Mary’s clients call her “Mother”, seemingly unable to use any other name. She is truly Mother of our souls and of our salvation. Sin deprives our souls of the life of grace which Jesus came to restore by His cross. He said, “I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” (Jn 10:10) His redemption far exceeds the injury of Adam’s sin. By reconciling us, He became the Father of our souls. “He shall be called the Father of the world to come.” (Is. 9:6) If Jesus is the Father of our souls, then Mary is the mother.
Two Occasions
Mary became our spiritual mother on two occasions. First, when she conceived the Son of God in her womb “When the Blessed Virgin gave her consent, she asked for our salvation with intense love and bore us also in her womb.” (St. Bernardine) It is of faith, that Mary had no other children by the flesh. She must have had spiritual children and we are those children.
God revealed to St. Gertrude that “Mary brought forth her first born son and that all mankind was her second-born, according to the Spirit.” “Mary, by giving birth to life itself, gave life to many.” (Abbot St. William)
Mary also became our spiritual mother at Calvary. “By cooperating at the cross in the birth of the faithful to the life of grace, she became mother to all Christ’s members.” (St. Augustine) The Canticle says “They made me the keeper in the vineyards but my own vineyard I have not kept” (1:5) meaning “to save many souls she exposed her own Son to death.” (St. William)
ST. ALPHONSUS LIGOURI -THE GLORIES OF MARY