After His resurrection, Jesus Christ will establish the Kingdom of the Spirit: the Church. This is not a human institution, but rather a community of men born not from the desire of the flesh or the blood, but from God Himself (Jn 1:13). It is the community of “children of God”, born of the Spirit.
My Father will send you an Advocate, who will also be an Illuminator, who will help you remember everything and will dispel the mists from your horizons, so that all that I said and did may appear transparent to your eyes.
On the day of Pentecost, in the “upper room” of the house in Jerusalem (Acts 1:13), the Mother is present, presiding over the group of the committed ones who are awaiting the arrival of the Spirit who, with Mary and in Mary, will give birth to Jesus Christ for a second time, and this time, will give Him birth in the Spirit. The Holy Church of God was born, and it was born -through the work of the Holy Spirit- of the Virgin Mary.
At that moment, Mary had already completed her Paschal journey; she had brought to fruition the new spiritual gestation, and now, once again, she was The Mother, Mother in faith and in the Spirit, Universal Mother, Mother of the Church, Mother of Humanity and of History.
The Book of Acts is known as the “Gospel of the Holy Spirit” -and rightly so. It is remarkable; there is not a single chapter in which the Holy Spirit is not mentioned three or four times.
This book describes the first steps. Is it not true that this nascent Church -presided over by the invisible presence of the Holy Spirit- was also presided over by the silent presence of the Mother, as we have seen above? In any case, if the Apostles received all the gifts of the Spirit on that dawn of Pentecost, we could well imagine the abundance received by the Mother, who had previously received the personal and life-giving Presence of the Holy Spirit.
Could not the boldness and fortitude with which the Church conducted itself in its early days be a sharing in the gifts of the Mother? Truly, the most precise title ever bestowed upon Mary is this: Mother of the Church.
Excerpted from the book “The Silence of Mary” by Father Ignacio Larrañaga.
