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We Need Mary

By Fr. Nelson Medina, O.P.

The Blessed Virgin Mary was evangelised by the Holy Archangel Gabriel. We can seethe whole scene of the Annunciation as a defining moment in transmitting thegospel, that is, as a profound and beautiful lesson on evangelising.

Had you ever note that evangelising has an angel within? It is not a punit goesdown to the Greek roots of our own language. Angelos, in Greek, means: messenger;Eu-aggelon means: good news. Evangelise is to be like an Angel, like a new Gabrieltelling people the great news of Gods love.

The same Gospel that tells us the story of the Annunciation shortly after tells usof the Visitation. There is more than a chronological order in this. There is aninner logic that goes from receiving the gospel, as Mary did in the Annunciation,to sharing the gospel, as Mary did in visiting Elizabeth. Please, observe that youcan replace gospel for the adorable person of Jesus Christ and the effect isthe same: we receive Christ when we accept the gospel; we announce Christ when weshare what we believe.

The Blessed Virgin is therefore the very model of every true Christian life. Thereis no Christian life without Christ, but Christ will not remain idle within thehearts of the believers. It is to be expected that whoever embraces his Word is inturn compelled to offer that same word of salvation to others.

Frank Duff saw all this with great clarity and acted accordingly. He saw that Maryis the best definition of Christian life, for it is not a static model but aliving testimony of the beauty and power of Christs grace and message. Withoutthe Saints, speaking in general, and I dare to say: without Mary, speaking inparticular, we are at great risk of considering the gospel only as a set of nicelyconnected terms.

Yet we do not, or at least should not, speak of Jesus Christ as a set of writings,

a good portion of knowledge, alike Mohammads teachings or the Buddhas sentences.There is a lot of wise people all around, and many of them are really clever incrafting beautiful and meaningful phrases. Nonetheless, Christ is not another onein the long line of the wise and remarkable speakers of this world. As believers,we claim that it is not his teaching but He himself who acts upon the hearts ofthose who believe. Christs message is not life-changing because we decide tochange and make the effort but because we decide to believe and open our being tothe One we trust can change us.

If you were a Muslim, or a Buddhist, you had to make the effort of putting in topractice what you learnt from the Koran or from the sayings of the Buddha. If youare a Christian though your effort aims above all to one thing, just one thing: toaccept that Jesus is the living Lord of your life, and that He will actively

transform your mind, of course, but also your will, your memory, your fantasy,your imagination, your body, so that you resemble more and more his Body, that wasrisen from the dead.

Indeed, your life will change! However it is not you, but Christ, the livingChrist, who is to transform and change everything in you.

To come to believe with all our heart that Christ is alive and life-giving we needmore than mere words. We have to see lives truly and deeply changed by Him. Thisis why we need the Church. The Protestant teaching of Sola Scriptura is utterlywrong, for we need the community and not only the book. We need the Church, we

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need Christs Body, which is the Church, in order to believe that Christs messageis not only a set of nicely jointed words.

Even more: what we need from the Church is not firstly her passing structural orinstitutional services but the Holiness that dwells in Her. In touching, in beingin touch with the transformation that the Risen Lord produces in the believers wecome to trust in His contagious love and his far-reaching compassion.

By the same token, we need Mary. We really need Her. We, the Church, need Mary,for we are in great need of seeing the end of the story, the finished version, thefinal outcome of Christs proposal. In Her we behold Christs grace in all itssplendour. In Her we learn that Christ is not watching us from afar but watchingover us from within.