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Month of May in Honor of Mary (Day 6)

May 06, 2026

Fr. John Colacino C.PP.S.

Day 6

A reading from the first Book of Kings (8:1, 3-7,9-11)

The elders of Israel and all the leaders of the tribes,

the princes in the ancestral houses of the Israelites,

came to King Solomon in Jerusalem,

to bring up the ark of the LORD’S covenant

from the City of David, which is Zion.

When all the elders of Israel had arrived,

the priests took up the ark;

they carried the ark of the LORD

and the meeting tent with all the sacred vessels

that were in the tent.

(The priests and Levites carried them.)

King Solomon and the entire community of Israel

present for the occasion

sacrificed before the ark sheep and oxen

too many to number or count.

The priests brought the ark of the covenant of the LORD

to its place beneath the wings of the cherubim in the sanctuary,

the holy of holies of the temple.

The cherubim had their wings spread out over the place of the ark,

sheltering the ark and its poles from above.

There was nothing in the ark but the two stone tablets

which Moses had put there at Horeb,

when the LORD made a covenant with the Israelites

at their departure from the land of Egypt.

When the priests left the holy place,

the cloud filled the temple of the LORD

so that the priests could no longer minister because of the cloud,

since the LORD’S glory had filled the temple of the LORD.

From Mary, Mother of the Lord by Fr. Karl Rahner

Mary placed herself at the disposal of the action of God, so totally that in her the gift of God in person, God made man, could appear, truly of us and yet wholly from on high. Because he is not of this world, but from on high, Mary is the Virgin. In her it is made plain and manifest that there is something beyond the powers and forces of this world, even the noblest, the most important, those that serve to increase humanity, to found nations and produce human life; something that transcends them and is beyond their scope, which is grace, and occurs only by the favour of the eternal God. Her virginity, and the origin of our Lord without an earthly father, signify one and the same thing, not in words, but in easily understood terms of human life: God is the God of freely bestowed grace, who cannot be drawn down from on high by all our endeavours, whom we can only receive as the inexpressibly freely given gift of himself. Mary was not only called to live that, in heart and mind, but visibly to represent and proclaim it by all she was, even in her physical existence. That is why she is a virgin spiritually and physically, solely and entirely at God’s disposal.

Because her whole existence, all that she was throughout her life, from her conception to her death, was totally absorbed into this function of being the mother of God; because apart from it she is nothing; because she had no other purpose; because in everything she was, with all her powers, and in every situation in life, she was dedicated to this one vocation; because of all this, she was ever a virgin, ever and always by reason of her divine motherhood as the obedient acceptance of grace. And not only before the conception of her divine Son, but also ever afterwards. For then too she was and remained still the same, total receptivity to the free gift of grace from on high. She was not only to be that, but also to represent it for the Church as an exemplar actively inspiring imitation, and so found in the Church virginity as a state of life. She has no other function in this world but one, to receive, not earthly powers for earthly life, but divine grace alone, not only in her mind and heart, though that was the most important, but also in her visible and tangible earthly existence.

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