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Back when Jesus had to by his own design return to heaven, he saw to it that his first followers had his Mother. In fact he said to John, Behold your Mother.
This seems like an appropriate place to quote from Jesus of Nazareth: Part Two, Holy Week, From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection by Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI:

John not only tells us that there were women at the foot of the Cross -- "his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene" (19:25) -- but he continues: "When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, 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 to his own home" (19:26-27). This is one of Jesus' final acts, an adoption arrangement, as it were. He is the only son of his mother, who will be left alone in the world after his death. He now assigns the beloved disciple to accompany her and, as it were, makes him her son in his place; from that time onward, John is responsible for her -- he takes her to himself. The literal translation is stronger still; it could be rendered like this: he took her into his own -- received her into his innder life-setting. In the first instance, then, this is an entirely human gesture on the part of the dying Savior. He does not leave his mother alone; he places her in the custody of the disciple who was especiallyi close to him. And so a new home is also given to the disciple -- a mother to care for him, a mother for him to look after.
If John takes the trouble to record such human concerns, it is because he wants to set down what really happened. But his concern always goes deeper than mere facts of the past. The event points beyond itself to that which endures. What is he trying to say?
The first clue comes from his form of address to Mary: "Woman." Jesus had used this same form of address at the marriage feast of Cana (Jn 2:4). The two scenes are thus linked together. Cana had been an anticipation of the definitive marriage feast -- of the new wine that the Lord wanted to bestow. What had then been merely a prophetic sign now becomes a reality.
The name "Woman" points back in the first instance to the account of creation, when the Creator presents the woman to Adam. In response to this new creation, Adam says: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman ..." (Gen 2:23). Saint Paul in his letters interprets Jesus as the new Adam, with whom mankind begins afresh. In the figure of Mary, Saint John shows us "the Woman" who belongs now to this new Adam. In the Gospel the allusion is a hidden one, but it was gradually explored in the context of the Church's faith.
When the Book of Revelation speaks of the great sign of a Woman appearing in heaven, she is understood to represent all Israel, indeed, the whole Church. The Church must continually give birth to Christ in pain (cf. Rev 12:1-6). Another stage in the evolution of this idea is found in the Letter to the Ephesians, where the saying about the man who leaves his father and mother to become one flesh with his wife is applied to Christ and the Church (cf 5:31-32). On the basis of the "corporate personality" model -- in keeping with biblical thought -- the early Church had no difficulty recognizing in the Woman, on the one hand, Mary herself and, on the other hand, transcending time, the Church, bride and mother, in which the mystery of Mary spreads out into history.

Just like Mary, the Woman, so too the beloved disciple is both a historical figure and a type for discipleship as it will always exist and must always exist. It is to the disciple, a true disciple in loving communion with the Lord, that the Woman is entrusted: Mary -- the Church.
These words spoken by Jesus as he hung upon the Cross continue to be fulfilled in many concrete ways. They are constantly repeated to both mother and disciple, and each person is called to relive them in his own life, as the Lord has allotted. Again and again the disciple is asked to take Mary as an individual and as the Church into his own home and, thus, to carry out Jesus' final instruction.