Saint Mary, Disciple of the Lord: Dogmatic-liturgical analysis

Santa Maria discípula do Senhor: análise dogmático-litúrgica

On this 4th day of the Novena to Our Lady of Aparecida we celebrate the Mass: Holy Mary disciple of the Lord. It is an ancient title as time itself, and new as the light of each day.

Mary listens to the Word, fulfills the promise, makes herself available to the Father’s will, and is the Mother of Jesus. In all this, she is the model of the disciple.

Porque?

The disciple is the one who listens to the Word in the Spirit with which it was written, in Church. This is what discipleship consists of, and Mary? In the Annunciation she listened to the Word, the Spirit came down upon her, and she went to announce, as the nascent Church, to Elizabeth.

But today the readings go even deeper to speak of the disciple of the Mistress of disciples: in the Book of Ben Sira it speaks of Wisdom, asked for in the Sanctuary, therefore in the presence of God. And the more it flourished, the greater the joy increased: imagine how the angel called her at the Annunciation: kekaritomene, which means something like this: she who received the karis, that is, grace, from the past and continues to receive in the fullness of having been chosen and responding to that predestination, through the meditation of the mysteries.

We will try to define the disciple: one who responds to God’s proposal. Mary responds before all of us, before all the apostles, to God’s proposal in the Annunciation. She follows Jesus, does not understand the revealed mystery, and in the end… she keeps the memory that one day it will make sense.

The Mother becomes a disciple, follows the Son, is with the Apostles and remains faithful in the crucial moments of the history of Salvation that God decided to design with Her at each stage, seeking the will to put it into practice, and all this through the meditation on the mysteries. Without this, we are merely good people looking for a more solidarity-based, fraternal, just world, but even without God this can be achieved.

To deepen the analysis of Mary as the perfect disciple of the Lord, consult John Paul II’s encyclical Redemptoris Mater, which presents Mary as a model of faith and discipleship for the entire Church.

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