My dear sisters and brothers in the Lord,
As the day was approaching, when the Lord had already foreseen that he would freely give His life for the salvation of those who would believe in Him, He prepared to give His disciples two great gifts. And today we celebrate both gifts and how one is so intimately linked with the other. For my young friends, the first gift is what brings us to Sunday mass, what brings us here today. For as you know, on the night before the Lord offered His life for us, He gathered with His disciples in the upper room and shared with them a meal that was His heritage as a faithful jewish man. But He took that meal and transformed it into the sacrament of our salvation.
For in simple bread and wine, Jesus celebrated His Passover from death to life that would unfold in the days ahead. And each time we come to mass, you and I, in an unbloody way, participate in the one act, the one sacrifice that has set us all free, that dares us to hope that our sins will be forgiven if we ask in sorrow, and that the doors of heaven are open to every single one of us who is willing to walk with Him. My young friends, we come here so that we could receive the food of eternal life given to us by the Lord himself. An extraordinary gift. But as we just heard in the gospel, Jesus also gives us a second gift.
Moments before He literally handed over His spirit to the Father. His last great gift was his own mother, the Virgin Mary, the one who said yes to the angel Gabriel, the one whose yes allowed her son to enter into the world, the one woman above all others who had set the stage for our salvation.
You know, my young friends, all through the history of the Church, to try to understand the enormous importance of our lady, many people have used different images. One in particular I find absolutely beautiful, and I’d like to share it with you this morning. You know, my young friends, there was a time when there was no GPS, right? There was no Internet. For thousands of years, mariners who would travail the seas and the oceans relied on maps of stars and of the moon.
And it was those maps that allowed them to find their way home safely. The image of the moon has been used to describe the beauty of our lady for three reasons. As you know from science, the moon does not generate any light of its own, but it reflects the light of the sun that is hidden. But we see it because the sun is shining, and it reflects that sun. Number two is that the moon allows us to find our way when the sky is the darkest, where there is perhaps no other light to guide us.
The moon rises so that we have a path. And of course, in the end, number three, if you follow that path, generations of sailors found their way safely home.
You see, our lady is our spiritual moon. For our lady is the one, above all other disciples, who shone completely the light of Christ. Our lady’s life had nothing to do with our lady and had everything to do with her son, Jesus. Her last words were, do whatever He tells you, which is exactly how she lived her life. Everything about our lady points to the Son of God, whose light shines in the darkness of our lives, as she is present to us, us in the darkest moments of our life, so that she may lead us home to her son.
And our Lord knew that. And our Lord knew that we would struggle, all of us, through the ages, with our own sinfulness, with our own disobedience, with our own temptation to pride or to think that my life is all about me or that my opinion is what matters. He knew that we would all struggle. And so He gave us both the food of life and the woman who is our model and our lady, if you and I share her example, will lead us not only to receive the Eucharist worthily, but to see her son one day face to face. And as you know, when a mother loves her children, there is nothing she will not do for them.
And there is nothing our lady will not do for us. For you, my young friends, if you turn to her, because her heart is most joyful when you and I are one with her son, how blessed are we. How great are the gifts God gives us. Who are we to have the food of eternal life and the mother of all mothers who will lead us to glory? But that is who we are.
We are the Church. We are the disciples of Jesus Christ. We are the ones chosen by Him to carry His life and message and mission in the world. And today we celebrate the fact that we all have the same Mother Mary, mother of the church. May she lead us safely home so that one day we might all share in the glory of everlasting life.