“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.
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