Behold Your Mother

The city of Ephesus was a historical giant.  At its height during the time of ancient Rome, it was the largest city in the empire’s Asian territories.  It boasted an immense three-story library that is still standing today, an enormous temple that rivaled any built in Rome or Athens, and one of the largest ports on the Mediterranean.  The history of Christianity in the city is equally rich.  While many of the cities that we’ve visited so far show up in only a couple verses in the book of Acts or as the recipients of a brief message near the beginning of Revelation, Ephesus shows up time and time again in the early history of the Church.  Paul spent roughly two years amongst the Church in Ephesus and they were eventually the destination of his Letter to the Ephesians.  Saints like Timothy, Polycarp, and Ignatius of Antioch all had close ties to the city.  Ephesus was even the location of one of the most important ecumenical councils in the Church’s history.  However, if you were to ask the majority of us what stood out the most to us today.  I doubt that many of these things would be mentioned.  Rather, many of us would point to a place a little outside the walls of the city, about a mile or two up the mountainside, a small brick building overlooking the ruins of this once sprawling metropolis: the house of Saint John and the Blessed Mother.

Back in my room at Mundelein, I have a small icon on my wall that I continually come back to in prayer.  It shows Mary and Saint John as they prepare for Mass.  He’s vested in the garb of a medieval priest and she’s handing him a stole.  I love this image, and I hope that it remains the model of my own priesthood.  It’s amazing to meditate on the life Saint John shared with Mary in Ephesus in the years after the Resurrection and Pentecost.  He had the chance to do as Christ had done before him, to take Mary as his mother and learn at her feet.  He had the chance to learn from her those things that the Gospel tells us she pondered in her heart, and he had the chance to learn what it means to be a priest from the mother of the true High Priest.

As men studying to be priests like Saint John before us, we have the same chance and the same calling today.  As a wise priest once told me: “you cannot take the Church as your bride if you don’t take Mary as your mother.”  Today, we had opportunity to do exactly that, to unite ourselves more fully to Mary and, through her, her Son.  We walked the house that she walked with Saint John nearly two thousand years ago.  We journeyed through the ancient metropolis that their house had once overlooked, and, most importantly, we celebrated the Mass just a few feet from where they had once done the same.

To all of you who have been following along with these blogs, please know that we’re incredibly grateful for your support and that we carry you in all of our prayers.  May Mary the Theotokos and Saint John the Beloved pour out God’s blessings upon you! 

-Samuel Bergmann, Diocese of Joliet