Bishop Anthony B. Taylor delivered this homily July 6 at St. Mary Church in Mountain View to mark the 30th anniversary of the mission’s establishment and 10th anniversary of the church building.
I’m sure that the most commonly chosen patron saint for Catholic churches worldwide is the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Indeed we have 32 churches in Arkansas named St. Mary’s, like here in Mountain View, or after one of her titles, like the Assumption or Immaculate Conception or Our Lady of Guadalupe, of Fatima, of Good Counsel, of the Holy Souls, of the Lake and so on. Indeed, the church here in Mountain View was founded out of St. Mary’s in Batesville. This is quite appropriate because Mary is our mother and she is the model of the Church.
1) As the mother of Jesus, Mary is also our mother since we are his brothers and sisters. Jesus made this explicit on Good Friday as she and John stood before him at the foot of the cross. “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, then said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his house.” Notice how beautifully Jesus makes explicit Mary’s role as the mother of Christians, personified by the beloved disciple.
2) Mary is also the model Christian, and in this Year of Faith marking the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, we should note that one of the four most important documents of the council, “Lumen Gentium,” the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, devotes an entire chapter to the role of Mary in God’s plan of salvation. The council emphasizes how much the example of her faithfulness to the Lord has to teach us about getting to know Jesus as she knew him — pondering everything in our hearts and then imitating her charity and fulfilling God’s will in our lives faithfully, just as she did in hers.
The readings chosen for this Mass celebrating your 30 years as a mission church and the 10th anniversary of the dedication of your church building make these points quite eloquently. They were taken from the readings for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is especially appropriate since the Holy Father has named her “the patroness of the Americas.” The Gospel of the Annunciation is used on her feast because in this apparition in Mexico Mary appeared as a pregnant woman, the rays of light surrounding her emanating from the child in her womb. That’s also why Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patroness of the pro-life movement in the United States.
In this Gospel account of the Annunciation, we see how Mary as our mother and Mary as our model of faithfulness come together. She is our mother according to the flesh because she is the mother of Jesus, who is our brother according to the flesh. She is also our mother according to the spirit because she is the mother of Christ, and we form with Jesus the one mystical body of Christ. As I said earlier, Jesus made Mary’s motherhood of us clear on Good Friday when he explicitly gave Mary to us to be our mother.
We also see in this Gospel of the Annunciation how Mary is the model Christian because once she learned God’s will for her life, she set aside all of her fears and doubts, saying “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” This would have seemed like a very risky thing for her to do. She was pregnant with a very hard-to-believe explanation of how she got that way. She faced the incomprehension of others and possible rejection, and not only by Joseph, her fiancé. But that was what it took to bear our Savior into the world.
In subsequent years she pondered everything in her heart and stayed with her son to the very end.
Mary reminds us that if we are to be faithful to God’s plan in our lives, we too must set aside our fears and doubts. We too must say, “I am the servant of the Lord,” and regardless of whatever risks might be involved — including the incomprehension or rejection of others—may God’s will be done in our life too. May we bear our Savior into the world today, into the lives of people today — right here in Stone County — who so much need the salvation Jesus offers us.
