What is the connection between Mary and the Holy Spirit?
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Have you ever noticed that there is a close connection in the Gospels between Mary and the Holy Spirit? At every significant moment in the life of our Blessed Mother, the Holy Spirit is present and active. In fact, many of the attributes we assign to the Spirit of God, such as Comforter, Advocate, and Guide, can also be assigned to the Virgin Mother of Jesus whose tender love comforts, intercedes and shows us the way to her Son.
Whereas we worship God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we venerate Mary and the saints. The distinction is important. God alone deserves our absolute love and devotion. God alone commands our total reverence and adoration. But the love we have for God is meant to be shared with our neighbors, with all our sisters and brothers in the one family of God. Love of neighbor is modeled perfectly for us in the sinless Virgin Mary who was wholly obedient to God’s will and who, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, comforts us in times of sorrow, intercedes for us in times of trouble, and guides us on our life’s journey to our heavenly homeland.
We first meet this young woman from Nazareth in the Gospel texts that proclaim: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will cover you with his shadow” (Lk. 1:35) and “[Mary] was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit…. She has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit” (Mt. 1:18, 20). It is the Holy Spirit who consecrates and makes fruitful Mary’s acceptance of the Father’s will for her. She is full of the grace of the Holy Spirit, who guides her in all of the decisive moments of her life.
Pope St. Paul VI’s apostolic exhortation Marialis Cultis (For the Right Ordering and Development of Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary), published on February 2, 1974, points out that some Fathers and writers of the Church have attributed to the work of the Spirit the original holiness of Mary, who was, as it were, “fashioned by the Holy Spirit into a kind of new substance and new creature.” Mary was conceived without sin by the grace of the Holy Spirit. She is the new Eve—the mother of all the living—because the Spirit of God is with her always.
According to Pope Paul, these same spiritual writers believed that “the mysterious relationship between the Spirit and Mary” is essential to our contemplation of the mystery of the Incarnation, the fact that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity became a human being like us in all things except sin. The cooperation of Mary in God’s saving action was made possible by the grace of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit prepared her for an absolutely unique and unprecedented role in salvation history. He also guided and sustained her throughout her time on earth—providing Mary with “a sacred character” as “the permanent dwelling of the Spirit of God.”
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