In Acts 1:12-14 Luke depicts the scene in the Upper Room after theAscension. He names the Eleven disciples Judas, of course, is missingand has not yet been replaced by Matthias. He continues: ‘With one heartall these (the Eleven disciples) joined constantly in prayer, together withsome women, including Mary the Mother of Jesus, and with hisbrothers' (NJB). This single verse is on the face of it disappointingly littleon which to base everything that has been said or written down throughthe ages on the role of Mary in the Church at its birth - and in particularby Fr. Colin. All the same, it is a text that attracts our attention and callsfor reflection and meditation (see ‘Biblical Approaches’, FN3,4 (1996)521-537).
For one thing, there is the fact that this text exists. It is the sole mentionof Mary in the Acts of the Apostles, and indeed the sole mention of heroutside the Gospels, except for Gal 4:4 (and, probably, the Woman ofApocalypse 12). This verse has nourished the contemplation of those whowanted to know more about the role of Mary in the Church at its birth. AsFr. Coste remarks: Tn testifying to Mary's presence in the first littlegroup of Apostles after the Ascension, St Luke removes from Christiantradition the right to limit its thinking to the fact of the divine maternityand to the Blessed Virgin’s activity during the earthly life of her Son’(ActaSM, vol. 5, p. 450; cf. 418).
Luke draws our attention to Mary’s presence in the post-Paschal Churchand at the same time tantalizes us by telling us next-to-nothing about her.Next-to-nothing, but not quite nothing. The mention of Mary’s presenceamong those who were waiting for the Holy Spirit to ‘come upon’ themand to be filled with ‘power’ (Acts 1:8) recalls the scene of theAnnunciation, when the angel told Mary: ‘The Holy Spirit will comeupon you, and the power of the Most High will rest upon you’ (Luke1:35). We are encouraged to think that the Church, which is about tocome to birth, is to continue the earthly existence of Mary’s child. In his‘Infancy Gospel' Luke shows us Mary taking care of her newborn babyand looking after him throughout his childhood. In Acts 1:14 he seems toinvite us to suppose that Mary nurtured the newborn Church as well.
How did Mary support the Church at its birth? Luke gives us a valuablehint in the way he constructs v. 14. Let us hear it once again, in a slightly more literal translation: ‘All these persevered unanimously in prayer,together with some women and Mary the Mother of Jesus and hisbrothers.’Notice that Mary is not situated ‘in the midst of the apostles’, as is sooften said nor is this the scene of Pentecost, which does not occur for apage or so of the Book of Acts. Rather, Mary is ‘in the midst of thecommunity’, of which the Eleven disciples form part, and if she is ‘in themidst’ of any particular group it is that of the women. Luke, it seems, incomposing this scene, is not simply portraying the apostles awaiting thegift of the Spirit at Pentecost. He intends to depict the earliest Churchitself as a community. Further, this community is complex, made up ofseveral groups and tendencies, and it finds its centre of unity in Mary.
Let's look at the scene more closely. Observe the twofold ‘and’ beforeand after the mention of Mary. The first ‘and’ links her with the disciplesand the women (these will be the women who accompanied the apostolicgroup, cf. Luke 8:1-3); the second ‘and’ links her with the brothers ofJesus (these are his ‘folk’, his clan, led by James called ‘the Lord’sbrother’, who is not named here). Now these two extremes - disciples andbelieving women on the one hand, and Jesus’ brothers on the other - arefar from being unanimous in the gospels, even if Luke does notemphasize their opposition as strongly as do Mark (3:21 ) and John (7:5).In our passage from Acts, the very structure of the sentence (1:14) givesMary a mediating role between these extremes. The third gospel hasalready prepared the ground for this mediating role. There, it is clear,Mary belongs to both groups. By blood, of course, she belongs to Jesus’natural family, along with his ‘brothers’. By faith, she belongs to his newfamily consisting of those who hear God’s word and put it into practice(Luke 8:19-21; cf. Mark 3:31-35).
The presence of Jesus’ brothers in the upper room tells us that they havelearnt to believe in him (the same is implied by the apparition of the risenJesus to James, cf. 1 Cor 15:7). But, even though they are now believers,they have not become his disciples: when Peter, freed from Herod’sprison, rejoins the community that is praying for him, James and thebrothers are not there (cf. Acts 12:17). If Jesus’ disciples and his brothersare found together after the Ascension at least as Luke paints the scene- they still remain two distinct groups. The way that Mary is mentionedbetween them suggests that it is she who has brought them together. Lukeseems to imply that, if their potential rivalry has been settled peacefully,it is thanks to Mary, who occupied the middle ground between bothparties and knew how to use it in order to keep the peace.
In fact Mary may have fulfilled a specific role of mediation in the new¬born Church that was of the highest importance for the future, namely bypreventing a schism that could well have broken out between the disciplesand the brothers of Jesus concerning his succession. (Cf. Lucien LegrandL'annonce à Marie (Lc 1,26-28). Une apocalypse aux origines del’Evangile, Paris, Cerf (Lectio Divina 106), 1981, pp. 339-341.) Who willtake over the leadership after the Founder or Prophet has left the scene:one of his former companions or one of his close relations? This has beena problem for more than one religion. It is the basis of the schism thatdivides the Muslim world between the Sunni, who accept the successionof Kalifs since Uthman, the first who did not belong to Muhammad'sfamily, and the Shi'a, who recognize only his son-in-law Ali and hisdescendants. A similar quarrel divides the Mormons. It could have beenthe case with the Christians as well. The New Testament bears traces of akind of balancing act between Peter, chief of the disciples, and James,brother of Jesus. According to Acts, Peter quits Jerusalem and leaves thefield free for James. In fact, right into the 2nd century the family of Jesusand their descendants were at the head of the believers in Jerusalem, whowere all observant, practising Jews. The mother of Jesus might haveupheld the rights of his brothers, as the mother of the sons of Zebedee hadpromoted theirs (cf. Mt 20:20). On the contrary, Mary renounced forherself any power in the Church that she might have had as mother ofJesus. We can infer that from the New Testament and Church history.Mary of Agreda conveys the same by showing us the Blessed Virginalways respectful and obedient to the apostles.
Acts 1:14 supports the tradition that after the Ascension Mary lived inJerusalem with the apostles and disciples. One of the apocryphal writingseven names them: Evodius, Peter and Andrew, Alexander and Rufus,Salome and Joanna and other virgins. On the other hand, once the‘disciple whom Jesus loved' had been identified as John, writer of theFourth Gospel and of the Apocalypse, then the text of John 19:27, whereJesus on the cross gave his mother to the beloved disciple who ‘from thathour took her to his own’, was taken to mean that Mary lived in the houseof John, and even that she went with him to Ephesus.
We will stay with the version of the tradition according to which theapostles remained in Jerusalem during Mary’s lifetime and only dispersedon their various missions after her Dormition and Assumption. Thetradition that Mary lived with the apostles after the Ascension is closelyassociated with the role that patristic and medieval writers - up to andincluding Mary of Agreda - assigned to the Blessed Virgin in thenewborn Church. This was predominantly a teaching role. Mary asteacher of the apostles, magistra magistrorum, is a very ancient theme,being found at least as far back as St Ambrose in the 4th century, andmay well be solidly founded. The tradition that the evangelists, especiallyLuke and John, derived information concerning Mary and the infancy ofJesus from the Blessed Virgin herself, has been taken seriously by somemodern exegetes (Harnack, Lagrange, Laurentin, Benoit). Some writersalso attributed to Mary a role as counsellor and comforter of the apostles,which brings us closer once again to Mary of Agreda and Fr. Colin. Thistheme can be regarded as a development of the general theme of Mary’smaternal role in the newborn Church.
It seems then that the Church kept the memory of Mary after theAscension among the apostles and first believers, remembering her asuniting, caring for, and even instructing the newborn Church. The firstand most authentic expression of this memory is to be found in the NewTestament. Later tradition continued to express it, often with considerableembellishments, not all of which are of equal value. It could be, however,that certain elements that are found in the later tradition but not inScripture, such as Mary teaching the apostles, are authentic. In any case,it was the living memory of Mary in the community that promptedChristians of a later age to find in the brief words of Acts 1:14a witnessto their own belief in the supportive role of Mary in the Church at itsbirth.
We are entitled to infer from those words that, for Luke, Mary has, evenmore generally, a role that is central and mediating in the new-bornChurch, a body that he knew was made up of several blocs that weredifferent and liable to disagree, even violently. That is, of course, thebasic meaning of the Greek word ekklesia that we translate as ‘Church’: itis an ‘assembly’, which brings together distinct groups or parties. Byexercising this role of mediation or even reconciliation, Mary ‘supports’the newborn Church. This is the scripturally based paradigm of the ‘workof Mary’, in which Marists are called to take part - our Mission.
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