ARCHDIOCESE OF PHILADELPHIA

Praised be Jesus Christ! Now and forever!

Dear Friends,

I am happy to greet my brother Bishops, priests and deacons, consecrated religious sisters and brothers, seminarians, and the many faithful of the parishes of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for participating in this wonderful tradition of pilgrimage in honor of the Holy Mother of God. I especially thank the children and teenagers, representatives of our schools, for your presence here today. My greetings extend also to those who are unable to be present with us today - especially the homebound and the infirm - who are united with us in prayer and in loving devotion to Mary. May the graces which flow from Mary’s Immaculate Heart fill us all as she leads us ever closer to her Divine Son.

How opportune it is for us in this Jubilee Year of Saint Paul the Apostle to come together and honor Mary under her title, Queen of Apostles. Throughout this year of grace, as we have celebrated the 2,000th birthday of Saint Paul, so we have had numerous occasions to consider the missions, the letters, the sufferings and the all-consuming zeal of the Apostle to the Gentiles. As we look at the history of the early Church, we know that Saint Paul preached the Gospel in Ephesus and ancient tradition holds that Mary, some time before her death and Assumption, lived with Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist in Ephesus. However, neither Scripture nor Tradition provides us with any evidence that Saint Paul ever met the Mother of Jesus. Yet, Saint Paul was deeply moved by the mystery of the Incarnationÿthe mystery of the Word made fleshÿand of the significant role which Mary played in God’s plan for the Redemption of the world.

The theme for our pilgrimage is taken directly from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Galatians: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Gal 4:4). The moment of the Incarnationÿthat singular moment in all of historyÿwas no accident. All things, all events, all circumstances in salvation history led up to that precise moment, which Paul refers to as “the fullness of time,” and, for that moment to occur, the consent of the humble and immaculate Virgin of Nazareth was indispensable. Paul understood profoundly that God became Man through the cooperation of Mary. Further, Paul understood that this mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption made possible the adoption of all people as the children of God. In the same passage from the Letter to the Galatians, Paul further explains that God sent his Son, “born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption. As proof that you are children of God, God sent the spirit of his Son into hearts, crying out: ‘Abba, Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God“ (Gal 4:4-7).

This doctrine of Divine Adoption was at the core of the teachings of the 20th -century Benedictine Abbot, Blessed Columba Marmion. This Blessed of the Church, who may be referred to as the Doctor of Divine Adoption, taught: “If the Eternal Father has decreed that we should be His children, but only so in His Son Jesus …; if He has made us partakers of the heritage of His beatitude only through His Son, - we can realize this divine plan and consequently assure our salvation, only by remaining united to the Word…. We shall understand nothing, I do not say merely of perfection, but even of simple Christianity, if we do not grasp that its most essential basis is constituted by the state of child of God, participation, through sanctifying grace, in the eternal filiation of the Incarnate Word. All the teachings of Christ and of the Apostles are summed up in this truth, all the mysteries of Jesus tend to establish its wonderful reality in our souls (see Christ in His Mysteries, pp. 51-55)” Blessed Marmion added: “The saint who is the highest in heaven is the one who here below was most perfectly a child of God, who made the grace of supernatural adoption in Jesus Christ fructify the most” (ibid., p.55).

Today, as the adopted children of God, we join in prayer to become more and more like Jesus, Our Risen Lord. We pray that we may live more deeply the life of God into which we entered through the sacrament of Baptism. Today, we pray that our life in Christ will bear much fruit that we might have a greater share in the reward of the saints in heaven. These petitions, these hopes and desires for greater holiness, our desire to become more like Jesus, we place before the throne of the Mother of God. We look to her, for through her cooperation in the eternal plan of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, it became possible for us to participate in the mystery of adoption. The “yes” of Mary to the plan of God paved the way for all of us to say “yes” as we open our hearts to conversion, to faith and to participation in the mission of the Church. Our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI reminds us: “Direct your gaze to the Virgin Mary and from her ‘yes,’ learn also to pronounce your ‘yes’ to the divine call. The Holy Spirit enters into our lives in the measure in which we open our hearts with our ‘yes’: the fuller the ‘yes,’ the fuller is the gift of his presence” (Meeting with university students of Rome, December 13, 2007).

The Liturgy of the Word for this Mass, in a very particular way, shows us aspects of Mary in fulfilling her “yes” to the plan of God. At the Foot of the Cross, with a heart pierced with tremendous sorrow, Mary unites herself to the sufferings of Jesus as He offers Himself to the Father for the redemption of the world. In that moment of intense pain, Jesus entrusts Mary to the care of the Beloved Disciple: “ ‘Woman, behold, your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother’” (Jn 19:26-27). Not merely was Mary entrusted to the care of Saint John, but at that moment Mary was given an honored place as the Mother of all who would be the disciples of Jesus, and in that gesture, Jesus has entrusted all of us to the care and protection of Mary. The Servant of God Pope John Paul II explained: “The words uttered by Jesus from the Cross signify that the motherhood of her who bore Christ finds a ‘new’ continuation in the Church and through the Church, symbolized and represented by John. In this way, she who as the one ‘full of grace’ was brought into the mystery of Christ in order to be his Mother and thus the Holy Mother of God, through the Church remains in that mystery as ‘the woman’ spoken of by the Book of Genesis (3:15) at the beginning and by the Apocalypse (12:1) at the ends of the history of salvation. In accordance with the eternal plan of Providence, Mary’s divine motherhood is to be poured out upon the Church, as indicated by statements of Tradition, according to which Mary’s ‘motherhood’ of the Church is the reflection and extension of her motherhood of the Son of God” (Redemptoris Mater, 24).

Taking to heart her role as Mother of the Church, Mary places herself in the Upper Room, in the midst of the Apostles and disciples of Jesus as they are at prayer awaiting the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. We can easily imagine Mary, seated in the midst of this group, praying with them, offering them encouragement, recounting for them details of the early, hidden life of Jesus. With the loving heart of a mother, Mary delighted to be with the disciples of her Son. Yet, with all the longing which a heart could express, Mary desired to be with Jesus in the glory of heaven. This would not happen until her mission here was accomplished. So, until her death and assumption into heaven, Mary remained the model of discipleship, a source of inspiration for the early Church, and truly fulfilled her role as Mother of the Church and Queen of Apostles. She continues to do so even now. As the preface for this liturgy so beautifully states: “In our day the Blessed Virgin inspires by her example new preachers of the Gospel, cherishes them with a mother’s love, and sustains them by her unceasing prayer, so that they may bring the Good News of Christ the Savior to all the world.”

This Eucharistic celebration in honor of Mary, Queen of Apostles invites us to realize and appreciate deeply that, in Christ, we are the adopted children of God. If we are the children of God, then we are heirs with Christ. It is then our mission to share with the world the Good News of the Redemption, the message of the mercy of God poured forth in the Paschal Mystery. We must realize that, filled with the Holy Spirit, it is our duty to cooperate in the mission of the Church to bring the love of Christ to all people so that all people may be saved. In a special way, we are urged on in our task of evangelization by Mary, Mother of the Church and Queen of Apostles.

From this Pilgrimage we return to our everyday lives with renewed hope and with a driving desire to bear the message of God’s love to others. To our homes and neighborhoods, to our workplaces and our schools, in the marketplace and in our parishes, we return to aid others to recognize the tremendous love of God, who, in Christ, has made us his children. We do so also under the guidance and inspiration of our Blessed Mother.

In his encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI exhorts us to remember this: “Mary has truly become the Mother of all believers. Men and women of every time and place have recourse to her motherly kindness and her virginal purity and grace, in all their needs and aspirations, their joys and sorrows, their moments of loneliness and their common endeavors. They constantly experience the gift of her goodness and the unfailing love which she pours out from the depths of her heart…. At the same time, the devotion of the faithful shows an infallible intuition of how such love is possible: it becomes so as a result of the most intimate union with God, through which the soul is totally pervaded by him - a condition which enables those who have drunk from the fountain of God’s love to become in their turn a fountain from which ‘flow rivers of living water’ (Jn 7:38). Mary, Virgin and Mother, shows us what love is and whence it draws its origin and its constantly renewed power. To her we entrust the Church and her mission in the service of love” (no. 42).

Mary, Queen of Apostles, pray for us! Pray for the Church of Philadelphia that we may always be generous, strong and faithful to Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord. Amen.