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Cantalamessa First Lenten Sermon 2020
Cantalamessa First Lenten Sermon 2020
”
The Kenosis of the Mother of God
First Sermon, Lent 2020
~Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap~
Preacher of the Papal Household
We must admit that the New Testament doesn’t tell us much about
Mary, at least not as much as we would expect, considering the place the
Mother of God was to acquire in the Church. However, an attentive study will
show us that Mary figures into the three most important stages constituting
the mystery of salvation. In fact, there are three specific stages that together
form the great mystery of redemption: the incarnation of the Word, the
paschal mystery, and Pentecost.
Mary was present at all three of these fundamental events. She was
certainly present at the incarnation, which actually took place in her womb.
Mary was present at the paschal mystery, because it is written that she was
standing by the cross of Jesus (see Jn 19:25). Finally, she was present at
Pentecost, because it is written that the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles
while they were with one accord devoted to prayer together with Mary, the
mother of Jesus (see Acts 1:14). Mary’s presence in these three key
moments of our salvation cannot have been by mere chance. They
guarantee her a unique place beside Jesus in the work of redemption. Mary
was the only one of all mankind to witness and take part in all three of these
events.
On this second part of our journey let us follow Mary in the paschal
mystery and allow her to guide us to a deeper understanding and
participation in Christ’s sufferings. May Mary take us by the hand and
encourage us to follow her along the way as she tells us, like a mother
talking to her children gathered round her, “Let us also go, that we may die
with him” (Jn 11:16). In the Gospel, these words were uttered by Thomas, but
it was Mary who lived them.
Parallel with the journey of the new obedient Adam, the journey of the
new Eve developed. For Mary too, the paschal mystery began rather early.
Simeon’s words on the sign of contradiction and the sword that would pierce
her heart had already been a premonition, which Mary kept in her heart
together with all the other words. The aim of the present meditation is to
follow Mary during Jesus’ public life and to see her as our model during this
period.
What happens normally when a soul called to holiness has been filled
with grace? What happens when that soul has generously said yes in faith
and has willingly started to do good works and cultivate virtue? A period of
purification and deprivation follows. The dark night of faith arrives. And we
shall see that in this period of her life, Mary is our guide and model precisely
in how we should behave when it is “pruning time” in our lives.
It was thought that she had been exempted not only from original sin
and corruption (privileges the Church defined in the dogmas on the
Immaculate Conception and the Assumption), but it was even believed that
Mary had been exempted from the pangs of childbirth, from fatigue, doubt,
temptation, ignorance, and (worse still) even from death. In fact, some
believed that Mary didn’t die before being assumed into heaven.
All these things, it was reasoned, are consequences of sin, but Mary
was sinless. They didn’t realize that instead of associating Mary with Jesus,
they were totally dissociating her from him who, although he was without
sin, had wanted to experience all these things: fatigue, sorrow, anguish,
temptation, and death for our sake. All of this was reflected in the
iconography on the Blessed Mother in the way she was depicted in statues,
paintings, and pictures, generally as a disincarnate and idealized creature of
a beauty that was often purely human and that any woman would love to
possess—as a woman, in brief, who seems to have barely touched the earth.
In the New Testament there are very powerful statements about Jesus.
One of these says that “we have not a high priest who is unable to
sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been
tempted as we are, yet without sinning” (Heb 4:15); another statement tells
us that “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he
suffered” (Heb 5:8). If Mary followed her son in his kenosis, these words, with
the due distinctions made, apply to her also and are the key to
understanding her life. Although she was the mother, Mary learned
obedience through what she suffered.
Mary, too, learned obedience and faith; she grew in both through what
she suffered, so that with all confidence we may say of her that we have a
mother who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, our fatigue, and our
temptations, one who was tempted as we are, yet without sinning.
Let us start with the loss of Jesus in the Temple (see Lk 2:41ff.). This
was the beginning of the paschal mystery of deprivation for the mother. In
fact, what did he say to her when they found him? “How is it that you sought
me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (v. 49). “How is
it that you sought me?”—words that placed a different will between Jesus
and Mary, an infinitely more important will, making every other relationship
secondary, even his filial relationship with her.
All three of the Synoptic Gospels relate this next episode, which took
place during Jesus’ public ministry. One day while Jesus was preaching, his
mother and his brethren came to talk with him. Just like any mother, his
mother was probably worried about his health, because the preceding verses
recount that he could not even eat because of the crowd (see Mk 3:20). A
small detail to note: Mary, his mother, had to beg even for the right to see
him and talk with him. She didn’t take advantage of being his mother to push
her way through the crowd. Instead, she remained standing outside, and it
was others who went to Jesus and said, “Your mother and your brethren are
outside asking for you.” But here too, the important thing is what Jesus said:
“Who are my mother and my brethren?” (Mk 3:33).
Another day, St. Luke relates, a woman in the crowd raised her voice in
an enthusiastic outburst toward Jesus, exclaiming, “Blessed is the womb that
bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!” This compliment would be
enough on its own to make any mother happy, but Mary, if she was present
or came to hear of it, couldn’t dwell on these words long enough to relish
them because Jesus hastened to correct the woman at once and said,
“Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Lk 11:27-
28).
Let us look at one last example. At a certain point in his Gospel, St. Luke
mentions Jesus’ female followers, and he names some holy women who had
been blessed by him and who “provided for him out of their means” (see Lk
8:2-3), that is to say, they looked after his and the apostles’ material needs,
preparing meals for them, washing or mending their clothes. How does this
concern Mary? She was not mentioned among these women, and we all
know how much a mother longs to do these little things for a son, especially
if he is consecrated to the Lord. It was the total sacrifice of her heart.
Such a precise and coherent series of facts and words cannot be there
just by pure chance. Mary, too, had to go through
her kenosis. Jesus’ kenosis consisted in this: instead of asserting his divine
rights and prerogatives, he deprived himself, becoming a servant and
appearing before all as a man just like any other man.
Mary’s kenosis consisted in the fact that, instead of asserting her rights as
the Messiah’s mother, she let herself be deprived and appeared before all as
a woman just like any other woman.
The fact that he was God’s Son didn’t spare Christ all kinds of
humiliations, just as the fact of being God’s mother didn’t spare Mary all
kinds of humiliations. Jesus said the Word is what God uses to prune and
clean the branches: “You are already made clean by the word which I have
spoken to you” (Jn 15:3), and this is the way he “pruned” his mother. Was
this not, perhaps, precisely the sword that would one day pierce her heart,
as Simeon had predicted?
On the one hand, he let himself be led by the Father by means of the
Spirit wherever the Father wanted: into the desert to be tempted, up the
mountain to be transfigured, into Gethsemane to sweat blood. He said, “I
always do what is pleasing to him” (Jn 8:29). On the other hand, Jesus led
Mary in the same “race” to do the Father’s will.
Here we see the unique personal holiness of the Mother of God, the
highest marvel of grace. To realize this, all we have to do is make a
comparison with St. Peter, for example. When Jesus informed Peter that
rejection, passion, and death awaited him in Jerusalem, Peter rebuked him
and said, “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you” (Mt 16:22). He
was worried about Jesus but also about himself. Mary wasn’t worried about
herself.
The fact that Mary kept silent doesn’t signify that everything was easy
for her and that she didn’t have to overcome difficulties. She was free from
sin, not from struggle and from what saint John Paul II calls “ the particular
heaviness of heart, linked with a sort of night of faith”. If Jesus in
Gethsemane had to struggle and sweat blood to get his human will to adhere
fully to the Father’s will, is it surprising that his mother had to face agony
too? One thing, however, is certain: under no circumstance
whatsoever would Mary have wanted to turn back. When certain souls, led
by God along similar paths, are asked if they want to pray for it to end and
go back to being as they once were, they immediately answer, “No!”, no
matter how perturbed they are and even at times on the verge of apparent
desperation.
In the flesh Mary is therefore only Christ’s mother, but spiritually she is
his sister and mother.[5]
Are we therefore to think that Mary’s life was one of constant affliction,
a dismal life? On the contrary. Judging it in accordance with the lives of the
saints, we must say that day by day Mary discovered a new kind of joy, with
respect to the maternal joys of Bethlehem or Nazareth, when she pressed
Jesus to her breast and he pressed himself to her cheek. The joy of not doing
her own will. The joy of believing. The joy of giving to God what for him is the
most precious thing, just as, also in relation to God, there is greater joy in
giving than in receiving. The joy of discovering a God whose ways are
inaccessible and whose thoughts are not our thoughts but who, because of
this, makes himself known for what he really is: God, the Holy One.
From our meditation on Mary during the public life of Jesus we can take
a consoling assurance: We have a mother who is able to understand our
weakness having been “tempted” herself in every way, like us, except sin.
Now that she lives glorified in heaven at the side of her Son, she can stretch
out her hand and pull us in her wake, saying to us with even more truth than
the Apostle, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1).
In this time of great suffering let us turn to the Mother of God with the prayer
so dear to the Christian people: