This is very good, Lurking... and I will plug in a bit more from Agape:
“From the Annunciation to the Crucifixion of her Son, Mary can be seen as God’s ultimate validation of free will. The Virgin Mary’s obedience to the will of God as conveyed to her in the angel Gabriel’s message was no less voluntary in its affirmation than the disobedience of the virgin Eve had been in its negation. In the 2nd century St. Irenaeus the Bishop of Lyon and a second generation disciple from the Apostle John wrote: “...so also Mary, betrothed to a man but nevertheless still a virgin, being obedient, was made the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race. [...]. Thus, the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. What the virgin Eve had bound in unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosed through faith.” Against Heresies, 3.22.4, Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons.
Mary, as the first human to kiss the face of God and the first to believe in Jesus as her Savior, took her place in Salvation History as the first Christian. She is also the one disciple of Jesus who didn’t flee or doubt when all the others fled and doubted, but who stayed and accepted to the very end the burden of being under the Cross. Down through the ages the weeping Mary of the Cross witnessing her son’s torture and death stands in solidarity with all believers who also suffer and live under the shadow of the Cross.
The gift of Mary to the Church was Jesus’ last human act from the Cross. He placed His mother’s care in the hands of the only apostle present at the cross, the Apostle John, “Seeing his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing near her, Jesus said to his mother, ‘Woman, this is your son.’ Then to the disciple he said, ‘This is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.” [John 19:26-27] This is one of only two scenes in which Mary is present in John’s Gospel. The first is the narrative of the Wedding at Cana in chapter 2 of John’s Gospel. These two scenes in which Mary is present have several things in common. First, Mary is addressed as “gunai” [from the Greek gune] or “dear Woman” by Jesus in both scenes; second, she is never called by name but only identified as “the mother of Jesus”; and third, in both cases a “new family” is formed: at Cana by the wedding itself and in the second scene in John chapter 19 a new family is formed by a kind of adoption in which “the beloved disciple” takes Mary as his mother and in the greater sense, as the mother of Christ’s family, the Church—a role she continues to fill to this day.”
And for all those who erroneously think that Catholics worship Mary as equal to God, I suggest this:
very good stuff SumPro
thanks
Ad Majoram Dei Gloriam