III. MARY'S FAITH RESPONSE

Here I would like to add a few remarks to the excellent comments made by Gourgues on the sigaificance of Mary's reaction to Jesus' challenge: "His mother said to the servants. ' Do whatever he tells you'."

Jesus called into question his mother's relationship with him. He did so the moment Mary had taken the initiative. It is as if Jesus let his mother understand that it was no longer the time for her to take the initative. Mary accepts being put into question. She accepts that the "natural" mother-Son relationship be set aside. From now on she does not try any more to exercise her motherly influence on her Son. On the contrary, she puts herself at the service of her Son. She places herself among the servants. In their midst, she invites them to collaborate with her Son: "Do whatever he tells you". She does not know what Jesus intends to do. But she is already at his disposal. She is ready to collaborate. But it is he who must take the initiative.

We are very far here from a certain traditional interpretation that sees Mary as ignoring Jesus' questioning and persists in asserting her will at all costs, bending to her will even that of Jesus! Of course it is not my intention to minimise Mary's power of intercession. No, it is only a question of perceiving the Gospel-indicated direction of this powerful intercession: Mary intercedes for us before Jesus and the Father "that their will be done"; at the same time she intercedes before us that we "do whatever he tells" us. At Cana "Mary not only gives her consent to the renunciation demanded by Jesus. She does more. She encourages others to the same unconditional docility. In doing so, she passes from her role as mother of Jesus according to the flesh to her role as spiritual mother of the faithful".(6)

Cana is Mary's second Annunciation. Not Gabriel, but Jesus himself calls his mother to a new mission. This new mission is inaugurated at Cana and culminates on the Cross: "Woman, behold, your son!"(7) The Crucifixion scene of Jn 19:25-27 describes the culmination of Mary's spiritual motherhood of the faith-ful Christians. Standing by the cross, Mary becomes the mother of our faith, because at that moment Mary's faith reaches its apex. "How great, how heroic then is the obedience of faith shown by Mary in the face of God's 'unsearchable judgments'!. How competely she 'abandons herself to God', without reserve,' offering the full assent of the intellect and the will' (cf. DV 5) to him whose 'ways are inscrutable' (cf. Rom 11:33)! And how powerful too is the action of grace in her soul, how all-pervading is the influence of the Holy Spirit and of his light and power! Through this faith Mary is perfectly united with Christ in his self-emptying. [...] At the foot of the Cross Mary shares through faith in the appalling mystery of [Jesus] self-emptying. This is perhaps the deepest 'kenosis' of faith in human history". ("Redemptoris Mater", n.18).

"When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?" (Lk 18:8). Mary, mother of Jesus and mother of our faith, pray for us!

6.Ibidem, pp. 165-166

7.The contemporary confessor of the faith, Mons. Ignatius Gong, Catholic Bishop of Shanghai, prefers to see the Cross rather than the Cana event as Mary's second Annunciation. In the pastoral letter of April 22nd, 1951, he writes: "To Mary, the words of Jesus on the cross, 'Woman, behold, your son!', were like a second Annunciation, the beginning of a second motherhood". (China Missionary Bulletin 3 (4) (1951) 659. (My translation from the French).