Mary, Mother of Hope

By Fr. Christopher Foeckler, MJ • St Josaphat Formation Center, Phoenix, Arizona

Pope Francis has been offering a “catechesis on Christian hope” in his Wednesday audiences: “As a gift of the Spirit, hope is both an anchor (cf. Heb. 6:18-19) giving us security amid the storms of life, and a ‘sail’ driving us forward towards the safe harbor of eternal life.” Pope Francis continued, “The Spirit bears witness within our hearts to the consoling truth of God’s promises and the inheritance that awaits us as his beloved sons and daughters. (cf. Rom 8:16)”

As we celebrate the great Feast of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven – a tremendous source of Hope for us – we consider some highlights of the Holy Father concerning Mary, the Mother of Hope, on May 10th, 2017:

“Mary appears in the Gospels as a silent woman who often does not understand all that is happening around her but ponders every word and every event in her heart.

“In this arrangement there is a beautiful outline of Maria’s psychology: she is not a woman who is discouraged by the uncertainties of life, especially when nothing seems to go in the right direction. Nor is she a woman who protests with violence, who inveighs against the destiny in life that often reveals a hostile face. Instead, she is a woman who listens: do not forget that there is always a great relationship between hope and listening, and Mary is a woman who listens. Mary welcomes existence just as it is given to us, with its happy days, but also with its tragedies we would never have wished to encounter. Up to the supreme night of Mary, when her Son is nailed to the wood of the cross.

“The Gospels record in a simple verb the presence of the Mother: she “stood” (John 19:25). She was standing. They say nothing of her reaction: whether or not she wept… nothing; not even a brushstroke to describe her grief: the imagination of poets and painters were to seize upon these details, giving us images that have entered the history of art and literature. But the Gospels just say, she was ‘standing.’ She was there, in the worst moment, in the cruellest moment, and suffered with her Son. ‘She stood.’

“We find her again in the first day of the Church, she, mother of hope, in the midst of that community of disciples, so fragile: one had renounced, many had fled, and all had been afraid (cf. Acts 1:14). But she was simply there, in the most normal of ways, as if it were something entirely natural: in the first Church enveloped in the light of the Resurrection, but also in the tremors of the first steps that she needed to take in the world.

“This is why we all love her as a Mother. We are not orphans: we have a Mother in heaven who is the Holy Mother of God. Because she teaches us the virtue of waiting, even when everything seems to be without meaning; she is always trustful in the mystery of God, even when He seems to be eclipsed by the evil in the world. In moments of difficulty, may Mary, the Mother who Jesus gave to all of us, always be able to sustain our steps, may she always be able to say to our heart, ‘Arise! Look ahead, look to the horizon,’ because she is the Mother of hope.”

Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promise of Christ of eternal life!