By Raymond Syms
Email: editor.camsel@catholictt.org
We have two mothers, Eve and Mary. “Which one of these do you want as your mother?”
Archbishop Jason Gordon asked this question to viewing faithful as he celebrated a September 8 virtual Mass to commemorate the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
He said Mary’s birthday was special in the Catholic tradition as her birth “signals the dawn of salvation history, an intervention of God promised a long time ago… she is the one through whom Christ our saviour will be born. Her immaculate conception is the promise of God realised”.
He said, “the light of the resurrection is first seen in its fragile and tentative form with the birth of Mary”.
Archbishop Gordon said Mary is considered the second Eve. He explained that the first Eve was born without sin but was tempted into sin, turned, and walked away from what God wanted, and in so doing condemned all her offspring (us) to be born with original sin.
But God saved Mary from original sin, bringing her into birth “spotless, sinless” —a new Eve. “She is the mother of the new humanity, mother of the new people of God, from whom our lineage goes back to Jesus Christ and to the Father, a lineage who will say ‘yes’ to God regardless of the cost…”