Our Lady and the Ascension
May 22, 2010Pope John Paul II in his 2002 Apostolic Letter on the Rosary encouraged us Christian people to sit at the school of Mary, in this way being led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ, and to experience the depth of his love.
Later in that same Letter Pope John Paul indicated a difference between two kinds of holy learning. First, we can learn what Jesus “the supreme Teacher” taught, but secondly we also need to “learn him”. In this regard, the pope asks, “could we have any better teacher than Mary?”
In the first way Jesus guides and informs us. In the second way he seems to draw us -or rather, he has Mary draw us to himself.
These two ways of holy learning in the school of Mary are not either-or, but both-and.
So with Mary we can “learn Jesus” coming into the world from the Father as human by conception and birth. She knows this more intimately than any one else. Now, we join her in prayer-learning as we ponder his leaving her and the world humanly, and returns to the Father.
We join her in contemplating and celebrating his whole life and all that he suffered and achieved in his triumphant world wide win over the web of sin and death.
Fr Ben OP
