My Mother, Your Mother

Jesus:

My brother, you cannot really reproduce My filial love toward Mary unless you are, as I am, her child. Do you know to what extent you are a child of Mary?

All the faithful think they know it, for they all call her their Mother. The greater number of them, however, have only a very imperfect idea of Mary’s Motherhood in their regard.

Many love Mary as if she were their Mother: tell Me, what would your mother answer you, if you said to her, “I love you as if you were my mother”?
Many think that Mary is their Mother solely in virtue of the words I pronounced before I died, when, seeing My Mother standing at the foot of the cross, and next to her My beloved disciple, I said to her, “Woman, behold thy son,” and to John, “Behold thy Mother.” My words could very well have confided a maternal mission to Mary and created dispositions in her resembling those of a mother. Yet, if her Motherhood had depended on these words alone, it would have been a mere adoptive Motherhood. Now, I want you to realize that Mary is your true Mother in the supernatural order, just as she who gave you birth is your true mother in the natural order.

2. A mother is one who gives life. Mary has given you life—the most real life. She gave it to you at Nazareth, on Calvary, and in your baptism.
At Nazareth she conceived you in conceiving Me. She knew that by answering the angel Gabriel “Yes” or “No,” she would either give you life or leave you in death. She said “Yes” in order that you might live. By consenting to give Me life, she also consented to give it to you. In becoming My Mother, she became yours. From that moment, in the designs of God and in her own designs—for she had some idea of the designs of God and adhered to them with her whole heart—you constituted a part of My Mystical Body. I was the head and you were a member. Mary bore us both, though in different ways, in her maternal womb; for the members and the head have not a separate existence.

3. On Calvary, she brought you forth when she offered Me as a sacrifice for you. Your deliverance from sin and death was only consummated on Golgotha. It was there that I “destroyed him who had the empire of death,” and by My death merited for you the grace of living My life. Now, it was in union with Mary that I accomplished this work. She had conceived Me as a victim; she had nourished and brought Me up for the sacrifice; and at that supreme moment, she offered Me to the Father for your salvation and renounced in your favor her maternal rights over Me. And she who, ever Virgin, experienced only joy in the birth of her First- born Son, gave birth to you and your brothers amid the most agonizing sorrow.

4. At that moment, her Motherhood in your regard was consummated. That is why I then wanted to proclaim it by confiding John to Mary and Mary to John. My words did not create that motherhood; they attested, confirmed, and completed it at the most solemn hour of My life—the hour when My Mother, having become your Mother in the full sense of the word, was best able to understand her maternal mission.

5. At your baptism Mary not only gave you the right to supernatural life as she did on Calvary, she actually brought you forth to it. As far as the supernatural world was concerned, your natural mother brought you forth a stillborn child. That you might come to life, sanctifying grace had to be infused into you at the baptismal font.  This sanctifying grace came to you through Mary, for, except through her no grace is ever given. When you were transformed from a child of wrath to a child of God, it was Mary who gave birth to you unto that life divine.

6. Do you understand now how Mary, by making you a participant of the life of God, is really your Mother in the supernatural order, just as the one who gave you human life is really your mother in the natural order? Mary is even more truly your Mother. She is more truly your Mother, first, because of the way in which she has given you life.  For your birth, she paid incomparably more than your earthly mother. That she might bring you forth to life, she offered the Eternal Father the unutterable sufferings and the very life of One who was infinitely dearer to her than her own life.  

She continues during the whole course of your existence to busy herself with you, whereas earthly mothers care for their children only until they are adults. You will always be her “little child whom she continues to bear until Christ be formed in you.” And if, unhappily, you should lose your supernatural life, she is not like earthly mothers who helplessly grieve and weep over the corpse of their child. She can restore life to you each time you may happen to lose it.

She loves you—you, all imperfect and ungrateful as you are; she loves you with a love which surpasses in intensity and in purity the motherly love of all the mothers in the world.

7. Above all, she is more truly your Mother because of the nature of the life which she has given to you. It is not a passing life like your terrestrial one, but a life without end; not a life full of imperfections and anguish like your present existence, but a life incomparably happy; not a created life, human or angelic, but— and understand it well—a participation in uncreated life, in the very life of God, in the life of the Most Blessed Trinity. And that is why this life will be endless and incomparably happy, because it is a sharing in the eternity and in the beatitude of God. What human motherhood could compare with such a Motherhood?

Now, Mary is your true Mother, and so perfect a Mother, just because she is My Mother.

And you are My brother—My infinitely dear brother—because My Father is your Father and My Mother is your Mother.

The Faithful Soul:
No, Jesus, I did not know to what extent Mary was my Mother. How much nearer You have just brought her to me! Thanks, O Jesus, for that gift of gifts.