Mary is the Lady of All Nations. She is particularly Jewish. All of this is of faith. But is it puzzling? How is it that the Lady of All Nations can belong to a particular nation?

Put this way, the problem seems difficult to solve, except by faith. However, is there anything concrete and thinkable that we can get out of this truth? How is it that Mary can be the mother of all nations and yet have a source in a particular people?

I won’t discredit any other answers, but my own answer is fairly simple. Simply put, “the nations” are the גוים, the goyim, the Gentiles. This is the meaning of the word. This is the resonance of the word in the world of the New Testament. It is by the faith of Israel that the nations are born into citizenship in Heaven in the first place. It is onto this root that the Gentiles can be grafted. “Israel” is not a nation among many; it is the root onto which the Gentiles – in my case, we Gentiles – find a spiritual, supernatural home. This is the Trinity’s particular choice of story to write in human history: there is Israel, and there are “the nations”. In each case, “salvation is from the Jews” (Jn 4:22) – especially Jesus our Mediator and Mother Mary, the gate of particular graces dispensed, but also all the history of Israel and the promises made in and to that history.

I hope this is a very simple way of seeing how Mary can be the Lady of All Nations, without in any way minimizing her particularity as a Jewish woman.