Pope declares new celebration: Mary Mother of the Church

FILE: Pope Francis (Pixabay photo)

Pope Francis, in a decree released on March 3, announced an additional day to the Roman calendar to mark for the celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary Mother of the Church.

This new celebration will be on the Monday after the celebration of the Pentecost or the celebration for the descending of the Holy Spirit to the apostles. For year 2018, the celebration will fall on May 21.

According to the Holy Father, this addition will “encourage the growth of the maternal sense of the Church in the pastors, religious and faithful, as well as growth of genuine Marian piety.”

As written in the decree by Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, this new celebration is essential for Christians to remember that their growth “must be anchored to the Mystery of the Cross, to the oblation of Christ in the Eucharistic Banquet and to the Mother of the Redeemer and Mother of the Redeemed, the Virgin who makes her offering to God.”

Citing Marian theology, Sarah also wrote that the Mother Mary’s impact in the mystery of Christ and his nature cannot be ignored – as she is both the Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church.

The Marian title “Mother of the Church” has been used for decades.

“Thus the foundation is clearly established by which Blessed Paul VI, on 21 November 1964, at the conclusion of the Third Session of the Second Vatican Council, declared the Blessed Virgin Mary as ‘Mother of the Church, that is to say of all Christian people, the faithful as well as the pastors, who call her the most loving Mother’ and established that ‘the Mother of God should be further honoured and invoked by the entire Christian people by this tenderest of titles,” the decree added.