Genuine Filial Love for Our Mother

When King David was old and advanced in years, though they spread covers over him he could not keep warm. His servants therefore said to him, “Let a young virgin be sought to attend you, lord king, and to nurse you. If she sleeps with your royal majesty, you will be kept warm.” So they sought for a beautiful girl throughout the territory of Israel, and found Abishag the Shunamite, whom they brought to the king. The maiden, who was very beautiful, nursed the king and cared for him, but the king did not have relations with her.” 1 King 1: 1-4

The great David is old, weak and cold: he seeks comfort, passively, in the arms of a beautiful virgin. No longer fierce warrior, virile lover, magnificent king; he has regressed back to infancy and it’s longing for connection with the nurture of life-giving fecund femininity. While he is in this weakened condition, his son Adonijah plots to take over the kingdom against David’s pledge to Bathsheba and Solomon so that the nation moves towards division and bloodshed.

David is paradigmatic: Every day we learn of some powerful, celebrated and aging man who shames himself and his family by marital infidelity and a desperate but passive surrender into the arms of a young beauty. Governors are prone to this. Think of Hugh Heffner who surrounds himself with young beauties who could be his granddaughters.

In his gracious providence, however, our heavenly Father has given each of us such a perennially young virgin to nurse, warm and comfort us: Mary our Mother and the Church as virgin spouse and mother. These two mutually indwell each other so that we receive in Mary, the Church; and in the Church Mary. In baptism, we become forever children of our Father, but also sons and daughters of Mary and the Church. So, in a spiritual and chaste but corporal and concrete manner we are always receptive of the Immaculate’s liberating maternity; we remain childlike, innocent, and trusting in a holy dependency that is always freeing and empowering.

Consider than the virility and paternity of John Paul II and Benedict XVI: both exhibit an abiding filiality towards Mary and Church; this filiality grounds and empowers their vigorous virility, paternity, royalty and wisdom. Child of the Father and of Mary and of the Church, such men do not grow weak and cold with time but deepen and purify their potency as lovers, fathers, warriors, kings and wise men.

Today, as every Saturday, we celebrate Mary our Mother. Recalling St. Cyril of Alexandria, great defender of Mary as Mother of God, we especially renew our filial love for her. In doing this, we are warmed, strengthened and invigorated by her virginal innocence in its purity, vitality, fecundity, hopefulness, and freshness.