What God asks of people is too difficult and demanding to do without help from Jesus and Mary, Pope Francis said. People need to lose themselves in the contemplation of Mary's sweetness and Christ's suffering in order to receive the grace necessary to live out God's will, he said in his Sept. 12 morning homily at his residence in the Domus Sanctae Marthae. What God asks of people "is not easy to live out: Love your enemies, do good to them, lend without expecting anything in return, turn the other cheek," he said. "These are tough things, right? We, with our own strength, we can't do it. We cannot do this. Only grace can do it in us," a grace that comes from contemplating Christ, he said.
The spiritual climax of the Gospel of John, as Father John Waiss points out, occurs at the foot of the Cross, where Jesus utters his parting words: “Woman, behold, your son!” and “Behold your mother!” (John 19:26-27). While these words were addressed to the Apostle John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, the Church has long understood this moment as a universal adoption. To truly image Christ, we must share in His parentage; if we embrace God as our spiritual Father but reject Mary as our mother, we treat Christ as a half-brother rather than our "firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29). As Origen noted as early as the third century, the profound depths of the Gospel are only accessible to those who, like John, rest their heads on Jesus’ breast and receive Mary into their own homes. This maternal role is deeply rooted in biblical typology, positioning Mary as the fulfillment of the great mothers of the Old Covenant. She is the New Eve , the mother of all the living according ...