The following is a summary of a recent diocesan letter sent to all parishes:
It saddens me somewhat when I feel that our various communities do not highlight the festivities surrounding the patroness of our diocese, scheduled for October 11, nor do they celebrate them adequately. Have we forgotten that October 11 marks the anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council? Let us not forget that our diocese was established during this Council and it is spiritually linked with this major ecclesial event! Furthermore, in proclaiming this Marian title at the closing of the Council, Pope Paul VI wanted to show that there was a profound and dynamic relationship between the Church’s conciliar doctrine and Mary, as mother of the Church.
As mother of the Church, Mary has a mission: to contribute to the birth in faith and in the sacraments of the members of Christ, and to bring the faithful to welcome and obey the Spirit who identifies us with Jesus. Mary became the mother of the body at the foot of the cross: “Behold, your son”. Then she gives us advice to lead a Christian and apostolic life, which she had already given to the servants at the wedding in Cana: “Do whatever he tells you”. These simple words, coming from a mother and an educator, stimulate us in seriously considering Mary’s spiritual role towards us, our communities and diversified groups and our diocesan Church as a whole. Mary is then the catechist, teaching us who is Jesus, how to get close to him, and to live in him and of him, as he lives in us. Saint Paul again serves as a striking example: “I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me. (Galatians 2, 19-20)
In short, Mary as Mother of the Church comes before us as both the mother who collaborates in engendering our baptismal spiritual life and as a guide leading us to the sacramental, spiritual, intimate and internal sources of the Christian vitality. And so, essentially, she is teaching us the mission.
For, like all biographies of saints will tell us, it is by knowing Jesus intimately, by forever remaining more united to him, by accepting, as Mary did, his Spirit, that we can, or in fact that we are in some way forced internally to, become convincing witnesses. As Pope Paul VI stated so strongly in 1975, our world is not in need of propagandists, but of witnesses, of individuals who have experienced the invisible and who dare reveal the dynamic vitality and happiness for our world. We are called by God, devoted to Christ for the mission which, basically, brings hope, realizations and a future to a world that is too often desperate or forgetful of the meaning of its history and of God’s plan for the whole world.
Like the apostles after Pentecost constantly contemplated Mary’s face to remember Jesus’, so it is that Mary for us is a reflection of this love and of this incarnated mercy for which we are all thirsting.
May this annual celebration of our patroness help us move towards those important vital sources (i.e. the community, the Gospel and the sacraments) of our life as a Church.
Have a good 2010 celebration!
† Roger Ébacher
Bishop of Gatineau
September 28, 2010
