Niệm Tin Mừng Lễ Mừng Mẹ là mẹ Giáo Hội Thứ Hai sau lễ Hiện Xuống

Niệm Tin Mừng Lễ Mừng Mẹ là mẹ Giáo Hội Thứ Hai sau lễ Hiện Xuống
Đức Mẹ đã được ban nhiều danh hiệu, để nhấn mạnh vai trò của Mẹ trong sự kết hiệp với Chúa Giêsu Con của Mẹ trong công cuộc cứu rỗi của Chúa. Mẹ đã có rất nhiều danh hiệu bao gồm cả những cái tên nơi mà Mẹ đã hiện trên trái đất. Những danh xưng khác của Mẹ được lấy từ Kinh thánh, thêm vào sự hiểu biết trong những  mầu nhiệm của Thiên Chúa Cha trên Trời. Một danh hiệu đáng lẽ phải được dùng phổ thông và rộng rãi ngay từ thời Chúa Giêsu đã phải chết trên Thập giá, đó là danh hiệu Mẹ của Giáo hội, và tên này chính là động căn bản được xuất phát từ những lời của Chúa Giêsu đã với Mẹ Maria ngay lúc Ngài còn trên thập giá: “Hỡi bà, này là con bà” [ Ga 19: 26-27]. Đứng dưới chân thánh giá Mẹ Maria và Thánh Gioan là biểu tượng của Giáo hội, do đó, khi trao cho Mẹ Maria cho môn đệ yêu dấu của Ngài chăm sóc, Chúa Giêsu đã ngầm trao Mẹ Mria coi sóc và phù trợ cho Giáo hội với tư cách là Mẹ của Giáo hội.  Thánh Ambrose của Thành Milan đã dùng danh hiệu này cho Mẹ Maria từ thế kỷ thứ 4, nhưng đó chỉ được sdùngvtrng địa phương. Cho tới khi thời Giáo hoàng Paul VI đã chính thức dùng danh hiếu này trong Công đồng Vatican II. Và ĐGH Phanxicô muốn giáo hội mừng nhớ mMẹ vào Mi thứ Hai sau lễ Chúa Thánh Thần Hiện Xuống -viồ đấy cũng là Ngày sinh hhật của Giáo Hội.
Maria, Mẹ của Giáo hội, xin Mẹ chăm sóc chúng con và hướng dẫn chúng con đến sự thánh thiện hơn trong cuộc sống mà chúng con đang sống hầu giúp chúng con có thể thực sự trở thành môn đệ yêu dấu của Chúa Giêsu, Con của Mẹ.’
 
Monday after Pentecost- Our Lady, Mother of the Church:
Gen. 3:9-15,20 or Acts 1:12-14; Ps. 87(86):1-2,3,5,6-7; Jn. 19:25-34)
Our Lady has been given many titles, stressing her role in union with her Son Jesus in God’s work of salvation. Many of the titles include the names where it is believed Our Lady appeared on earth. Other titles are taken from Scripture, adding levels of understanding to the mystery of the Mother of God. One title which should have been widely in use from the time of Jesus’ death on the Cross, is “Mother of the Church”, which essentially derives from Jesus’ words to his Mother from the cross:  “Woman, behold your Son” [Jn 19:26-27].
Standing at the foot of the cross Mary and John are symbolic of the Church, thus in giving Mary into the care of the Beloved Disciple, Jesus is implicitly giving the Church into Mary’s care as Mother of the Church. St Ambrose of Milan used the title for Mary already in the 4th century, but it only came into universal use in the Church when Pope Paul VI officially used it during Vatican Council II.
Mary, Mother of the Church, take care of us and guide us to a greater holiness of life that we may truly become beloved disciples of Jesus, Your Son.
 
Monday after Pentecost 2026
Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home. John 19:25–27
Yesterday, we celebrated the great Solemnity of Pentecost, commemorating the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the first disciples and the birth of the Church. Just as God “breathed” life into Adam at the creation, so the Holy Spirit, the Breath of God, gives new life to the Church, the Body of Christ. At Pentecost, the Blessed Virgin Mary was present, embodying the Gift of Fortitude in her unwavering trust in God’s plan.
Fortitude, one of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, strengthens us to persevere in doing good, especially amid trials, suffering, or temptation. It acts as an anchor, holding us steady during life’s storms and uniting us more deeply to the Mystery of the Cross.
When this memorial was instituted in 2018, Cardinal Robert Sarah beautifully reminded us that “the Christian life must be anchored to the Mystery of the Cross, to the oblation of Christ in the Eucharistic Banquet, and to the Mother of the Redeemer and Mother of the Redeemed….” Today, we honor her not only as the Mother of the Redeemer but also as our Mother—the Mother of the Redeemed. What a profound gift it is to share a spiritual mother with the Son of God! Through her maternal care and intercession, she leads us to her Son and strengthens us on our journey of faith. 
The Gospel for today’s memorial recalls one of the most sacred images in the Scriptures—the Blessed Virgin Mary standing at the foot of the Cross, gazing with perfect faith, hope, and love at her divine Son. Her fidelity to Him was unwavering. With a motherly empathy, strengthened by the fullness of grace, she felt His pains and endured His suffering until the end. Though Jesus embodied every virtue and spiritual gift, He allowed Himself to receive strength and consolation from His mother as He hung upon the Cross. 
This act of shared love and mutual consolation—Christ receiving strength from His mother as she shared in His suffering—invites us to embrace this same love, allowing our Blessed Mother’s maternal care to unite us more fully to Christ. When Jesus turned to His mother and said, “Woman, behold, your son,” and to John, “Behold, your mother,” He was speaking to each of us, entrusting His mother to us and us to her. As the Blessed Mother stood by her Son in His suffering, she also stands by us, teaching us to remain steadfast in our faith, rooted in Christ’s sacrifice and strengthened by His Eucharistic presence. God strengthens and consoles us in accord with His divine plan, which includes the grace dispensed through the Sacraments—especially the Eucharist—the charitable intercession of others, the ministry of angels, and the unique motherly mediation of the Mother of God, our mother.
Reflect today on the many ways God sanctifies and strengthens you for your mission. Through the Eucharist, we are united to Christ’s Cross and receive the grace to rise triumphantly with Him. Along this journey, we are strengthened by the Blessed Mother, the Mother of the Church and the Mediatrix of grace. As the Spirit filled the Church at Pentecost, so too does He fill our hearts today, leading us to Mary, whose love and intercession anchor us to her Son and His saving grace.
Mother of the Church and Mother of God, the Holy Spirit filled you with the fullness of grace and perfected every virtue in your humble soul. Your strength to endure the Cross with your Son includes a promise that you will always stand by me, showering your motherly care and mediating the grace of your Son. Please be my mother now and always, and help me to be a faithful disciple of your Son, anchored in His Cross and lifted by His grace. Mother of the Church and Mother of the Redeemed, pray for me. Jesus, I trust in You.
 
Monday after Pentecost 2026
Opening Prayer: Lord God, from the beginning, you prepared Mary, the Mother of your Son, to be my mother. She cares for me and asks you through her Son to attend to my prayer and give me the good things I need. With you as my Father and with Mary as my Mother, I have nothing to fear.
Encountering the Word of God
1. Eve, the Sinful Mother of Humanity: One of the options for the First Reading is Genesis 3, which narrates the fall of Adam and Eve. Adam called his wife “Eve,” because she was “the mother of all the living” (Genesis 3:20). When Adam and Eve sinned, God promised that the “seed of the woman,” one of Eve’s descendants, would crush the head of the serpent, the devil (Genesis 3:15). “Not only did [Eve] play a crucial role in bringing sin and death into the world but it was one of her offspring – the Messiah – who was expected to rise up one day and undo the effects of the Fall” (Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary, 24). In contrast to Eve, who disobeyed God and transmitted sin and death to all her descendants, Mary is the New Eve, who, through her obedience, cooperated in the transmission of grace and life to all her spiritual children. Eve had an important role in the first creation; Mary, the New Eve, has an important role in the New Creation.
2. Rachel, the Sorrowful Mother of Israel: To understand the identity and role of Mary as the Mother of the Church, it is helpful to take a look back at Rachel, who was considered the Mother of Israel. Rachel was the beloved wife of Jacob and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin. Rachel’s life was filled with suffering. Her father tricked Jacob into marrying her sister, Leah, and when Rachel finally married Joseph, she struggled to conceive a child. She eventually gave birth to Joseph, the beloved son of Jacob, but died giving birth to Benjamin, her second son, near Bethlehem. Rachel, however, was not just the mother of Joseph and Benjamin but was also considered the mother of all Israel, who somehow suffers with them and weeps for them, even after her death (Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary, 166). The prophet Jeremiah (31:15) depicts the spirit of Rachel witnessing the suffering of her descendants as they were taken captive by the Babylonians in the sixth century B.C. She intercedes for her children and moves the heart of God. God responds to Rachel’s prayer and tells her not to cry anymore because her work will be rewarded and her children will come back to the Promised Land (Jeremiah 31:16-17) (Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary, 167). In sum, “as the wife of Jacob/Israel himself, Rachel was regarded in a special way as the sorrowful mother of all Israel, whose special role was to pray for and intercede on behalf of her children, even though she was no longer here on earth” (Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary, 169).
3. Mary, the Sorrowful Mother of the Church: In relation to Rachel, Mary has many important connections. First, when Matthew narrates the massacre of the innocents, he links Jeremiah’s prophecy about Rachel to Mary: Rachel is the suffering mother who is in pain for the murdered children of Bethlehem. She symbolizes the suffering of Mary. “As the suffering mother of the persecuted child who is driven into exile, Mary in Matthew’s Gospel is truly a new Rachel” (Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary, 171). The Gospel of John, which we read today, also depicts Mary as the new Rachel: she becomes the mother of the Beloved Disciple through her suffering at Golgotha. Jesus compared his crucifixion to the sorrow of a woman in childbirth (John 16:21-22). The image of a sorrowing mother giving birth calls to mind Rachel’s sorrowful delivery of her second son, Benjamin (Genesis 35:16-20). “[J]ust as Rachel gave birth to her second-born son, Benjamin, through suffering and dying in childbirth, so Mary spiritually ‘gives birth’ to her second son – the Beloved Disciple – by her interior suffering and ‘dying’ at the foot of the cross” (Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary, 175). Mary’s suffering, like Rachel’s, is fruitful: through her interior dying, she becomes the mother of another child – the apostle John, who, as the Beloved Disciple, symbolizes the members of the Church. Just as Rachel, the mother of all Israel, was thought to be a powerful intercessor for her children, so also, Mary, the Mother of the Church, is our powerful intercessor in heaven.
 
Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church
Monday after Pentecost—
Mary mothered Jesus, Jesus then gave life to the Church with water and blood from His side, and the Church then mothers us into existence through baptism. Devotion to Mary goes hand in hand with devotion to the Church because both are mothers. Mother Mary gives the world Christ. Mother Church gives the world Christians.
The metaphorical parallels between Mother Mary and Mother Church are spiritually rich and deeply biblical. Mary was understood by many early theologians as both the mother of the Head of the Church, Jesus, and also the symbol of the Church par excellence. Mother Mary is a virgin who conceived the physical body of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit at the Annunciation. In a parallel way, Mother Church is the Mystical Body of Christ who gives every Christian rebirth through the power of the Holy Spirit received at Pentecost. Both Mary and the Church conceived through the same Spirit, without the aid of human seed. Mother Mary makes Christ’s body physically present in Palestine in the first century. Mother Church, in turn, makes Christ’s body mystically present through baptism and sacramentally present in the Eucharist, in every time and place. It was common for a baptismal font in early Christianity to be described as a sacred womb in which Mother Church gave her children life. 
The theological cross-pollination between Mother Mary and Mother Church has produced a field ripe for spiritual and theological cultivation. Christ is from Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Galilee. But He is most deeply from the Father. He is one Son but lives two sonships. Similarly, all Christians are born from one Mother expressed in two motherhoods: Mary’s and the Church’s. Mary and the Church, understood most profoundly, form one mother.  Both are the mother of Christ, but each mutually assists the other to bring Christ physically, sacramentally, and mystically into the world in all His fullness. Neither Mary nor the Church can exercise their motherhoods alone. 
Today’s feast, formally integrated into the Church’s calendar by the authority of Pope Francis in 2018, specifically commemorates Mary’s motherhood of the Church rather than her motherhood of God, a feast celebrated on January 1. Mary likely showed as much tender concern for Christ’s mystical body as it slowly matured in its native Palestine as she did for His physical body in Nazareth. Pope Pius XII perceptively noted Mary’s dual maternity in his encyclical on the Church: “It was she who was there to tend the mystical body of Christ, born of the Savior’s pierced heart, with the same motherly care that she spent on the child Jesus in the crib.” It is possible the Apostles held their first Council in about 49 A.D. in Jerusalem precisely because Mary still dwelled in the holy city. She was likely the young religion’s greatest living witness and pillar of unity. We can imagine her presiding over early Christian gatherings with reserved solemnity, nursing primitive Christianity just as she had Christ. 
Ancient pagans spoke of imperial Rome as a Domina, a divine female master. Rome was praised as a conquering mother who brought vanquished peoples close to her own heart, incorporating them as citizens into her vast, multicultural, polyglot realm. Other empires executed prisoners of war, exiled peoples, imposed a foreign culture, or displaced populations. Not Rome. Rome absorbed them all. The early fathers understood Mother Church as the successor to this Domina. In baptism this Mother does not release her children from her body but absorbs them, making them fully her own unto death. Since the early Middle Ages, feast days and devotions to the Virgin Mary have proliferated in Catholicism. Now Pope Francis has given the Church a feast to compliment that of January 1. The two motherhoods of Mary reflect one profound truth, that Christ approaches us in time and in space, in history and in sacrament, in mysterious and beautiful ways. In the words of Saint Augustine: “What (God) has bestowed on Mary in the flesh, He has bestowed on the Church in the spirit; Mary gave birth to the One, and the Church gives birth to the many, who through the One become one.” This is all cause for deep reflection.
Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, you are the fairest daughter of Israel, chosen and prepared by God as the sacred vessel to replace Mother Synagogue with Mother Church. Eve approaches you like mother to daughter, old Eve to New Eve—two mothers of souls both on earth and in heaven.
 
May 29- Mary, Mother of the Church 2023
Introductory Prayer: You are true goodness and life, Lord. Closeness to you brings peace and joy. You deserve all of my trust and my love. Thank you for the gift of life, my family, and above all of my faith. Thank you as well for giving us your Mother at the foot of the cross. 
Petition:  Lord, help me to grow in my filial love for Mary, your Mother, and mine.
1. Standing: Today is a Marian celebration, the memorial of “Mary, Mother of the Church.” Mary, like me, had no particular love of pain and sorrow. The first announcement of her vocation by the Archangel Gabriel mentioned nothing about it, being filled only with messianic promises. However, soon after Jesus’ birth, Simeon completed the dimensions that were to enlighten her vocation: “…and a sword will pierce your heart that the thoughts of many might be revealed.” Recognizing the fulfillment of her calling to accompany her Son during his crucifixion, she does so with a desire to fulfill God’s mysterious plan, not reluctantly, but by standing close to Jesus with all the sorrow that this implied for her. Mary never abandons her children when they are suffering.
2. Last Will and Testament: The words Jesus speaks to his mother and beloved disciple are equivalent to his last will and testament. He bequeaths what is most precious to him to a beloved person. To Mary, he gives the friend he loves so much, who will also need her help in his difficulties. To John, he gives his greatest human comfort, his best disciple, his mother. He knows that she needs him, an adopted son, to comfort and accompany her.
3. Mary Makes My Home Sweet: John took his responsibility for Mary seriously, taking her into his own home. Home for John was nothing less than the Church that Jesus founded. Mary was to have pride of place there, as Jesus’ mother and as she who knew, loved, and served him best. She also took her role seriously, so seriously that she immediately perceived that all those she encountered were her adoptive sons and daughters. In this house, that is the Church; Mary is the sweetness of the traditional saying, “Home, sweet home.”
 
Mary, Mother of the Church 2022
Opening Prayer: Mother Mary, in this special month of May, please bless me as I contemplate your suffering at the foot of the cross.
Encountering Christ: 
His Last Gift: With his dying breath, Jesus presented his mother to the apostle John. With this gesture, he offers her to us as well. Afterward, John invited Mary into his home. Do we also invite Mary into our spiritual home? If we look to Mary when life gets tough, our relationship with her deepens. If we pray for her as an intercessor, situation after situation, our connection to her grows. If we are grateful for her, in life’s storms or on calm seas, our bond with her is solidified. If we pray the rosary, read about Mary, and talk about her, she becomes our constant companion. When we have faith in our Mother, we truly receive her presence as a gift—the gift Jesus intended for each one of us when he said, “Behold your mother.”
His Thirst: In her well-known letter, “I thirst for you,” St. Teresa of Calcutta described the infinite love and thirsts of God. Jesus told her, “Even when you are not listening, even when you doubt it could be me, I am there: waiting for even the smallest suggestion of an invitation that will permit me to enter.” Jesus longs to strengthen, console, carry, transform, calm, and heal us. He knows everything about us—our troubles, rejections, humiliations, even the number of hairs on our head. “All I ask of you that you entrust yourself to me completely. I will do the rest.” Do the words “I thirst” echo in our souls?
It Is Finished: In his brief life, Jesus perfectly fulfilled the will of God. When he made the ultimate sacrifice for mankind, he proclaimed, “It is finished.” God’s plan had been perfectly executed. Those same words are true for us when we’ve run a race, completed a project, or endured a hardship. Jesus, however, accomplished his Father’s will in perfect union with him. We are called to do likewise. Our Lord wants nothing more than to be an integral part of our life—all of it. Next time we say, “Ahhh… it is finished,” may we also acknowledge that Jesus strengthened and accompanied us.