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

In the upper room on Pentecost – the birthday of the Church – Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was the prominent figure named by St. Luke specifically and, in fact, the only one named personally after the 11 Apostles! This is the first time Mary appears in the Scriptures since the account by St. John of the episode at the Cross of Jesus when Our Lord commended His Mother to the beloved disciple, “Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” During these 50 days the Scriptures relate many accounts of the appearances of the Resurrected Lord to Mary Magdalene, the other woman, the disciples and the Apostles, yet Mary, the Mother of Jesus is not mentioned. Why?

Is it perhaps because these 50 days in the life of the early Church are a period of a kind of spiritual ‘labor pains’ of faith? Some disciples had become so despondent at the public rejection and cruel death of the Lord that they gave up and were heading home to Emmaus; others were as incredulous at the news of the Risen Lord as “doubting Thomas;”and even at the Ascension of the Lord, we are told, that some among the 500 witnesses there some still had doubts. Yet it is also a time of these doubters coming to full, confident faith in the Resurrection of Jesus, embracing Him as Lord and God and recognizing him in the breaking of bread. These are the labor pains of the early Church in anticipation of its going forth on Pentecost.

While on the Cross, Jesus had confirmed his Mother’s vocation as the Mother of the Church (cf. Lumen Gentium ch. 8), the spiritual Mother of all the newly to-be-born disciples – Faith-filled brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus!

Since Mary was so attentive to the words about and by the Lord (cf. Lk 2: 19 & 51) and the divinely inspired praise of Elizabeth to Mary about her Faith, “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled,”(Lk 1:45) we can be very safe and even certain that Mary had faith in the third-day Resurrection of her Son who announced it several times to his disciples. She kept that faith even through the Cross and burial – as any of us are called to faith in the resurrection of our deceased loved ones even though we feel tremendous sorrow and grief at their passing. Mary, then, is the “Woman of Faith” who as Mother of the Church is in seclusion these 50 days praying for and with the disciples until the day of their going forth with power of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost to the whole world.

Mary, Mother of the Church, Pray for us.

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