Our
Lady, the Church, and the Workers of
the Vineyard
by: Fr. Andrew Younan
Mysterious Relationships
Though we neither know
nor understand how, since it
was the miraculous work of the Holy
Spirit, we do know and understand
that Mary, a virgin, became the
mother of the Son of God – we can
grasp the relationship between Mary
and Christ, though the causality of
this relationship is beyond us. In
the same way, we know that in every
corner of the New Testament Christ
is named the Bridegroom, and the
Church the Bride. But, just as we
cannot grasp the miracle of the
Virgin Birth of Christ, we cannot
grasp how this Heavenly Marriage
takes place, since it is the work of
the invisible and indefinable grace
of God.
But the mystery is even
deeper than that; the more we try to
define even the relationships
between these holy figures, the more
we realize that our definitions are
incomplete and unsuitable. Mary is
Christ’s mother, making her
(somehow) the mother-in-law of the
Church; but in another sense, she is
a member of the Church. The Church
is also somehow his mother, since it
is in the baptismal font, the “womb”
of the Church, that Christ is born
within the souls of the faithful.
Mother & Bride
In the book of
Revelation, there is a mysterious
woman described as a sign: “And a
great sign appeared in heaven, a
woman clothed with the sun, with the
moon under her feet, and on her head
a crown of twelve stars; she was
with child and she cried out in her
pangs of birth, in anguish for
delivery.” (Revelation 12:1-2) Who
is this woman? Her child is attacked
by a dragon, as well as her other
children who are described later:
“Then the dragon was angry with the
woman, and went off to make war on
the rest of her offspring, on those
who keep the commandments of God and
bear testimony to Jesus.”
(Revelation 12: 17) The Church is
somehow our spiritual mother, and so
is Mary; and Mary is therefore a
symbol of the Church.
In the midst of such
complexity, our Chaldean Church
offers a beautiful hymn to describe
the relationship between the Church
and Mary:
The Church says to Mary, “come, let
us go as one
and appease the Son of the Almighty
on behalf of the iniquity of the
world.
You appease him because you suckled
him with milk,
I will appease him because he
prepared Blood for my wedding feast.
You appease him as a mother, and I
as a bride,
for he heeds his mother, and he
answers his betrothed.”
The details of the relationship,
which are beyond us, are not the
point. The point is that the Lord
loves his mother and his bride, and
that they return this love in their
own ways which are, though distinct,
both expressions of pure, spiritual
love.
The
Workers of the Vineyard
The intense love of a
bride and the tender care of a
mother are the traits which
accompany the ceremony we look
forward to on May 15th.
On that day,
Reem
Salman and
Rana Raban
will make their vows to dedicate
themselves as nuns for the next two
years. This is the continuation of a
formative period in which they will
prepare to become, on the day of
their final vow, visible symbols of
the Church, the bride of Christ.
Moreover, they will during this time
follow the model given to them by
Our Lady, and become spiritual
mothers to the faithful of our
Diocese, with special attentiveness
to our youth. Thus their names will
be changed, on that day, to Sr.
Miskenta Mariam and Sr. Tarbytha
Mariam, names given to them by their
superiors in the Church to reflect
their goal of sanctity (since the
names given to them are those of
saints), their Chaldean identity
(since the saints are of our own
tradition), and the reality of their
Marian patronage.
Our Lady of the Fields, pray for us!!
