Hear the Word of God and Do It: Become Mothers of Christ - The New Evangelization

The New Evangelization

You give birth to Christ in your very self by receiving the Word of God by the gift of yourself. You go out of yourself to say "Yes!" You receive the Word. Then saturate Him with your humanity as our Lady did. Bring him into each of the daily details you live in ordinary life. You live; no, not you. Christ lives in you. (cf. Gal 2. 20). You are now doing what she did. Christ lives now as then.

November 21: Presentation of Mary in the Temple by Her Parents

Gospel text: Mt. 12, 46-50: Jesus replied to the question “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers? stretching out his hand to his disciples: “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and siter, and mother.”

St. Augustine comments: "Did the Virgin Mary, who believed by faith and conceived by faith, who was the chosen one from whom our Savior was born among men, who was created by Christ before Christ was created in her – did she not do the will of the Father? Indeed the blessed Mary certainly did the Father’s will, and so it was for her a greater thing to have been Christ’s disciple than to have been his mother, and she was more blessed in her discipleship than in her motherhood. Hers was the happiness of first bearing in her womb him whom she would obey as her master”…

“Now having said that all of you are brothers of Christ, shall I not dare to call you his mother? Much less would I dare to deny his own words. Tell me how Mary became the mother of Christ, if it was not by giving birth to the members of Christ? You, to whom I am speaking, are the members of Christ. Of whom were you born? ‘Of Mother Church,’ I hear the reply of your hearts. You became sons of this mother at your baptism; you came to birth then as members of Christ. Now you in your turn must draw to the font of baptism as many as you possibly can. You became sons when you were born there yourselves, and now by bringing others to birth in the same way, you have it in your power to become the mothers of Christ.”

(Augustine. Sermon 25, 7-8)