The title given to Mary –Mother of the Church (Mater Ecclesiae)– has its roots in the 4th century with Saint Ambrose. In later centuries various theologians and saints gave this title new currency. Most recently Pope Francis (in 2018) made the Monday after Pentecost the feast of Mary, Mother of the Church. The hope of His Holiness is to “encourage the growth of the maternal sense of the Church in the pastors, religious and faithful, as well as a growth of genuine Marian piety.”
The perennial teaching of the Church indicates that just as Eve was “the mother of all the living” (Gen. 3:20), Mary is mother of all those living in Jesus Christ.
Francis echoes St. Paul VI, in Credo of the People of God, who explained, “Joined by a close and indissoluble bond to the Mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption, the Blessed Virgin, the Immaculate, was at the end of her earthly life raised body and soul to heavenly glory and likened to her risen Son in anticipation of the future lot of all the just; and we believe that the Blessed Mother of God, the New Eve, Mother of the Church, continues in heaven her maternal role with regard to Christ’s members, cooperating with the birth and growth of divine life in the souls of the redeemed.”
In 1964, St. Paul VI “declared the Blessed Virgin Mary as ‘Mother of the Church, that is to say of all Christian people, the faithful as well as the pastors, who call her the most loving Mother’ and established that ‘the Mother of God should be further honored and invoked by the entire Christian people by this tenderest of titles.’”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church of St. John Paul II teaches us that Mary’s role in the Church is inseparable from her union with Christ and flows directly from it. The Catechism (487) makes it clear –once again, that anything said of Mary is first said of Her Son and Our Savior, Jesus: “What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ.”
Going more deeply into The Catechism (964-965) we read: “This union of the mother with the Son in the work of salvation is made manifest from the time of Christ’s virginal conception up to his death”; it is made manifest above all at the hour of His Passion: Thus the Blessed Virgin advanced in her pilgrimage of faith, and faithfully persevered in her union with her Son unto the cross.
Ultimately, the what the Church believes, teaches and honors about Mary is found in the liturgical prayers of the Mass:
O God, Father of mercies,
whose Only Begotten Son, as He hung upon the Cross,
chose the Blessed Virgin Mary, His Mother,
to be our Mother also,
grant, we pray, that with her loving help
your Church may be more fruitful day by day
and, exulting in the holiness of her children,
may draw to her embrace all the families of the peoples.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
– Collect for the Feast of Mary, Mother of the Church
Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for us.