May: Dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary

…The Church, which from the beginning has modelled her earthly journey on that of the Mother of God, constantly repeats after her the words of the Magnificat. From the depths of the Virgin’s faith at the Annunciation and the Visitation, the Church derives the truth about the God of the Covenant: the God who is Almighty and does ‘great things’ for man: ‘holy is his name’.In the Magnificat, the Church sees uprooted that sin which is found at the outset of the earthly history of man and woman, the sin of disbelief and of ‘little faith’ in God. In contrast with the ‘suspicion’ which the ‘father of lies’ sowed in the heart of Eve the first woman, Mary, whom tradition is wont to call the ‘new Eve’ and the true ‘Mother of the living’, boldly proclaims the undimmed truth about God: the holy and almighty God, who from the beginning is the source of gifts, he who ‘has done great things’ in her, as well as in the whole universe…

…Mary is totally dependent upon God and completely directed towards him, and at the side of her Son, she is THE MOST PERFECT IMAGE OF FREEDOM AND OF THE LIBERATION of humanity and of the universe. It is to her as Mother and Model that the Church must look in order to understand in its completeness the meaning of her own mission…

Excerpts from Encyclical Letter of Pope John Paul II: “MOTHER OF THE REDEEMER”