1 June: Homily based on Acts 1:12-14

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(Please read the Scripture passage first, before the homily.)

We celebrate today the Memorial of Mary, the Mother of the Church.  In the upper room, the Church has gathered, a hundred twenty people, symbolically ten from each of the twelve tribes of Israel.  Both women and men are in the upper room.  Family members and disciples are there.  The atmosphere is intense: the Church awaits the coming of the Holy Spirit.

It is a time of birth, much like the time in Genesis, when God brought a deep sleep upon and the man and gave him Eve for his wife.  In one sense, the birth already happened on Calvary when from the sleeping side of Christ the Church was born.  In another sense, it is one and the same birth, albeit in two different modalities, much as conception and birth are two modalities of a child’s new life.

It is Genesis again, but in mystery and in the truthfulness of the reality called myth or mysticism.  In Genesis, the head was asleep on the cross.  In Acts, the body was awaiting the coming of the Holy Breath of God that would awaken the sleeping Body of Christ.  On Pentecost, the Church would spring into life, and proclaim the glorious resurrection of the Lord Jesus.  The body that was awaiting birth would come into the light of day.  In Spanish, “come into the light of day” translates the English “give birth”.

The Church in the upper room, then, is a Church ready for birth.  Just as Eve came forth from Adam’s sleep, so Mary, the Mother of Jesus, becomes the Mother of the Church in the sleep that precedes Pentecost.

We are speaking of mystery and the mystic reality of myth here, so do not look for exactness in the parallels.  We are looking at a mega picture, a supernatural grandeur that lies hidden by frail, human, words.  It is like what Jesus did on the way to Emmaus when he explained to the two disciples “all the referred to him in all the scriptures (Luke 24:27).”  In the short space of a walk, he explained to the disciples the grand panoply and the immense design of God’s plan from the beginning.  So now, somehow Genesis finds fullness in Acts just as conception finds fulfilment in birth.  So now the mother of all the living in Genesis becomes the mother of the full Christ, the head and the body, and, hence, the mother of the Church, in Acts.

In the upper room is Mary the Mother of Jesus with his family and disciples.  Christ the head and the Church the body make up the whole Christ.  Mary, the mother of Christ is the mother of this whole Christ, the risen head and his full body, the Church.  This mystery, this wonderment, we celebrate today in this memorial that hails Mary as Mother of the Church.