Opera Omnia

INSTRUCTION X
MARY DISCIPLE AND TEACHER
A Note on the Pious Union Apostolate of Audiovisual Media

A third Pious Union in particular for the audiovisual media at the service of the Gospel and the Church. Its spirit, nature and aim can be grasped from the Statute:
1. - The Pious Association Apostolate of Audiovisual Media is a religious body whose purpose is to spread the Church's doctrine by means of audio and visual means (cinema, television, radio, discs), and in particular to convey in a practical way the teachings and exhortations of the Popes as set out particularly in the encyclicals Vigilanti cura and Miranda Prorsus, in the messages on the ideal film, and in the Acts and Speeches of Pope John XXIII.
The Association has an eminently spiritual purpose which is to communicate Christ Way, Truth and Life to people, and to make available to those who work in this field the spiritual treasures which derive from associated apostolic action.
2. - To this end it is proposed:
a) to group all those persons who work for this apostolate;

b) to give spiritual and moral support to all these persons in their difficult undertaking;
c) to make them aware of, and sharers in, all the spiritual advantages that accrue from such an apostolate;
d) to give a more positive outcome to the apostolate by this merger of prayer, study, and activities in collaboration and reciprocal help.

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Art. 263. As the excessive concern for those things that pertain to the body is blameworthy, so the moderate and prudent care of one's own health and strength, which are God's precious gifts, is recommended to all in so far as it enables us to devote ourselves more diligently, and for a longer length of time, to the service of God. Therefore, should anyone come to know that something is harmful to his own health, let him in all sincerity and humility inform the Superior. On the other hand, Superiors ought to be particularly in earnest about their subjects' health.
Art. 270. Whenever a sick member is in grave danger of death, let him renew his religious Profession. The Superior should take care that the dying member be religiously assisted by the prayers prescribed by Holy Church for the dying.
Art. 271. As soon as a member has died, all the members of the Society ought to be informed, so that they may apply to him, as soon as possible, the suffrages prescribed by the Constitutions.
Art. 272. The charity, by which the members are united one

to another, is not at all dissolved by death, but is rather enhanced. Wherefore, the funerals and burying places of our deceased should be proper and fitting, according to the custom of Religious, and our dead should be relieved by a great abundance of suffrages. While alive, however, let each one provide for himself by doing penance for his own sins as well as by gaining indulgences, lest when he dies he run the danger of being detained for a very long time suffering in Purgatory.

Through Mary our Teacher to Jesus our Teacher

Our devotion to Jesus our Divine Teacher will be perfected if it is prepared and preceded by devotion to Mary our Teacher.
In his encyclical Adjutricem populi christiani (1895), Leo XIII writes: … In all truth Mary must be considered Mother of the Church, Teacher and Queen of the Apostles, to whom she imparted also those divine oracles which she conserved in her heart.
So, Mary a Teacher. If we say: per Mariam ad Jesum,¹ then surely per Mariam Magistram ad Jesus Magistrum² will also be worthy [of belief]. First she was a pupil, then Teacher, then Mother and tutor of the Teachers.

The Teacher Way, Truth and Life

Through a human and supernatural elevation, the complete and all-inclusive concept of Teacher/Master, with respect to every person and to the whole of humanity, is incarnated in Christ:

I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. Saint Leo the Great writes: It would serve no purpose to call ourselves Christians were we not to conform to Jesus Christ, who declared himself the Way, so that the life of the Teacher could become the pattern for the disciple. Saint Catherine of Siena is of the same mind.
Likewise the encyclical Divini Illius Magistri of Pius XI: Since education consists basically in the formation of the human being… it is clear that in the present order of providence… that is, after God revealed himself in his only-begotten Son, who alone is the Way, Truth and Life, there can be no suitable and perfect education except in Christian education.
This conformity to Jesus Christ, conformes fieri imagini Filii sui,³ embraces the whole person: intelligence, feelings, and will.
Clement of Alexander, speaking of education, observed that if people go to Plato they learn to become philosophers; if people go to Jesus Christ they will have a perfect formation in the likeness of the Divine Teacher and they will learn to live as the God-Man.

Mary way to Jesus

Jesus Christ is Man, but he is also God; and given our human weakness we find it somewhat difficult to form ourselves on him. To make this conformation to Jesus Christ easier, the Lord, in his infinite love, willed to help our weak human nature. He showed us a simple and easy way. That way is Mary, a most loveable and holy creature. Mary is the way to Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ is the way to the Father in heaven.

We have to imitate God and conform ourselves to the working of his wisdom and love.
To effect our Redemption the Son of God passed through Mary: Conceptus de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria Virgine.⁴ Thus the Lord applies salvation and sanctification to every person through Mary, as well as life, and life's growth: Salve Regina… [our] life; vitam datam per Virginem, gentes redemptae, plaudite.⁵ It is Mary who gives Jesus; and forms Jesus in us.
God's style, once chosen, does not change. Just like a skilful architect who, planning a church, incorporates his style right down to the design of the altar cloths, the cruets, and the lectern.
This is what Jesus Christ has done; every action of his is an instruction; indeed a law. He is Way for us even in this first stage of the Incarnation; the road marked out for us is the one to follow. He came as a Teacher through Mary our Teacher.

Mary, Jesus' Teacher and ours

The Lord equipped Mary with appropriate privileges, dignity, gifts and powers for this very lofty role of hers as Jesus' Teacher and our Teacher. Leo XIII shows how Mary was a Teacher of the Apostles and of the first Christians, in that she wonderfully edified the faithful with the holiness of her example, the authority of her advice, the gentleness of her consolation, and the effectiveness of her prayers. Jesus

is our Teacher inasmuch as he is Way, Truth and Life; and Mary is therefore our Teacher because she has sanctity, wisdom, grace and life.
Jesus is our one and only Teacher. Mary is our Teacher in association with, in dependence on and in relation to Jesus Christ. Just as she is Coredemptrix and Queen in dependence on and in association with Jesus Christ, Redeemer and King.

1. The holiness of Mary's example

Grace, in a soul, is like the root from which the plant evolves with its branches, leaves, flowers and fruit. Virtues increase in a soul in proportion to grace; we can thus understand how Mary, because she is gratia plena, achieved the highest degree of virtue and holiness: in her there abounded the theologal, cardinal and moral virtues, the beatitudes, and the fruits of the Holy Spirit.
The words of Leo XIII in the encyclical Magnae Dei Matris bear this out: In this Mother we have the example of every virtue.
This is a providential example, for when we reflect on it we are unlikely to lose heart and [suffer] discomfort, as could happen were we to consider the divine perfections of Jesus; whereas when we reflect on them in Mary, pure and holy, a creature like us, we are more attracted to them.
This is also the thinking of Saint Pius X in his encyclical Ad diem illum. Conform ourselves to Christ: but because the Lord is God as well as Man, he adapted himself to our weakness. Thus we conform ourselves to Christ following the easy way, Mary! Her motherly example is what invites and draw us towards her.

In the same vein is the call of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Thomas of Villanova when they say: Every saint specialized, as it were, in some virtue, such as faith, obedience, charity, zeal… Mary, on the contrary, is eminent in each and every virtue: she gathers them all to herself, and she excels all the saints in every virtue. Thus the conclusion: Read this Book (Mary) frequently, this Book written inside and out in God's own hand. In this Book you will read of her holiness, purity, prudence, charity, meekness, humility… indeed you will read the fullness of her virtues.

2. Mary as life: effectiveness of her prayers

The Church has us greet Mary, in the Salve Regina, as Life; indeed, in the litanies, as Mater divinae Gratiae.⁶ It is not she who produced grace, but it is her role to communicate it. She is Mother because Jesus-Life passed through her.
In Mary Life. She shared not only in the grace acquired by her Son Jesus, as happens with us, but with Jesus and dependent on him, she competed to produce it in her life, and especially during the Passion of her Son by sharing in his sorrows: tuam ipsius animam pertransibit gladius.⁷ So that receiving this grace-life, in the first place and from the source, we receive and share in the merits of Jesus Christ; secondly, in the merits of Mary, through the Communion of Saints.

Mary communicates life especially in three ongoing stages.
a) At Nazareth she conceived us. Our spiritual conception happened in the mystery of the Incarnation. Without the Incarnation we would be still buried in the death of sin. Now God has worked the Incarnation through Mary, and willed that her concourse be free, conscious, and necessary.
Her fiat was an act of consent for our supernatural conception and for her motherhood in our regard.
b) She generated us on Calvary. The mystery of the Incarnation finds its fulfilment in the mystery of the Redemption. Through his own death Christ merited for us to live definitively of his life. That which was came to the light.
Consequently, just as our spiritual begetting began in the mystery of the Incarnation and received its fulfilment in the Redemption, so Mary's spiritual maternity, which started at Nazareth, was brought to fulfilment and proclaimed on Calvary.
c) She generates us one by one at the baptismal font. The baptismal font is, for each one of us, Bethlehem.
From a supernatural point of view, we are, at birth, stillborn. That life, which was merited for all by Christ's death, needs to be infused in each one of us. It is Mary who undertakes this role. The son of man becomes thus a son of God.

The archangel Gabriel greeted her full of grace. The Church's ordinary teaching understood this to mean that Mary is the Mediatrix and distributor of the grace won by Jesus Christ with the cooperation of Mary.

3. Mary has wisdom: authority of her counsel

If Mary is full of grace she is also full of wisdom. In fact, the foremost grace for humanity and for every person is heavenly wisdom, divine light, the truth. Thence flow or follow the other graces.
The Church invokes Mary as Sedes Sapientiae, Mater boni consilii, Regina Apostolorum.⁸
It is not so much a question of profane knowledge, but rather of that knowledge which unites us with God and make us sharers of God's knowledge.
Mary was to become the Mother of Jesus our Teacher forma Dei forma Christi.⁹ According to the Liturgy God fashioned in Mary a tabernacle worthy of the soul and body of her Son.
An axiom among distinguished mariologists which holds good as a principle is that every good which God granted to the angels, to the saints, and to his creatures he had also to give to Mary; therefore all the privileges of nature, grace and glory distributed among God's creatures were also lavished on and found in Mary; but in an eminent, that is, in a regal degree, because she was to be Queen of the prophets, patriarchs, apostles, martyrs, confessors, and virgins, of all the angels and saints. Dante, the poet theologian, summed it up:

In you (Mary) is contained / all that is good in creatures.¹⁰
Mary was a Teacher: she wrote no dissertations, she had no university chair, she did not preach, since preaching is the priest's task. But divine knowledge was hers to such a degree that her every word was like an essay and supposed that there was in her complete clarity concerning basic dogmas, such as sin, satisfaction, the Church, and salvation.

Knowledge and Wisdom

In Mary there were the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Theologians distinguish three kinds of knowledge: acquired knowledge, which is natural to man; infused knowledge, which is natural to the angels, and beatific knowledge, which is natural to God.
In this regard, Saint Anselm states: Christ, according to the Apostle, is wisdom and power of God and in him are all the hidden treasures of God's wisdom and knowledge. But Christ is in Mary. Therefore the wisdom and power of God and all the hidden treasures of knowledge and of wisdom are in Mary (Homil. in Intravit in quoddam castellum).
Legis scientiam et prophetarum vaticinia, quotidiana meditatione, Maria cognoverat,¹¹ affirms Origen (Hom. 6 in Lucam).
In Mary the Truth. We believe in the triune God, in the Incarnation, the Redemption, the Church, the Apostolate. Mary lived out all these mysteries: in the Annunciation there is the knowledge and the operation in her of the Blessed Trinity;

in her is fulfilled the Incarnation, the divine nature coming together with the human nature, given by Mary, in the unity of the one person; Mary shares in all the 33 years of Jesus the Redeemer's life in accordance with her condition, from the moment in which Jesus' sacred humanity - victim of atonement - was formed in her; Mary was the first member of the Church, Jesus being the Head of the Mystical Body, which Mary conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit; she cooperated with the Church in the Cenacle, and during the time it took its first steps.

Conclusion

Three applications:
[1] The Pauline Family has the mission to make known, to imitate, and to live Jesus Christ inasmuch as he is our Teacher; it will fulfil this privileged mission in a holy way by training people to know, to love and to pray to Mary our Teacher: dedit orbi Magistrum Jesum, qui est benedictus fructus ventris sui.¹²
[2] Our Pauline teaching will be immensely more effective if it is inspired, guided, and encouraged by Mary: Ipsa duce non fatigaris.¹³ No one would want to deprive himself of such a great help.
[3] Our Pauline discipleship is to be grafted completely in Mary, who will form Jesus Christ in every Aspirant: that means becoming Christians, apostles, and saints.
In Mary, every true and complete teacher finds light, example, protection and encouragement. There are precious bonds between Mary and every Christian; but the bonds that link Mary and the teacher surpass by far ordinary bonds;

even more so if it is a teacher who is a trainer of Religious and of Priests.
To appreciate such bonds you need to know the part that Mary had in the work of Redemption; the role she has now in the application of the Redemption itself in every age.
Saint Epiphanius writes, greeting Mary: Rejoice, O Mary, unfathomed Book, who have presented to the world the Word, the Son of the heavenly Father, to be seen and understood.
Bishop Saint Tarasius says of her: Rejoice, O beloved Daughter of the heavenly Father, on account of whom God became known to the ends of the world… Rejoice, O Mary, because you shine brighter than the light of the sun.
Saint Cyril of Alexander says: Through you the Apostles announced the salvation of the nations…; through you the precious Cross is praised and adored throughout the world…; through you devils are put to flight, and man himself is recalled to heaven; through you every creature, caught up formerly in the error of the idols, has been converted to the light of truth; through you the faithful have reached holy baptism, and in every part of the world churches have been founded. Moreover, according to the same Doctor, Mary was the sceptre of orthodox faith.
The Disciple can learn from Mary the pupil to let himself be humbly trained by his teacher who instructs, precedes, loves and prays for him.
Let the teacher never put an end to his teaching; let him utilize the most effective modern and rapid means to spread God's message.

In the Church all are called to some form of apostolate; in Confirmation all receive the grace to undertake it: the apostolate of prayer, of good example, of suffering, of publications, of vocations, and so on. All can contribute to the building up of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.¹⁴