Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church

CNA 

May 21 marks the memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church, added to the Roman calendar this year by Pope Francis.The annual memorial is intended to foster Marian devotion among Catholics. Cardinal Robert Sarah, head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, said this celebration will help promote affection for Christ and his mother.

“This celebration will help us to remember that growth in the Christian life must be anchored to the Mystery of the Cross, to the oblation of Christ in the Eucharistic Banquet and to the Mother of the Redeemer and Mother of the Redeemed,” he said in a March 3 letter.

Catholic Herald 

The Church should have the attitude of a wife and a mother, the Pope said. Without its feminine dimension, the Catholic Church risks becoming an old boy’s club and incapable of love, Pope Francis said.

The Church must “remain female” and “have this attitude of a wife and mother” who nurtures her children, the Pope said in his homily on May 21 during a morning Mass commemorating the feast of Mary, Mother of the Church.

“When we forget this, it becomes a masculine church; without this dimension, it sadly becomes a church of old bachelors, who live in this isolation, incapable of love, incapable of fruitfulness,” the Pope said.

...............Without this dimension, “the Church loses its true identity and becomes a charitable organization or a soccer team or something, but not the Church,” he said.

Like a mother, the Church also goes “along the path of tenderness” and knows how to convey wisdom through the language of “caresses, of silence, of the gaze that knows compassion,” the Pope said.

All Christians in some way are called to “go along the same path,” being someone who is “gentle, tender, smiling, full of love,” Pope Francis said.

iBenedictines - A New Feast: Mary, Mother of the Church Vatican News -  Pope Francis: The Church, like Mary, is woman and mother 
CNA - Pope Francis: Like Mary, the Church is a mother 
Liturgical details for the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church 

Whispers in the Loggia - Address of Pope Paul VI Closing of the Third Session of the Second Vatican Council, St Peter's Basilica, 21 November 1964