Jesus Christ had come to transform everything. He had come to take men out of the orbit of the flesh and place them in the orbit of the Spirit. With his arrival, all consanguinity ties would expire, and the borders of the spirit would be established, within which God would be the father of all of us and all of us would be brothers to one another (Mt 23,8).
Much more still: for all those who radically assume the will of the Father, God becomes father, mother, wife, brother… (Mt 12,50; Lk 8,21). Everything human would be assumed, not suppressed. Everything would be sublimated, not destroyed. It was the revolution of the spirit.
All human reality moves in closed orbits, and Jesus Christ had come to open man to unlimited horizons. Thus, for example, fatherhood, motherhood, the home, human love; unfold in closed circles, and Jesus Christ wanted to open these realities towards perfect love, towards paternal, maternal, fraternal universality… In one word, He had come to implant the sphere of the Spirit.
After his resurrection, Jesus Christ will establish the Kingdom of the Spirit: The Church. Which is not a human institution, rather a community of men who were born, not from the desire of flesh or blood, but from God himself (Jn 1,13). It is God’s people; children of God, born of the Spirit.
At Pentecost there will be a new birth. For the second time Jesus will be born, but this time not according to the flesh as in Bethlehem, but according to the Spirit. There is no birth without a mother. If it was a spiritual birth, the mother would have to be spiritual. The mother, humanly speaking, is a sweet reality. That sweet reality would have to die, in a transforming evolution, because for every birth there is a death.
Mary, then, would have to journey. Somehow, she would have to forget that she was a “Mother” according to the flesh. Her behavior, or better, the mutual relationship between Mother and Son, would have to unfold as if the two were strangers to one another.
In one word, Mary would have to leave her maternal orbit, closed in on herself—the sphere of the flesh—and she would have to enter the sphere of faith. The reason for all of this, is that Christ needed a mother in spirit for his second birth at Pentecost. The Church is the living prolongation of Jesus Christ, projected and poured out throughout history.
Taken from the book “El Silencio de María” (Mary’s Silence) fourth chapter: “Journey” by Father Ignacio Larrañaga
