In the 1970s, the Adorers of the Blood of Christ developed a new title for Mary: Mary, Woman of the New Covenant. Mary is invoked under this title in the 1992 ASC Constitution.

This has been an important development in how we understand Mary in relation to the spirituality of the Blood of Christ. It brings forward a number of important perspectives for understanding Mary especially relevant to our time. I would like to take a few moments to explore these, both in regard to Mary herself and to mariology, and also to the spirituality of the blood of Christ.

First of all, the broadening out of the designation of Mary as woman. Mary has been invoked timelessly as Mother. That attribute serves us well and will continue to do so. The role of mother of God, a title dear to the Church since the fifth century, relates her clearly to God's plan of salvation. The title of mother links her to the mothers of the world today, who often suffer for their children and struggle to keep their families together. For these reasons, this title will continue to be important.

At the same time, it has some inherent limitations. When the minority at the Second Vatican Council were thwarted in their efforts to have a separate document of the Council on Mary, they then tried to have Mary proclaimed "Mother of the Church." This too was ultimately rejected because, historically, the Church itself has been seen as our mother. More appropriately (and this is how the Council decided) Mary was seen to be a model for members of the Church, the first disciple of Christ.

As wide-ranging as the image of Mary as mother can be, the image of Mary as woman speaks especially to our time. For it has been a new awareness of women that marked the last decades of the twentieth century. The struggle for equality of women with men in the First World, and the drive to improve educational possibilities for women in the Third World, have been gradually transforming the status and roles of women in the world today. This first of all recognizes the inherent dignity of women as human beings, made in the image and likeness of God. But it is also key to solving some of the intransigent problems of our world. Experts on poverty note that, in many countries, the single most important factor in raising people out of poverty is better education for women. Women with literacy and with education are better able to care for their families, and to be agents of their own history rather than simply subordinate to men. Women who are better educated are also better able to look after their own health and the health of those around them. Improving the status of women is essential for the betterment of the world as a whole.

Thus, seeing Mary under the title of woman provides for an identification of Mary with the women of today, and they with her. It also opens up a mariology based upon the Gospel of John, where Mary is addressed as "woman." While that has been read (in the story of the wedding at Cana) as a reproach to her, more recent scholarship suggests that it makes her the prototype of women who were so important in Jesus' following, much as the Beloved Disciple is a prototype of discipleship.

The designation of Mary as woman of the New Covenant situates her in the salvific plan of God. This is done in a number of ways. First of all, because of her fiat at the Annunciation, she makes the Incarnation possible. She thus becomes a vital participant in God's saving plan. Secondly, because most of the stories we have of her in the New Testament are located in the period before the formal inauguration of the New Covenant, her actions can be read as anticipatory of the New Covenant. That is to say, in reading those stories about Mary (as we shall in a moment), we see what the New Covenant is meant to address and meant to be for us. Thirdly, the identification with the New Covenant places Mary squarely within the context of the Church, as the Second Vatican Council tries to do. The Church is sign and sacrament to the world of that New Covenant, inaugurated in Christ's blood. Mary, as the one to whom the Savior is first announced, and who is with the disciples in the Upper Room at the event of Pentecost, is herself a type of what life in the New Covenant is to be. She is type and model for the Church; she shows in her life what being Church is all about.

The development of the image of Mary as Woman of the New Covenant, then, is to be welcomed as a significant step forward in our understanding of Mary. The whole Precious Blood family stands in gratitude to the Adorers of the Blood of Christ for their efforts in helping the rest of us understand Mary under this title. It offers us a range of possibilities to which I now wish to turn, to help us understand our response to globalization and multiculturalism in our world today.

Globalization and Multiculturalism: A Response through Mary

The challenges of globalization were addressed especially from a theology of the covenant. Covenant, as was noted, is foundational to the spirituality of the blood of Christ. It finds its special meaning in the new covenant inaugurated in Christ's own blood.

Covenant as a response to globalization was viewed under three headings: commitment, connection, and communion. Commitment emphasized the steadfastness and solidarity needed to deal with globalization, both in globalization's fast-moving pace and its lack of long-term involvement with anything. Connection was concerned with the establishing and maintaining of relationships. It is about connecting up what has become disconnected through breaks in relationships or dysfunctional relationships which are not life-giving. Communion is about entering into a deeper unity, about achieving reconciliation, about finding our place in the order of things which God intended.

How does Mary illumine each of these dimensions of covenant: commitment, connection, and communion? Dimensions of commitment amid the speed and ephemera of globalization can be found in three ways in Mary as the Woman of the New Covenant.

First of all, her fiat, her yes to God in the Annunciation. We often think of how hard it is for us, and for all people, to make a commitment in First World societies today. Things move so fast, choices are so abundant, everything appears to keep changing: how can we possibly make a commitment, given such an uncertain future? Mary understands this, and more. The commitment which was being asked of her in the Annunciation story is even greater than what is usually asked of us. Here she is, a young girl from an insignificant town in an insignificant country, who is being asked by God to play a role in God's action in the world beyond that ever asked of a human being. Her question to the angel is telling of the awesome thing being asked of her: how can she, an unmarried young woman, become the bearer of a child of such importance? We think of all the struggles which single mothers face today, not only in supporting their children, but in holding up their dignity in the face of society. Mary understands the awesomeness of commitment, even under the complicating circumstances of globalization.

Second, Mary shows commitment in the midst of prophecy. Her conception of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit carries with it an anointing of the Holy Spirit. Out of her lowliness she is able to praise the great works of God. In her Magnificat (Luke 1:58-79), she extols how God works through the lowly, filling the poor with good things, and sending the rich away with empty hands. In her prophetic praise of God, Mary shows herself to understand the issues of poverty and power that so clearly mark the shadow side of globalization today, and how God sides with and speaks through the little ones of this world. It is the Mary of the Magnificat who stands by us in our commitments to the poor and to the marginalized. It is no wonder that, during the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua in the 1970s, it was forbidden to pray the Magnificat publicly in church.

The other side of her experience of prophecy is the prophecy of Simeon in the temple (Luke 2:33-35). Here it is prophesied that a sword of sorrow will pierce her heart. Here Mary's heart can be seen as something similar to the heart of God which was discussed in the second presentation. Mary keeps all things in her heart. And it is that heart, like the heart of her son, which will be pierced. To commit oneself to the New Covenant in the midst of globalization is to risk having our hearts pierced as well, as we come to experience and feel the suffering of those excluded from the benefits of globalization, those left behind.

Mary kept all things in her heart. This brings us to the third thing about commitment. In keeping everything in her heart, she shows herself to be the true disciple. One of the things which happens in the ministry of many of us is that we are asked to keep many things in our hearts, as people share with us their burdens. Mary keeps all of this as a true disciple of Jesus. She is the one who truly hears God speaking in the suffering of others. She hears the cries of those in anguish. She carries with her the pain of the world that it might be transformed in the saving work of Christ.

Let us turn to a second dimension of the covenant response to globalization, and see how the Woman of the New Covenant helps us understand it. This is connection --- the making and sustaining of relationships. Two incidents from the life of Mary help us understand what connection means in the face of globalization.

The first comes from the story of the wedding at Cana in John 2. Here Mary is attentive to the needs of the young bridegroom and bride in the midst of their celebration. They have run out of wine. With no wine, the celebration will quickly come to an end. She turns to Jesus for help. He answers her curtly and a little coldly. Yet she persists. What Jesus sees as his timeplan has to take second place to the happiness of the young couple just married.

In a world of globalization, time and timelines often do not function on a human scale. They are meant to serve distant, abstract, economic goals. It has been said that, in this second decade of globalization, we will have to discover a more human face to globalization or it will collapse as a movement altogether. It cannot continue to disregard the needs and hopes of so many of the world. Mary's attentiveness to relationships, to connections, in this story reminds us about the globalization of solidarity, a favorite theme of Pope John Paul II. That is to say, we must decide that human relations supersede economic relations in importance, and we must attend especially to these. Mary helps us see that in the story of the wedding at Cana.

The other incident from the life of Mary shows us the power of disconnection. It is in Mark 3:31-35. Here Jesus is alerted to the fact that his mother and his brothers are standing outside the place where he is preaching. They are left standing outside by Jesus. Here Mary no doubt feels the exclusion which is the experience of so many in a globalized world. Family relations are disrupted because of forced migration for the sake of supporting one's loved ones. Mary, as Woman of the New Covenant, has experienced in her own life the exclusion, the marginalization which so many feel, and which the New Covenant promises to overcome.

Finally, the covenant as experience of communion. In the ASC Constitution, Mary is called the first adorer of the mystery of the blood of Christ. This aspect of Mary has been captured in art through the centuries in the depictions of Mary with the infant Jesus. She, more than all others, knows who is in her arms. It is Mary, who shows the constant attentiveness to Jesus in all the stories about her, who exemplifies the fruits of adoration --- being a living presence of tenderness and compassion. The Mary at the manger in Bethlehem is the Mary at the foot of the Jesus' cross on Calvary. To be so focused and so attentive in each of these instances is the fruits of a life of contemplation, of adoration. The Woman of the New Covenant is that first adorer, that first great contemplative.

As was noted in the second presentation, it is this attitude of contemplation and adoration which will make us a living presence of God's tenderness and compassion in a wounded world. Globalization has inflicted more than its share of wounds on the world. It is only through a life of contemplation and adoration that we can hope to attend to those wounds and help them heal.

The final act of communion for Mary is at Pentecost, when she is with the disciples in the Upper Room in Jerusalem. Mary, model of the followers of Jesus in the Church, is present at the birth of the Church. In an age of globalization, the Church must strive to be the reconciled community where those wounded by globalization, those exhausted by its unrelenting demands, those seeking a vision of a more humane society find haven and rest. Here too they find the energy, stirred up by the promise of the New Covenant, to struggle for justice in an unjust world. Mary dwells in the midst of the Church, her contemplative heart anointed by the Holy Spirit, as she was once overshadowed by the Spirit as a result of the words of the angel.

Mary as the Woman of the New Covenant, then, offers us important insights in how to look for and live out that covenant in commitment, connection, and communion. She shows us how to commit ourselves to the poor and to justice, how to connect with those who get disconnected, and how to live in that deeper communion which gives new perspective on the fast-moving and ephemeral powers of globalization.

Multiculturalism

In looking at the many faces of multiculturalism, we explored both the convergences it creates which can enable new kinds of societies to come to exist. We also examined the many dislocations it brings about. We then looked at multicultural realities within the ASC as an international religious institute and in the wider world, ending with reflections on adoration and entering the Paschal Mystery.
In this reflection on multiculturalism and the Woman of the New Covenant, I want to focus especially on how Mary helps us relate to the dislocations. Some other elements --- such as solidarity, attentiveness, and adoration have already been touched upon in the reflection on globalization. Because globalization and multiculturalism are so closely intertwined, it is not surprising that the stories of Mary in the New Testament relate to both.

I wish to begin by calling attention once again to the Magnificat of Mary. Her words show her deep awareness of all the displacements, all the dislocations which mark a world in movement. Her vision is a vision of hope, where the lowly will be exalted, and the powerful knocked from their thrones. The poor will have their fill; the rich go away empty. Mary, herself a person of no significance, knows the power of the grace of God behind the promise of the New Covenant.

Some of those dislocations are evident in Mary's own life. Matthew's Gospel depicts her as a refugee (Matt 2:13-15). She and Joseph must flee with their infant son to Egypt. Egypt was a place which had represented a hostile place for their Hebrew ancestors. They could only return when Herod had died.

The story of the flight into Egypt has often been particularly a great comfort to Christians who themselves have had to become refugees. I found this especially among Vietnamese Catholics. Becoming a refugee means not only losing one's home, but losing one's safety as well. One no longer has any control over one's existence. Refugees are extremely vulnerable people.

This story depicts Mary understanding the plight of the refugee, because she herself has experienced it. To have to escape one's homeland with a newborn child, to go to a place unknown, without any circle of relatives or acquaintances to receive one --- that is the lot of some one hundred twenty million people in the world today, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. The New Covenant promises safety, relationship, and care -- -things sadly missing in the lives of these people. Mary stands as a sign of hope for people living under such circumstances.

Mary experiences another one of the dislocations spoken about under multiculturalism. In the second presentation, it was spoken of the dislocation of coming into the city from the countryside and experiencing the confusion of the premodern and the modern and even postmodern together. The story of the loss of Jesus in Jerusalem in Luke 2:41-52 shows Mary in that vulnerable position. Mary and Joseph have journeyed to the temple, with Jesus in their company. In the confusion of the city, they lose track of him. Few things can be as frightening as the loss of a child, particularly in a strange place. For the village dwellers of Nazareth, Jerusalem was a frightening prospect. They turn back and frantically search for him.

In the contemporary world, children lost in the city provoke similar fears in their parents. Have they lost their way? Have they been abducted, abused, or even killed? Will we ever be reunited again? The Woman of the New Covenant understands these fears in the world today when parents and children are separated.

A different kind of loss of a child can be found in Mark 3, in an incident already alluded to, namely, the story in which Mary and Jesus' brothers are left standing outside. The experience of women struggling to raise their children in cities where cultures clash, and the modern, premodern, and postmodern contest with one another means that women often lose their children in another way. There is a feeling that children move away, that mothers can no longer communicate with them because the children seem to have rejected the values of their parents. In a way, Mary must have experienced that when Jesus begins to question who is his mother and who are his brothers. Family ties are strained. As the poor move into our cities, they often feel that the traditional family bonds they knew in their village in their place of origin are attenuated or even ruptured in the city. Again, the story in Mark 3 leads us to believe that Mary understands this.

Mary as the first disciple, as the first adorer, is the one who enters in a special way the Paschal Mystery. The Gospel of John portrays Mary as standing at the foot of the cross of Jesus. There is much of the life of Jesus which no doubt had not been clear to her. That it ends in his public execution as a criminal and the dashing of all his dreams is indeed a sword which pierces her heart. In this, she suffers with all the women whose sons go to prison, who are misunderstood and misjudged by legal authorities, whose dreams for a better life are crushed. Mary's walking with her son, her not abandoning him on the cross, her taking his dead body once again in her arms as she once contemplated him as an infant, shows us the fidelity of God's being with us in the midst of the most crushing disappointment. So often this is how things end for the poor--crushing disappointment. Mary has been there. Her own fidelity, her own presence, testifies to God's fidelity in the midst of what seems to all intents and purposes as utter failure.

Pope John Paul II has suggested, in his reflections on Mary, that the risen Lord appeared to her. We have no scriptural warrant for this, though its fittingness makes it an opinion we would want to support. The Acts of the Apostles does tell us that the Woman of the New Covenant was present for that important instantiation of the Covenant, the founding of the Church at Pentecost. Mary at Pentecost should be seen as more than simply a reward for her fidelity. It needs to be understood within the continuity of that woman of faith, a continuity reaching back to the Annunciation, the wonder of the Incarnation, and the trials which pierced her heart in between. It is that combination of awe and ache, of beauty and burden which so inspire us in the Woman of the New Covenant.

Conclusion

The images of Mary we have in the traditions of the Precious Blood family continue to support us in our own lives and in our ministries in many ways. I believe the image of the Woman of the New Covenant serves us especially well in these days, marked as they are by globalization and multicultural living. My hope is that you, as ASC sisters, will continue to develop your understanding of Mary under this title. Its potential is only beginning to be realized.

Robert Schreiter, C.PP.S.
Excerpt from a paper delivered at the ASC International Symposium
Newman University, Wichita, KS., June 25-26, 2002

For Reflection

1. What elements of the image of Mary as Woman of the New Covenant speak to you in a special way?
2. In the presentation of the spirituality of the Covenant as commitment, connection, and communion, which stories from the life of Mary spoke especially to you?
3. In the dislocations which can mark multicultural living, which stories from the life of Mary spoke especially to you?