Mary, the mother of humanity (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

     In the Synoptic Gospels, Mary is presented as a model of discipleship. John’s Gospel gives her a different role. Here she’s not the paradigm of discipleship (a role John gives to the Beloved disciple and to Mary Magdala), but is presented as Eve, the mother of humanity, and the mother of each of us. Interestingly, John never gives us Mary’s name. In the Gospel, she is always referred to as ‘the Mother of Jesus.’ As Eve, she stands in helplessness within human pain, when she stands under the cross. In this, she shows herself as universal mother, but also as an example of how injustice must be handled, namely, by standing within it in a way that does not replicate its hatred and violence so as to give it back in kind. 

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser OMI 

Facebook, December 12, 2022 

Image source: Wayman Scott IV, Earth and Life, a re-sculpting of Michelangelo’s Pietà (2022), https://baltimoreclayworks.org/event/earth-and-life-solo-exhibition-by-wayman-scott/
For an article about this Catholic artist’s work, click here.