Une Minute avec Marie
Faire connaître et aimer Marie
What is the Church? To answer this question, we can turn to Saint Paul. Or we can just look at Mary, because a rule of ecclesiology holds that everything taught about Mary applies to the Church (...)
We can easily test this rule in the case of the foundation of the people of the New Covenant sealed in the Passover of Jesus Christ.
What passage in the Gospels equates the Virgin with the new people of God? The answer is found in the account of the Announcement of the birth of Jesus made to Mary: "Mary said to the angel, ‘How shall this be, since I know no man?’ The angel answered her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called the Son of God" (Lk 1:34-35).
How should we interpret the expression "will come upon you" in reference to the Holy Spirit at the Annunciation? This expression refers to the prophecy of Isaiah 32:15 where the prophet announces that the Spirit will create a new people: "...until the Spirit is poured out on us from on high, and the desert is turned into an orchard, and the orchard into a forest." The same expression reappears in Luke's verse in Acts, where it is written that "the Spirit will come upon you" - this time in reference to the apostles (Acts 1:8) - just before Pentecost.
Jesus answered them (the apostles): "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. Then you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:7-8).
These two passages therefore point to the birth of the Church. Since the same prophecy concerning the coming of the Spirit appears in the pericope of the Annunciation in the third Gospel, the conclusion is obvious: the Virgin is indeed the origin of the new people of God.
A similar revelation is recorded in another passage of the New Testament.The association of Mary, the Spirit and the birth of the Church at the hour of the Crucifixion is found in the Gospel according to John. Before dying, Jesus delivers the Spirit to the believers ("...bowing his head, he gave up the Spirit" Jn 19:30), entrusts his mother to the disciple and, from his pierced and open side, from which blood and water flow, gives birth to the Church, just as Eve was drawn from the side of the sleeping Adam.