Agenzia Fides

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - When we enter Heaven and find ourselves before God, and contemplate Him “face to face”, we will see also the face of the Blessed Virgin Mary and it is sweet to imagine that meeting. The One whom we have invoked so often on earth : “Ave Maria.. the Lord is with you … Mother of God pray for us... now and at the hour of our death”. What will happen at the paradisiac moment?
Whom will we see in her face, whom will we recognise in her eyes? Someone we do not know, someone whom we see for the first time? Or will we not find in Her the many maternal gazes which accompanied us on earth? Will we not see first of all the face of our earthly mother shining on the face of the Mother of mothers? The face we know best of all, the first one we held in our wondering gaze as infants!
It will be marvellous to realise that Mary’s face has been always close, never unknown; so close that, that face we will contemplate in glory, which we have seen reflected so often here on earth without knowing, on the maternal faces which Providence, like a divine embroidery, in fact ordered our path with harmony.
All those faces of “mother”, “sister”, “friend” had in their eyes, a special light which gave courage and hope at times of trial, alleviating our suffering, lifting us out of our egoism with their generous and disinterested example.
Those eyes are impressed on our minds, a sweet memory, a gentle word, a gesture filled with goodness… although distracted by a thousand things and unawares, in fact everything spoke mysteriously of Her, of the mystery of her universal motherhood which embraces every believer who opens to her Son Jesus and therefore encounters the Mother of mothers.
In Heaven one day we will contemplate those other blessed faces in God’s company and note that they are marked by the same goodness, the same Love which proceeds from the Trinity and pours out on mankind though the Word incarnate and glorified.
Jesus is the source of our graces, our celestial beatitude and his Mother, as a Queen, is beside Him to introduce us to that mystery and continue to accompany is up there in the discovery and praise of God’s infinite mercy.
What a mystery of glory it will be to contemplate her spiritual maternity flowing from her divine maternity: Mother of the incarnate Word and therefore Mother of mankind redeemed! A spiritual motherhood which, through the fathomless plan of God, is so effective from the first moment of our life, watching over us every moment, and hiding in the heart of every person marked by this Marian goodness, a special manifestation of the maternal goodness of God. So the first word we learned here on earth “mamma”, we will repeat in Heaven in the fullness of truth, looking at the face of Mary. (Agenzia Fides 28/6/2006 - righe 37, parole 528)