My dear friends, how good it is to gather together here in this basilica that we must love so much since it was constructed for the glory of our Mother. Yesterday at Santa Sabina, Saint Dominic led us to Mary. Today it is Saint John who leads us to Mary, the one whom he received as Mother, and we are very close to her. The Gospel that we just heard (Mk. 12:28-34) indeed gives us the words of Jesus which can best allow us to discover the heart of our Mother. Actually, at the Cross Mary understood how Jesus was living by the new commandment which He had just given to His disciples, which He could only give to them by living by it fully Himself. At the foot of the Cross Mary understood, she lived, this intensity of love which dwelt in the heart of Jesus. It is no longer Israel that lives this love for God, it is the One whom Israel was expecting, the beloved Son of the Father, become incarnate to teach us to love and to love in this ultimate, totally gratuitous way and with infinite generosity. At the Cross Jesus only looks at the Father. His cry of thirst expresses how much His soul loves the Father, how much His mind, His intelligence, and all His strength are directed towards the Father. At the Cross He is the King of martyrs; He offers His life to glorify the Father and to show the whole world and each one of us personally how strong and intense the love of the Father is for Him. He gives everything, all His strength and all His blood, to show the entire world how much He loves the Father and to reveal that He is one with Him. This wonderful ecstasy of Jesus crucified is such that all His suffering, all the sorrow of His heart at the Agony, totally surpassed by a love that is infinitely pure and uniquely intense. He is there for the Father, showing the entire world that the Father is His love and that the love of the Father is in Him.
Mary, at the foot of the Cross, lives by this love, and it is this that allows her to stand, stabat mater (Jn. 19:26). The Gospel of Saint John begins with John the Baptist standing in the desert (Jn. 1:35; altera die iterum stabat Johannes) and ends with Mary standing at the foot of the Cross. The new desert is this desert of the heart of Jesus entirely attracted by the Father in the most radical poverty there is. Mary lives by this mystery. It is at this moment that she understands the new precept of love given by Jesus: "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you" (Jn. 15:9); "I give you a new commandment... as I have loved you, you must love one another" (Jn. 13:34). Jesus does not repeat what was said by Moses or the prophets. Living what He says, He says this with unique emphasis, the emphasis give by the beloved Son of the Father. And Mary, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, receives this precept in a unique way. This precept of love inscribed in the Heart of Christ must be inscribed in the heart of Mary, His Mother. It is here that we can grasp who is the Mother of God, who is the Mother of Jesus. It is she who, chosen by the Father, can carry out the same work of love--as a creature, of course--yet indeed the same work of love as His beloved Son. It is a divine, contemplative maternity, which allows Mary to live the mystery of the Cross in perfect unity with her Son. It is here that we must contemplate the one who is the Mother of God.

And what is admirable is that Mary, by offering herself completely to the Father with her Son, with Jesus, lives the same mystery as Jesus who, while offering Himself to the Father, gives Himself to us by clearing the path for us since He takes upon Himself all of our sins, the iniquity of the world and that of each of us, in order to open wide for us the "narrow gate" (cf. Mt. 7:13-14; Lk. 13:24) towards the Father, this gate of love which is the wound of His heart. It is in the same act of love that Jesus glorifies the Father and saves us. "There is no greater love than to give one's life for those whom one loves" (Jn. 15:13). He offers His life to glorify the Father and He offers His life to save us, to introduce us to the Father as beloved children. And Mary lives the same mystery. She offers herself for us like Rachel, who dies in order to give birth to Benjamin, her last child. Rachel, at the moment of death, wants to call him "son of my sorrow," Ben-oni, but Jacob calls him "son of my right hand," Ben-jamin (Gen. 35:16-20).

We ourselves are also the sons of Mary's sorrow, since she has given everything for us by letting us rank ahead of her, like a mother. And the Father calls us His Benjamins, the sons of His right hand, the sons of love and the victory of love. For this is the right hand of the Father. To be seated at the right hand of the Father is to be the sons of the victory of love (cf. Ps. 110:1: "Sit on my right, your foes I will put beneath your feet"). And among these sons there is one who comes first: the one who alone is faithful at the Cross; the one who wants "to follow the Lamb wherever He goes" (Rev. 14:4). The others fled, one betrayed and Peter denied. John alone is there to receive and live the testament of Christ's love, to bear witness to the piercing of His heart. He is there totally for Jesus and lives solely by His love.

And here Jesus Himself asks him to look at Mary as His Mother: "Behold your Mother" (Jn. 19:27). It is not a distraction to look at Mary when Jesus offers Himself totally for us; it is looking at the fruit par excellence of the Redemption in order to better understand how Jesus, at the Cross, is the source of all love, of all life, and of all light. By looking at Mary as his Mother, John penetrates further into the heart of Christ since he can love Jesus as Mary loves Him. A new unity is then brought about between the heart of the beloved disciple and that of Jesus. This new unity is realized through the heart of Mary, through the one who lives the mystery of the Compassion, i.e., who lives the mystery of the Cross in her faith, her hope, and her charity.

John, carrying out a common work with Mary, can through Mary offer Jesus to the Father. This is the first work of his Christian priesthood. Holy Thursday, when he was very close to the heart of Christ (Jn. 13:22), he received from Christ this new power to offer Jesus, to offer Him to glorify the Father through the mystery of the Eucharist. And at the Cross, with Mary, through her and in her, he offers to the Father the Immolated Lamb, the pierced heart of Jesus, the Heart of the One who completely offers Himself to the Father. The priesthood of John is to offer through Mary the holocaust of Jesus to finish, complete His work of love which is to glorify the Father and save the world.

We who are called by the Holy Spirit to live the mystery of our father Saint John in a very particular way for the Church and humanity of today, and who are thus called like him to receive Mary, let us receive her here in a new way, in this Eucharist. Mary is the one who lives the mystery of the Compassion, the one who offers Jesus in her faith. She is the one who in her poor hope (she is the poorest of all mothers) offers her beloved Son in the holocaust of the Cross and in this total poverty: He is rejected by all, by His people and the High Priests; He is considered as a blasphemer and dies in the torture of slaves, in this fetid place where the cadavers of the accursed, of condemned slaves, were abandoned to vultures. She who is mother of the condemned, the beloved mother of the One who offers everything to the Father, she is the one who is given to us as Mother. She is indeed the "admirable mother" (2 Macc. 7:20), the Mother who lived the fullness of her maternity toward Jesus by living the same mission as His until the end, by accepting everything in faith, without understanding anything. Mary really lives the mystery of the Cross in total obscurity, and thus in a hope which is totally poor, but also in a burning love where everything is totally given, with Jesus and for Him, and for the Father. It is she who is given to John as Mother; it is she who is given to us as Mother. She who suffered infinitely more than we suffer is capable of understanding all our sufferings, all our sorrows, all our sadness, all the rejections which we suffer. She is able to understand them because she lived them more fully than we do. And she receives us as she received Saint John to enable us to be her beloved children, to enable us to be faithful until the end, to enable us to be, with Jesus and in Him, beloved children of the Father who glorify Him and save the world of today, through Jesus and in Him.

Let us be very joyful in a divine way to be here, living this Eucharist together, very close to Saint John, very close to Mary. And let us ask a grace of renewal from the Holy Spirit, since the Holy Father wants the Community of Saint John to be in the Church this renewal of an apostolic monastic life, of a life totally given in a great desire of contemplation (to contemplate Jesus crucified and glorified) and also totally given, in fraternal charity and mercy, to those who are seeking the truth in the world, all those who suffer and are in need. May we live in a completely new way this mystery of intimacy with Mary, with Jesus, under the attraction of the Father, and may we be totally given to our brothers, wherever we are, whether it be in silence with Mary or in actions and words, by giving ourselves totally to those whom Providence puts close to us and by carrying in our heart all those who do not know Jesus, who have rejected Him, all those who have strayed from Him, all those who deny Him.

Jesus, at the Cross, carried the denial of Peter and the betrayal of Judas. We must, with Mary, carry all the suffering of our brothers, especially interior sufferings, the deep wounds we do not admit and that Mary carried with love, as Mother, by receiving the blow of the lance in the depths of her heart so that these secrets might be revealed (Lk. 2:35) to her and that we ourselves might be able to live with her this great mystery, by carrying in our heart all those who are far from Christ and who perhaps suffer more than we think. In this way we will be beloved sons of the heart of Mary and she will communicate to us more and more the secrets of her heart. May the Gospel of Saint John be truly for us the Gospel of the secrets of the heart of Jesus, carried and communicated through the heart of Mary; and may it be through the wounding of the heart of Jesus and the wounding of the heart of Mary, pierced by seven swords, that we might be able to discover in depth the entire mystery of the love of the Father for us and for all men.

Sunday, October 30, 1994
Homily during Mass at Saint Mary Major