Friday, October 7, 2011

MEDITATIONS ON THE LITANY (III): MOTHER OF THE CREATOR, MOTHER OF THE REDEEMER





Mother of the Creator…Mother of the Redeemer…” we pray in the Litany. These invocations allow us to perceive once again the beauty of Mary, the beauty of a life totally offered to God. But this invocation also allows us to lift our mind God and fix it on Him. In these invocations we clearly see the special relationship that Our Lady had with God, but then, they also tell us about who God is and what He has done for us, His beloved children. These invocations definitely tell us then about our own relationship with God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

That Mary is the Mother of the Redeemer, Jesus Christ does not surprise us. However, calling her Mother of the Creator may cause some eyebrows to raise. We often associate the work of creation with the Father, which is totally true but somewhat imprecise. The creation, as the work of the One and triune God, is the fruit of the action of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”[1]. The New Testament reveals that God created everything by the eternal Word, His beloved Son. In him, “all things were created…in heaven and earth…all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together[2]. The Church’s faith likewise confesses the creative action of the Holy Spirit, the “giver of life”, “the Creator Spirit” (Veni, Creator Spiritus), the “source of every good”[3]. We have been made in the image and likeness of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

But as the history of salvation would show us, due to the misuse of the gift of liberty, this very same image of God in man was distorted by sin. God’s love decreed that in the fullness of time, he sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, so that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying, “Abba! Father!”[4] . The work of the Redeemer, seen from one angle, is basically the renovation of this divine image distorted by sin; man is refashioned in the image of the Son of God, hence making us sons and daughters in the only-begotten Son of God, allowing us to call God “Father” with the grace of the Holy Spirit. Like the Creation, the Redemption is also the saving action of the Trinity.


These invocations show us how much God has intervened with love in our history, and in our life. It also shows us what bond holds Mary close to us. This is no mere theological detail, but one that is deeply founded in the witness of Scripture, and one that is relevant in our life, in the sense that this refashioning of the divine image of God continues in us with our correspondence to His grace. To end, as we call on the Mother of the Creator and of the Redeemer, we ask that she obtain for us from her divine Son the grace to always be open to the transforming power of His grace.


[1] Gen. 1:1
[2] Col 1: 16-17
[3] CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, 291
[4] cfr. Gal. 4:5-6

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