In 2018 Pope Francis added a feast day for Mary, Mother of the Church to be celebrated on the Monday following Pentecost – and the date he chose was intentional. On Pentecost Sunday, we celebrate the birthday of the Church, and on the memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church, we celebrate the fact that Mary, as the mother of Our Lord, is intrinsically linked to the Church as her mother.
In issuing his decree to add this feast day to the Church’s calendar, Pope Francis wished to promote this devotion to “encourage the growth of the maternal sense of the Church in the pastors, religious and faithful, as well as a growth of genuine Marian piety.”
This year, the feast day is on May 20.
Why do we celebrate Mary as Mother of the Church?
While the popularity of the specific expression “Mother of the Church” has grown in recent centuries, the theological roots of this title for Mary go back to the early Church.
The Fathers of the Church often spoke of Mary as the New Eve. Just as the Woman Eve was “the mother of all the living” (Gen 3:20), the Woman Mary was mother of all those living in Christ. In Revelation 12:17, St. John says that this Woman’s offspring are “those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus.”
St. Augustine and St. Leo the Great also both reflected on the Virgin Mary’s importance in the mystery of Christ.
“In fact the former (St. Augustine) says that Mary is the mother of the members of Christ, because with charity she cooperated in the rebirth of the faithful into the Church, while the latter (St. Leo the Great) says that the birth of the Head is also the birth of the body, thus indicating that Mary is at once Mother of Christ, the Son of God, and mother of the members of his Mystical Body, which is the Church,” Pope Francis’ 2018 decree noted. It said these reflections are a result of the “divine motherhood of Mary and from her intimate union in the work of the Redeemer.”
Scripture, the decree said, depicts Mary at the foot of the Cross. There she became the Mother of the Church when she “accepted her Son’s testament of love and welcomed all people in the person of the beloved disciple as sons and daughters to be reborn unto life eternal.”
In 1964, the decree said, St. Paul VI “declared the Blessed Virgin Mary as ‘Mother of the Church, that is to say of all Christian people, the faithful as well as the pastors, who call her the most loving Mother’ and established that ‘the Mother of God should be further honored and invoked by the entire Christian people by this tenderest of titles.’”
What is the role of the Virgin Mary in the Church?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that Mary’s role in the Church is inseparable from her union with Christ and flows directly from it. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (487) makes it clear that our beliefs about Mary are all tied to her relationship with the Lord: “What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ.”
The Catechism also states (964-965): “This union of the mother with the Son in the work of salvation is made manifest from the time of Christ’s virginal conception up to his death”; it is made manifest above all at the hour of His Passion: Thus the Blessed Virgin advanced in her pilgrimage of faith, and faithfully persevered in her union with her Son unto the cross. There she stood, in keeping with the divine plan, enduring with her only begotten Son the intensity of His suffering, joining herself with His sacrifice in her mother’s heart, and lovingly consenting to the immolation of this victim, born of her: to be given, by the same Christ Jesus dying on the cross, as a mother to His disciple, with these words: “Woman, behold your son.” After her Son’s Ascension, Mary “aided the beginnings of the Church by her prayers.” In her association with the apostles and several women, “we also see Mary by her prayers imploring the gift of the Spirit, who had already overshadowed her in the Annunciation.”
St. Paul VI, in “Credo of the People of God,” further explained, “Joined by a close and indissoluble bond to the Mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption, the Blessed Virgin, the Immaculate, was at the end of her earthly life raised body and soul to heavenly glory and likened to her risen Son in anticipation of the future lot of all the just; and we believe that the Blessed Mother of God, the New Eve, Mother of the Church, continues in heaven her maternal role with regard to Christ’s members, cooperating with the birth and growth of divine life in the souls of the redeemed.”
— EWTN, CatholicCulture.org and the Vatican
Did you know?
“Mater Ecclesiae” is Latin for “Mother of the Church.”
What does the Catholic Church believe about Mary?
The Catholic Church has four dogmas regarding the Blessed Virgin:
- She is the Mother of God, also called “Theotokos” (Council of Ephesus, 431)
- Her Perpetual Virginity, i.e. maintained throughout her life (Lateran Council, 649)
- Her Immaculate Conception (Pope Pius IX, “Ineffabilis Deus,” 1854)
- Her Assumption into Heaven (Pope Pius XII, “Munificentissimus Deus,” 1950)
“O God, Father of mercies,
whose Only Begotten Son, as He hung upon the Cross,
chose the Blessed Virgin Mary, His Mother,
to be our Mother also,
grant, we pray, that with her loving help
your Church may be more fruitful day by day
and, exulting in the holiness of her children,
may draw to her embrace all the families of the peoples.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.”
– Collect for the Feast of Mary, Mother of the Church
Pictured above: Mural from the Church of the Visitation in Ein Kerem, near Jerusalem, depicting Mary protecting Christians with her mantle. The image was inspired by the oldest known hymn to the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Mother of God, the “Sub tuum praesidium,” first written down in the third century. Photo taken by Dominican Father Lawrence Lew, who has an extensive photography collection for people to enjoy on Flickr (search “Lawrence OP”).