Today we realize that in the Gospels every time we talk about Mary, we are talking about “Jesus’ mother”. And although at the Annunciation the word “mother” is not said, the context is of motherhood: the mother of Jesus. This attitude of mother accompanies her work throughout the life of Jesus: she is a mother! So much that in the end Jesus gives her as our mother, in the person of John: “I am leaving, but this is your mother”. Here you have, therefore, the maternity of Mary.

The words of the Virgin are words of mother. They are all like that: after those at the beginning, words of availability to God’s will and of praise to God in the Magnificat, all the words of the Virgin are words of the mother. Before, in Nazareth, she helps him to grow up, raises him, educates him, but later she follows him: “Your mother is there”. Mary is a mother from the beginning, from the very first moment when she appears in the Gospels, from the moment of the Annunciation until the end: she is a mother.

—About her, it is not said “the lady” or “the widow of Joseph” —and, in fact, they could say it— but that Mary is always mother.