christians have cause to leap
for joy for the graces they have received from the Son through the Mother’s
mediation.
Jesus has ransomed us from death through the blood of the Cross, having reconciled the world to God his heavenly Father (Col. 1:20; 2 Cor. 5:18-19). Yet, with his mother having had a vital share in his victory over the serpent on Golgotha, the Divine validation of her motherhood of all humanity is completed at the foot of the Cross where her soul is pierced because of sinful humanity. The graces Christ has merited for mankind, therefore, are divinely ordained to be dispensed first and foremost through his most Blessed Mother Mary - Our Lady of Sorrows, whose interior suffering made finite temporal satisfaction to God for the sins of the world in union with her divine Son's infinite temporal and thereby eternal satisfaction.
We see in Luke 1:44 that the infant John the Baptist leaps in his mother’s womb upon the sound of Mary’s greeting having reached his mother Elizabeth. The child leaps because it has received the cleansing and healing balm of God’s sanctifying grace in anticipation of his divine calling. What Eve has helped forfeit by seducing her husband into partaking of the forbidden fruit, viz., the life of grace, Mary helps restore by offering the fruit of her blessed womb - the font (life-giving water) of restorative grace. As the saying goes: "To Jesus through Mary."
It is our Blessed
Mother who “acts as mediatrix between the loftiness of God and the lowliness of
the flesh” as mankind’s maternal advocate in vindication of fallen Eve (cf. St.
Andrew of Crete, (Homily 1, on Mary’s Nativity); she who is the free promised
woman “full of grace” and whose “soul magnifies the glory of the Lord” (Lk.
1:28, 46). In the words of Martin Luther, who took the Church to his own:
"She is my love, the noble Maid, forget her can I never, Whatever honor
men have paid, My heart she has forever!" (Sie ist mir lieb). John the
Evangelist expresses this same heartfelt devotion and love in honor of Mary,
the handmaid of the Lord and prototype of the Church, which the infant Church
possessed and paid to her, the spiritual mother of all Christ's disciples.
Our Lady of Fatima
The mystery of Mary
as the prototype of the Church and Mediatrix of Grace is like all divine
mysteries: shrouded in many obscurities. But it is only in darkness that the sanctifying
light of faith may take effect and enlighten the minds and hearts of the
faithful over time. For centuries, the Church has been gradually putting the
Marian mosaic work together tile by tile. God's great masterpiece is a mosaic
work that can be seen in its fullness only by observing one tile at a time,
for "who can know the mind of God or be His counselor?" (Rom.
11:34). The Church can understand only what God chooses to reveal to her
through the Holy Spirit in the course of time (Jn. 16:12-13). There can be no
faith - "the evidence for things unseen and hoped for" - if there is
gnosis (Heb. 11:1). Thus, "for now [she] sees in a mirror dimly, and then
face to face" (1 Cor. 13:12).
The Church must have
asked herself countless times with profound reverence like Elizabeth had asked
her kinswoman, while pondering on the divine mystery of Mary in the economy of
salvation: "Whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come
to me?" (Lk. 1:43). What the Church asks of the Lord, she does receive and
what she seeks to understand, she does find through the sanctifying light of
faith by the working of the Holy Spirit who is with her "forever"
(Mt. 7:7; Jn. 14:16). The Church is "the pillar and foundation of the
truth" (1 Tim. 3:15), the "unblemished and spotless" bride of
Christ in the purity of the womb of her faith and conception of God's word
(Eph. 2:7). She reflects the Virgin Mary's pure and unblemished womb and her
conception of the Divine Word made man because of the purity of her faith and
charity as the chaste bride of the Holy Spirit (Lk. 1:35).
Let’s conclude with the words of St. Ambrose: "The Lord appeared in our flesh and in Himself fulfilled the spotless marriage of Godhead and humanity, and since then the eternal virginity of the life of heaven has found its place among men. Christ's mother is a virgin, and likewise is His bride, the Church" (De Virginibus), and the words of his pupil, St. Augustine: "He has made His Church like to His mother, He has given her to us as a mother, He has kept her for Himself as a virgin. The holy Catholic Church, like Mary, is a virgin ever spotless and a mother ever fruitful" (Sermo 195, 2).
Shall not Zion say:
This man and that man is born in her,
and the Highest himself hath founded her?
Psalm 87, 5
Early Sacred Tradition
from the holy Virgin, without admitting also His Incarnation in the Church.
Every one of us must therefore recognize His coming in the flesh, by the pure Virgin,
but at the same time recognize His coming in the spirit in each one of us.”
St. Methodius of Philippi
De sanguisusa 8, 2
(ante A.D. 311)
in himself from Mary the Mother of God through the Holy Spirit."
St. Epiphanius of Salamis
The Man Well-Anchored 75
(A.D. 374)
virgin and mother; she is like Mary who gave birth to the Lord. Was not Mary a virgin when she gave
birth, and did she not ever remain a virgin? But the Church also gives birth and yet remains a virgin
she gives birth to Christ Himself, for all who receive baptism are His members. Does not the
Apostle say: ‘You are the body of Christ, member for member’? If then she gives birth to Christ’s
members, she is in every way like Mary.”
St. Augustine, Tract 1, 8
(ante A.D. 430)
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Salve Regina!