Mary Queen of Obedience.

In a Sunday in early March this year, I was standing in arguably the most famous pulpit of all Poland, that in the Church of Our Lady of Jasna Gora (which means Shining Mountain). This is home to the famous ikon "Black Madonna" with the sword-scarred face, in the city of Czestochowa. That ikon is the principal treasure among thousands of historic and artistic treasures assembled in the stunning museums of that shrine. I was a pilgrim there with an international team promoting devotion to the United Hearts of Jesus and Mary. We had presented a day-long conference in Warsaw the day before.

Jasna Gora is a symbol of the embattled Polish nation down through history. For example, in 1655, a Swedish army of three thousand was miraculously repulsed by a mere 250 monks and soldiers after 40 days of siege and fierce attacks. In 1979, an unbelievable 3 1/2 million pilgrims came for the visit of Pope John Paul II, in only three days. Thousands were there on the day of my own visit. Many were young people; some had come a long distance on foot.

Was Polish devotion and trust for Our Lady rewarded in recent times? Indeed yes. After 45 years of Communist oppression, the Iron Curtain suddenly crumbled, and Poland, along with most of Eastern Europe, became relatively free to shape its own future.

This contemporary act of "salvation" calls to our mind the author of Hebrews. He writes (5:8-9) that "the Son of God learned obedience by the things he suffered and having been made perfect he became, to all that obey him, the cause of eternal salvation."

Obedience of Jesus

The obedience here is that of Jesus the Son to God His Father. How can the divine, perfect, all-knowing Jesus "learn obedience?" He "learned" it in a human way by experience, the experience of a human life of profound suffering, culminating in the horrific sacrifice of the cross. He said, "I do always the things that please Him (the Father)." His perfect proclamation of truth and goodness led to increasing resistance and hostility from the many leaders of the very People of God. It led to Good Friday, to the Sacrifice that saved the world. Holy Obedience that costs pain and suffering is precious obedience.

There was one disciple of Jesus who imitated his obedience perfectly. That one was His Mother, Mary "Full of Grace," who, when confronted as a young Jewish maiden by the angel Gabriel and God's plan to save mankind, responded even then in perfect obedience: "Behold the Handmaid of the Lord" (Lk. 1:38). Just as Jesus became the cause of salvation through his perfect obedience to God, so we may say that Mary, by her similarly perfect obedience to God's plan and to suffering, likewise became the "co-cause" of salvation, that is, co-redemptress.

The recent collapse of Euro-Communism having begun in Catholic and Marian Poland, it seems fair to credit Poland with the liberation from Communism of the remainder of Eastern Europe. Poland's obedience to the Fair Maiden seems to have made her, like Christ, a "cause of salvation" for all the other Christian nations who obeyed Christ, according to their degree of faith.

Mary's obedience in suffering

Pope John Paul II, a Pole who played a mighty role in this salvation of Europe, has spoken eloquently of how the Blessed Virgin shared the sufferings of Jesus in total obedience to God. He writes:

"The Mother of Christ was present on Calvary, at the foot of the cross, where, as the Second Vatican Council teaches, "she stood, in accordance with the divine plan (cf. Jn. 19:25), suffering grievously with her only begotten son, uniting herself with a maternal heart to his sacrifice and lovingly consenting to the immolation of this victim which she herself had brought forth." How far the fiat uttered by Mary at the annunciation had taken her!

"When, acting in persona Christi, we priests celebrate the sacrament of the one same sacrifice, of which Christ is and remains the only priest and victim, we must not forget this suffering of his mother, in whom were fulfilled Simeon's words in the temple at Jerusalem: "A sword will pierce through your own soul also" (Lk. 2:35). They were spoken directly to Mary 40 days after Jesus' birth. On Golgotha, beneath the cross, these words were completely fulfilled. When on the cross Mary's son revealed himself fully as the "sign of contradiction," it was then that this immolation and mortal agony also reached her maternal heart.

"Behold the agony of the heart of the mother who suffered together with him, consenting to the imolation of this victim which she herself had brought forth." Here we reach the high point of Mary's presence in the mytstery of Christ and of the Church on earth.

Such was the painful and precious obedience of Mary together with Jesus toward the Father. We, who are fellow disciples with Mary and fellow children with Jesus, must not flinch from obedience in our own lives when it entails suffering. Please God we shall be faithfully obedient, and help win the salvation of Canada, our own dear land, and of other peoples still needing to be saved.

Fr. Somerville is an associate editor of Catholic Insight.