The Role Of The Virgin Mary In The Plan Of God Dariusz

SALESIAN PONTIFICAL UNIVERSITY
Jerusalem Campus
STUDIUM THEOLOGICUM SALESIANUM

Dariusz Mencel SDB

THE ROLE OF THE VIRGIN MARY IN THE SAVING
PLAN OF GOD, IN THE LIFE OF JESUS, IN THE
PRIMITIVE CHURCH, IN THE CATHOLIC LITURGY
AND IN THE CHRISTIAN SPIRITUAL LIFE

Final Synthesis for the Baccalaureate in Theology
Tutor: Prof. Pier Giorgio Gianazza

Jerusalem

25th March 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS ____________________________________________________ 2
ABBREVIATIONS _________________________________________________________ 3
INTRODUCTION__________________________________________________________ 4
1. THE ROLE OF THE VIRGIN MARY IN THE SAVING PLAN OF GOD ________ 6
1.1. The saving plan of God ________________________________________________ 7
1.2. The saving plan of God as in Galatians 4:4-6 and the role of “a woman” ______ 11
1.3. The protoevangelium in Genesis 3:15 and the role of the woman _____________ 16
2. MARY IN THE LIFE OF JESUS __________________________________________ 21
2.1. Virginal Mother of Jesus ______________________________________________ 22
2.2. True Disciple of her Son ______________________________________________ 26
2.3. Associated in His redemptive action ____________________________________ 30
3. MARY IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH ____________________________________ 36
3.1. Her mission: “Woman, this is your son... This is your mother” ______________ 37
3.2. Her practise: “they were joined constantly in prayer, including Mary” _______ 41
3.3. The tradition of her assumption to Heaven _______________________________ 46
4. MARY IN THE CATHOLIC LITURGY ____________________________________ 52
4.1. The cult of Mary in the Church: an historical view ________________________ 53
4.2. Mary in the liturgical celebrations ______________________________________ 58
4.3. Mary in the popular piety _____________________________________________ 62
5. MARY IN THE CHRISTIAN SPIRITUAL LIFE ____________________________ 67
5.1. Mary, perfect model of Christian life ____________________________________ 68
5.2. Two typical “Marian” saints: St Louis Mary de Montfort and St John Bosco __ 72
5.3. Mary mother of unity for the Christian East and West _____________________ 77
CONCLUSION ___________________________________________________________ 83
BIBLIOGRAPHY _________________________________________________________ 86

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ABBREVIATIONS

The Abbreviations of the biblical books are taken from: The New Jerusalm Bible, London,
Darton Longman, 1990.
AAS = Acta Apostolicae Sedis
AG = Ad Gentes
DV = Dei Verbum
LG = Lumen Gentium
OE = Orientalium Ecclesiarum
SC = Sacrosanctum Concilium
UR = Unitatis Redintegratio
ASS = Acta Sanctae Sedis
CCC = Catechism of the Catholic Church.
CMBVM = Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Vol. 1 Sacramentary, New
York, Catholic Book Publishing CO, 1992.
PG = Patrologia Graeca
PL = Patrologia Latina ed. = editor eds. = editors
n. (N.)= number nn. = numbers
p. = page pp. = pages vol. = volume

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INTRODUCTION
I should say at the very beginning that it is a great privilege and pleasure for me to choose this topic on The role of the Virgin Mary in the saving plan of God, in the life of
Jesus, in the primitive Church, in the catholic liturgy and in Christian spiritual life. I was motivated to do this synthesis on Mariology by my own personal relation and devotion to our
Blessed Mother and by what I learnt from my own family back in Poland. My special devotion to our Blessed Lady became even stronger when I entered into Novitiate where I was taught and instructed how to honor her and how to manifest or express a special devotion to her. This encouragement and guidelines that I received from my superiors with regard to the devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary pushed me to undertake this wonderful theme on
Mary. I also feel her loving presence and help during my life’s journey as a Salesian of Don
Bosco.
I made this research on the topic of Mariology, with a specific purpose, in order to try to understand and to know more about the love of God in the history of salvation manifested in God’s wonderful work in the life of our Blessed Mother. The other thing that I learnt from my synthesis is that it made me more aware of our Catholic tradition’s teachings and beliefs about the Blessed Lady from both theoretical and practical point of view. This also made me deepen my knowledge about the Mother of God. I definitely wish and pray that this synthesis of mine will help me in my future priestly ministry as Salesian of Don Bosco.
The division of my exposition entails five chapters, clearly present in the very title of the theme. Those are: The role of the Virgin Mary in the saving plan of God, Mary in the life of Jesus, Mary in the primitive Church, Mary in the catholic liturgy and Mary in Christian spiritual life. In the First Chapter, I tried to base my research on the saving plan of God in a general sense, on God’s saving plan and the role of a woman as in Galatians 4:4-6 and the role of the woman in the Protoevangelium in Genesis 3:15. The Second Chapter is based on the role of our Blessed Virgin Mary in the Fullness of Time. The essential points that I expanded are: Virginal mother of Jesus, Mary as the true disciple of her Son and as the one associated in His redemptive action. In the Third Chapter I focused on the mission of Mary who was entrusted to her by Jesus: “Woman, this is your son... This is your mother” (Jn
19:26-27), on her practice as the one who is present and pray: “they were joined constantly in prayer, including Mary” (Acts 1:14) and on the tradition of Mary’s assumption to Heaven.
The Fourth Chapter is dedicated to the historical view of the cult of Mary in the Church, to
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Mary in the Liturgical celebrations and to Mary in the popular piety. The final, Fifth Chapter presents Mary as the New Humanity. The main points that come under this topic are: Mary, the perfect model of Christian life in fulfilling God’s will, in conforming her life to Christ and in living her life in the Spirit, the presentation of two typical “Marian” saints, namely St
Louis Grignion de Montfort and the founder of the Salesian Congregation St John Bosco.
The last part of the final Chapter is dedicated to Mary as the mother of unity for Christian
East and West.
I sincerely acknowledge the help that I have received to develop my synthesis from several sources. The main sources that I inserted in my synthesis are the Holy Scripture,
Catechism of the Catholic Church, and The Documents of the Second Vatican Council. Some of the writings of the great theologians and some theological Dictionaries helped me to do my synthesis. I also used some of the Encyclical Letters of different Popes, Liturgical texts,
Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Salesian Constitutions and documents of our Congregations as well as the works of great spiritual value. All of them were extremely useful in writing and in living the topic in practice.
It is a great honor for me to show my heartfelt gratitude to Fr Pier Giorgio Gianazza, the Professor of the Studium Theologicum Salesianum, Jerusalem Campus and my Tutor, who has been always by my side to guide and direct me unceasingly during the development of my synthesis. I do sincerely appreciate and acknowledge his hard work and patiently correcting my paper in order to arrive at the conclusion successfully. May God shower His manifold blessings upon him. I also extend my sincere gratitude to Fr Biju Michael, the
Principal of the Studium Theologicum Salesianum, Jerusalem Campus and to Fr Ivo Coelho, the Rector of the Salesian Community Ratisbonne, who encouraged me and guided me to grow in my spiritual life. I pray for God’s blessings upon each one of them.

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CHAPTER 1
THE ROLE OF THE VIRGIN MARY IN THE SAVING PLAN OF GOD
“When God acts, the impossible becomes possible. It is our task to say ‘yes’ to God’s saving will and to accept his mysterious plan with our whole being. The world today needs to be awakened to God’s love and to his saving plan”.1
God has created the entire universe. In his merciful love, God has created man and woman in his image:
God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild animals and all the creatures that creep along the ground.’ God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them (Gen 1:26-27).

The creation in itself was good. This goodness of what God has created is stressed six times in the first chapter of Genesis (cf. Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25), but only once it is said that what God created was “very good” and that is after the creation of man and woman (Gen
1:31).2
Because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, sin came into the world. The man destroyed the original, perfect relationship with God, his creator, by listening and giving up into the temptation of Satan:
The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eye, and that it was enticing for the wisdom that it could give. So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it (Gen 3:6).

After the fall of the first parents God did not abandon his creatures. He was not only present there to help the human kind through the history, but he has promised to send the redeemer who would deliver us from the power of Satan. “When the completion of the time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born a subject of the Law, to redeem the subjects of the Law, so that we could receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4-5).

1

S. P. J. MILLER, FSE, Foreword, in POPE JOHN PAUL II, The Trinity’s Embrace. God’s Saving Plan. A catechesis on Salvation History, Volume Six, Boston, Pauline, 2002, p. Xiii.
2
Cf. P. HAFFNER, Mystery of Creation, Loeminster, Gracewing, 1995, p. 59.

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In this first chapter I would like to focus on the topics relating to the saving plan of
God and the role of a “woman” as in Galatians 4:4-6, and the protoevangelium and the role of the woman as in Genesis 3:15.

1.1 The saving plan of God
The eternal Father, in accordance with the utterly free and mysterious design of his wisdom and goodness, created the entire universe. He chose to raise up men and women to share in his own divine life; and when they had fallen in Adam, he did not abandon them, but at all times offered them the means of salvation, bestowed in consideration of
Christ, the Redeemer, ‘who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation’
(Col 1:15).3

God has created the entire universe, including the human race, out of his infinitive love. He created men and women to be in a special relationship with him. It was the role of the first parents to live in a constant presence with God, to love God, to talk to him, to obey him. When God has finished the work of creation, he looked at it and “found it very good”
(Gen 1:31). This shows, that everything, including the human race, is in its very nature “very good.” Because of its goodness, God himself blessed twice the human race.4
But this original goodness of the creation was affected. The personal relationship with
God, the relationship of love and trust was destroyed by the refusal of being obedient to the divine will. Man and woman did not follow the commandment of God not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil: “Then Yahweh God gave the man this command, ‘You are free to eat of all the trees in the garden. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat; for, the day you eat of that, you are doomed to die’” (Gen 2:16-17). That was the first sin of all humanity.5 The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives the answer to the question of how did this first sin of disobedience, the sin of Adam and Eve, affect all their descendants: 3

LG 2, all the quotations from the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council are taken from: A. FLANNERY, (ed.),
The Basic Sixteen Documents: Vatican Council II, New York, Costello Publishing Company, 1996.
4

Gen 1:28 „God blessed them, saying to them, 'Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all the living creatures that move on earth. '”; Gen 9:1 “God blessed
Noah and his sons and said to them, Breed, multiply and fill the earth.” The Pentateuch comprises many other blessings as well, such as the one of Abraham (Gen 12:2), Sarah and Isaac (Gen 17:16) Jacob (Gen 27-29), of the whole people by Aaron (Nm 6:24-26), of the nation by Balaam (Nm 23:20), of each tribe by Moses (Dt
33:1-29).
5

Sin has been defined as “any offense against life as God designed it. It is to miss the target that God designed for humanity, whether intentionally or unintentionally; it is the expression of an inner twistedness; it is finally to step over the bounds God has defined for humanity” (J. N. OSWALT, Theology of the Pentateuch, Sin, in T. D.
ALEXANDER – D. W. BAKER, (eds.), Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, Illinois, InterVarsity Press,
2003, p. 856).

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The whole human race is in Adam ‘as one body of one man’. By this ‘unity of the human race’ all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice. (...)
Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called
‘sin’ only in an analogical sense: it is a sin ‘contracted’ and not ‘committed’ - a state and not an act (CCC 404).

From that moment all the descendants of the first parents have the inclination to sin.
While people tend to sin, to disobedience to the divine will, God tends to forgiveness and mercy.6 Even though the human race refused to be in this special relation with their
Creator, God has never abandoned, never left them alone. Throughout the history he was always present there to lead people to himself. The inclination to sin is so great, that people were going far away further and further from God. They did not follow the way which God has shown them. They refused to come back to God, to the one who gives life. It is the way of humanity, but God’s way is different. He was giving them many occasions to come back to him.
God provides constant evidence of himself in created realities. Furthermore, wishing to open up the way to heavenly salvation, he manifested himself to our first parents from the very beginning. After the fall, he buoyed them up with the hope of salvation, by promising redemption; and he has never ceased to take care of the human race, in order to give eternal life to all those who seek salvation by persevering in doing good.7

Throught the human history there are many evidences that God did not give up the human race. There are many proofs that he was always intervening in times of difficulties, when everything seemed to be lost. “He intervened to heal and renew the human condition, deeply wounded by sin.”8 From the very first moment after the fall of the first human beings,
God gives the promise that the power of sin will be destroyed: “I shall put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; it will bruise your head and you will strike its heel” (Gen 3:15). That is the first promise of sending the Messiah who would be the offspring of a woman and who will deliver God’s people from the power of sin and death. 6

Cf. L. BOADT, The Pentateuch, in D. SENIOR – J. J. COLLINS (eds.), The Catholic Study Bible, The New
American Bible, Oxford, University Press, 2006, p. 98.
7

DV 3.

8

POPE JOHN PAUL II, General audience of November 19, 1997 in POPE JOHN PAUL II, The Trinity’s Embrace.
God’s Saving Plan. A catechesis on Salvation History, Volume Six, Boston, Pauline, 2002, p. 5.

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The promise of the Messiah will be fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. But before that, there are many more promises and God’s interventions in the life of men. Several times
God has entered into the life of the human beings with a new idea how to be closer to him.
God has made a covenant with his people.9 After the increasing sinfulness of humanity it seems that God regrets having created human beings:
Yahweh saw that human wickedness was great on earth and that human hearts contrived nothing but wicked schemes all day long Yahweh regretted having made human beings on earth and was grieved at heart. And Yahweh said, ‘I shall rid the surface of the earth of the human beings whom I created – human and animal, the creeping things and the birds of heaven – for I regret having made them’ (Gen 6:5-7).

God has sent a flood which destroyed the created things, but there was Noah who was righteous and he himself together with his family was saved. He was ordered to build the ark and take into it a pair of each animal. In this way God did not destroy the creatures. After the flood God made a covenant with Noah and his descendants:
Never again will I curse the earth because of human beings, because their heart contrives evil from their infancy. Never again will I strike down every living thing as I have done.
As long as earth endures: seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease (Gen 8:21-22).

Noah is not the only person to whom God shows his love and willingness to save his people.10 In his own time, God called Abraham and made him into a great nation (cf. Gen 12:2).
After the era of the patriarchs, he taught this nation, through Moses and the prophets, to recognize him as the only living and true God, as a provident Father and just judge.11

Faith is the basic attitude to be in union with God, to be a friend of God. It is
Abraham, with whom God has made a covenant because of his faith (cf. Gen 15:18). But even more important and more significant God’s intervention in human life was the covenant at Sinai. God has given the Ten Commandments to the People of Israel (cf. Ex 32:15-16).
Those Commandments were to help in fulfilling God’s will. They were to help the chosen
People to come closer, to be more faithful and to be more united with God. The Lord was to be their God and they were to obey and be his People. But even then it was not fulfilled.
9

A covenant is an agreement enacted between two parties In which one or both make promises under oath to perform or refrain from certain actions stipulated in advance. Covenant in the Bible is the major metaphor used to describe the relation between God and Israel (the people of God). As such, covenant is the instrument constituting the rule (or kingdom) of God. (Cf. G. E. MENDENHALL – G. A. HERION, COVENANT, in D. N.
FREEDMAN, (ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Volume I, A-C, New York, Doubleday, 1992, p. 1179).
10

For a more detailed list of the Covenants between God and his people see: Covenant, in J. W. ELLISON (ed.),
Nelson’s Complete Concordance of the Revised Standard Version Bible, New York, Thomas Nelson & Sons,
1954, pp. 365-367.
11

DV 3.

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While God was protecting his chosen race, the People of Israel many times turned against him. They worshiped other gods; they sinned and were not faithful. For this God has sent other punishments: the Temple of Jerusalem – the place where God was present in a special way, the place of worship – was destroyed and the chosen nation was taken into the exile (cf.
2Chr 36:17-20).
But even during that time and after the exile God was still with his people. He has never abonded them. Slowly he was preparing them and the whole humanity for the culmination of his love, as he has promised to Adam and Eve after their fall. God thaught them to wait for the promised savior who would deliver his people from the slavery. In this way he was leading the people of Israel to the coming of his own Son Jesus Christ (Cf. CCC
522). God prepared the way for the Gospel.12
At many moments in the past and by many means, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets; but in our time, the final days, he has spoken to us in the person of his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom he made the ages (Hbr 1:1-2).

Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the promise God has made to his people, the promise of salvation. In Jesus Christ are the “final days”, the culmination apex of the saving plan of
God.
In order to establish a relationship of peace and communion with himself, and in order to establish communion among people, sinners though they are, God decided to enter into the history of humankind in a new and definitive manner, by sending his own Son in human flesh, so that through him he might snatch men and women from the power of darkness and of Satan and in him reconcile the world to himself.13

Jesus brought back the fallen humanity to God. He came into the world to free the peoples from sin. His coming is the fulfillment of God’s love, the fulfillment of God’s saving plan.
Some theologians aroused a question about the Incarnation of the Son of God. Would it happen even if the humanity did not fall? Would God send his Son into the world?14
Beyond all those disputes, Jesus Christ came as the Savior and Redeemer. He came to deliberate the whole humankind from the power of sin. This liberation removes not only sins but also all barriers that separate humanity from the covenant and friendship with God. He came to reconcile us with God: “It is all God’s work; he reconciled us to himself through
12

Cf. DV 3.

13

AG 3.

14

St Thomas states that the Incarnation would not have taken place if there was no need of Redemption from sin whereas Duns Scotus said that the Incarnation is a great proof of divine love and is no inclusive only to the fall. Then Christ would havecome as the one who takes man to glory and not as he who is the redeemer. (Cf.
HAFFNER, Mystery of Creation, p. 140.

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Christ and he gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2Cor 5:18). This reconciliation has been accomplished by Christ’s own sacrificial death on the cross. He brought to earth peace not only between God and humanity, but also among human beings.15
Jesus Christ, true God and true man, entered into the history of humanity by the power of the Holy Spirit. But he had to take the human form from a human person. The fulfillment of God’s promise of redemption, the high point of the saving plan of God has been possible thanks to the positive attitude of a woman, the acceptance of Mary from
Nazareth to be the Mother of God’s only Son (cf. Lk 1:26-38).

1.2. The saving plan of God as in Galatians 4:4-6 and the role of “a woman” The Incarnation is the central and defining event of Christian theology. The doctrine of this event is about the second person of the Holy Trinity who assumed the human nature, becoming a man, in order to bring salvation to the fallen human beings. This doctrine can be found in several places in the New Testament, particularly in the Letter of St Paul to the
Galatians:
But when the completion of the time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born a subject of the Law, to redeem the subjects of the Law, so that we could receive adoption as sons. As you are sons, God has sent into our hearts the Spirit of his Son crying, ‘Abba,
Father’ (Gal 4:4-6).

On the base of the Scripture and the apostilic tradition, the Church believes that the
Son of God became incarnate, that is, Jesus is both God and Man. The theologians of the
Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit sought to comprehend what the Scripture teaches about the person of Christ. By faith they attest that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man. Jesus is the face of God, “the reflection of God’s glory” (Hbr 1:3). He is consubstantial with the Father and consubstantial with humanity (fully God and fully human). The Council of Chalcedon (451) strongly affirms this teaching when it states that Jesus is the divine

15

Cf. POPE JOHN PAUL II, The Son of God Brings the Fullness of Salvation. General audience of February 18,
1998 in POPE JOHN PAUL II, The Trinity’s Embrace. God’s Saving Plan. A catechesis on Salvation History,
Volume Six, Boston, Pauline, 2002, p. 28.

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person in two natures, namely divine nature which is invisible and human nature that is visible.16 The fulfillment of God’s saving plan took place in a specific time and in a specific place. It has also needed a specific person for that. God himself has chosen the appropriate time for his Son to be sent into the world. Through the centuries God was preparing the world, and in a special way his chosen people – the people of Israel, for this special event. It is not certain why the Son of God came exactly in that particular time of the history. God alone fixed the time and only He himself knows why decided to send his Son among men at the time when ‘Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be made of the whole inhabited world. This census – the first – took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria’
(Lk 2:1-2). Schools and theologians can put forward only hypotheses: the time was fixed by the necessity of some things to be accomplished before, or the world was in a certain condition, or as appointed to occur after the lapse of a certain definite period.17 “The completion of the time” came and this is the only thing that is certain. St Paul in his Letter to the Galatians does not give any explanation, any suggestion, any answer concerning this matter. It is God’s own decision; it was God himself who decided when this “completion of time” was going to take place. This was the “point in history when God’s salvific intervention took place.”18
“The completion of the time” does not mark a new beginning, the beginning of a new age. It does not mean that there is a gap between something what already happened and something that will happen; there is no separation between the past and the future.19 This completion is simply a time when God became man, when the eternal Son of God – the Word took a human flesh and lived among us (cf. Jn 1:14).
God has sent his only Son into the world. This event is described and specified by St
Paul in his letter to the Galatians by two phrases: Jesus was “born of a woman” and he was
“born under the law.” The first phrase has been interpreted from the earliest years of
Christianity, as the reference to Christ’s birth of the Virgin Mary – although some scholars

16

Cf. O. D. CRISP, Incarnation, in J. WEBSTER – K. TANNER – I. TORRANCE (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of
Systematic Theology, New York, Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 160-161.
17

Cf. E. DE WITT BURTON, A critical and exegetical commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, Edinburgh, T.
& T. Clark, 1968, p. 216.
18

J. A. FITZMYER, The Letter to the Galatians, p. 787, in R. E. BROWN – J. A. FITZMYER – R. E. MURPHY (eds.),
The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Theological Publications in India, Bangalore, 2005, pp. 780-790.
19

Cf. DE WITT BURTON, A critical and exegetical commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, p. 216.

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do not agree with that interpretation.20 The second phrase identifies Jesus as a Jew. And it is because Jesus is a Jew ‘under the law’ that he can redeem others under the law.21
St Paul stresses the role of a human being – a woman, in the mystery of the
Incarnation. God the Son could become a human being only through to the cooperation of a human being. In Mary, a woman from Nazareth, the Word took a human flesh (cf. Jn 1:14).
Her humble answer to the Angel sent by God: “You see before you the Lord’s servant, let it happen to me as you have said” (Lk 1:38) was the very moment when God became man.
Mary received the Word of God in her heart and in her body and in this way she has brought into the world the Son of God.22
God does not force anyone to obey and to do his will. It is a free choice of a person to do it, to answer to God’s calling. Men are free to choose to obey God and to go with him or not to obey and to go against God. And it was the same situation with Mary. God has sent the angel Gabriel to Mary with a message. She would become the mother of God’s only begotten
Son. But the angel does not impose on Mary this task. He is the one who brings the message to her. He explains the situation, answers questions asked by Mary, and finally gives the example of Elizabeth, the cousin of Mary, as the proof that there are no things which are impossible to God. (cf. Lk 1:26-37) But he does not force Mary to take this responsibility on her. It was Mary’s free choice, it was her free will to accept this message and become the
Mother of God. She made a decision in full freedom.
St Louis Grignion de Montfort in Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin writes: Mary is the earthly paradise of Jesus Christ the new Adam, where He became man by the power of the Holy Spirit, in order to accomplish in her wonders beyond our understanding. She is the vast and divine world of God where unutterable marvels and beauties are to be found. She is the magnificence of the Almighty where He hid His only
Son, as in His own bosom, and with Him everything that is most excellent and precious.23

Thus Mary became the channel of God’s redemptive plan. She has received the Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. St Louis Grignion de Montfort emphasizes the role

20

Cf. FITZMYER, The Letter to the Galatians, p. 787, in. BROWN – FITZMYER – MURPHY (eds.), The New
Jerome Biblical Commentary, pp. 780-790.
21

Cf. B. R. GAVENTA, Galatians, p. 1381, in J. D. G. DUNN (ed.), Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible,
Michigan/Cambridge, B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003, pp. 1374-1384.
22

Cf. LG 53.

23

ST L. M. DE MONTFORT, Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, Canonisation Edition, London,
Keliher, Hudson&Kearns LTd, 1947, n. 6.

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of the Holy Spirit in the act of the Incarnation. He points that this mystery took place by the intervention of the Holy Spirit. This is a very important statement. In the act of the incarnation of the Son of God there cannot be a human sexual act. It was the Holy Spirit who came upon Mary and she conceived by his power, as is testified by the Gospel itself: “ 'The
Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God” (Lk 1:35).
When Mary accepted the invitation to conceive the Son of God, the Holy Spirit has overshadowed her and that is the moment when she has conceived the Son of God. But without her cooperation, without her “yes”, without her body, that would never happen. She is the real Mother of God.24 In the Middle Ages St Thomas Aquinas put the emphasis on the important role of Mary which she has played in the Incarnation – also against the heresy of
Nestorius. He pointed the mistake of Nestorius who was saying that Mary should not to be called the Mother of God because she only gave the flesh to Jesus, but not his divinity. St
Thomas explained it by using the example of normal human life. A woman is called a mother of her child because she is the one from whom a child is taking the matter – the body. A human person is made up of a body and a soul. A child does not derive his or her soul from the mother. It is God who gives the soul to the individual persons. But even if a woman does not transmit the soul to her child, she is still called the mother of that child. Therefore Mary is a real Mother of God.25 The Only Begotten Son of God became Man thanks to the cooperation of Mary from Nazareth. He derived the human body from Mary and therefore she is rightly called the Mother of God. “Through the humanity assumed in Mary’s womb, the eternal Son of God began to live as a child and grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man (cf. Lk 2:52). Thus, he manifested himself as true man.”26
This significant role of Mary in giving birth to the Son of God has also its importance in the second phrase which indicates the sending of the eternal Son into the world: “born under the law.” Being born as a human being, the Son of God – Jesus became a subject of the law. Being born in a Jewish family, he had to go through all the prescriptions written in the
Law given by God through Moses on Mount Sinai. He had to follow what the people of
Israel were thought to observe. In this way Jesus shared the condition of those whom he

24

Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Mater, London, Catholic Truth Society, 2003, n. 9.

25

Cf. ST THOMAS AQUINAS, Compendium of Theology, Part 1, chapter 222, R. J. REGAN (translator), New York,
Oxford University Press, 2009.
26

POPE JOHN PAUL II, Eternity Now Pervades Time. General audience of February 18, 1998, in POPE JOHN
PAUL II, The Trinity’s Embrace. God’s Saving Plan. A catechesis on Salvation History, p. 13.

14

came to redeem. He became like us in everything except sin so that we might become more like him. He became a human being so that the humanity could be raised up to the higher level. Finally the Son of God became like us so that we could share his condition before his
Incarnation.27
“Born a subject of the Law, to redeem the subjects of the Law, so that we could receive adoption as sons”. As the one who came to share our human condition, Jesus should live an earthly life and to be under the civil and religious law. When he was born, he did not set the law aside but he had to be submitted to the rules of the Mosaic Law. That is why he was circumcised just as the law demanded (cf. Lk 2:21) and was attending the major feasts of the Jewish religion (cf. 2:41-42).28 He had to obey both the religious as well as the civil law
(cf. Jn 19:15).
Jesus, by submitting himself to the law, wanted to redeem from the law firstly the
Jews. But they did not follow him, did not listen to him when he openly attacked some interpretations of the law. Even in small things concerning the Law of Moses, the pharasees were against him (cf. Jn 9:24). Jesus submitted himself to the law. He was judged, then condemned and finally put to death under the civil law. He did all this in order to bring upon himself the curse of that law and in this way to redeem the Jews from the curse of the law (cf.
Gal 3:13; 4:5).29
In the Christian world this redemption, this putting aside the curse of the law takes place in Baptism. “In Baptism they die, symbolically or mystically, a death to which the law attaches a curse.”30 In Baptism we become sharers of Christ’s divine sonship. It is through
Baptism that we become children of God.
“The Galatians, who were slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe, have experienced, through redemption by God’s Son and divine adoption, the freedom of the sons
(= children) of God.”31 St Paul writes and explains to the people of Galatia that, through the redemption offered by Jesus Christ, they became children of God. It took place when they have been incorporated into Jesus’ death and resurrection through the Baptism. Through this sacrament Christians become children of God. Jesus Christ offered himself as the one cursed
27

Cf. J. BLIGH, Galatians. A Discussion of St Paul’s Epistle, London, St Paul Publications, 1969, pp. 342-343.

28

Cf. BLIGH, Galatians. A Discussion of St Paul’s Epistle, p. 343.

29

Cf. BLIGH, Galatians. A Discussion of St Paul’s Epistle, p. 344.

30

BLIGH, Galatians. A Discussion of St Paul’s Epistle, p. 344.

31

R. E. BROWN, An introduction to the New Testament, New York, Doubleday, 1997, p. 472.

15

by the law that we might be no longer the slaves of the law. This freedom makes us the children of God and no longer the slaves of the law. We have been adopted as children of
God through Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Just as God the Father is called ‘Abba, Father’ by Jesus (cf. Mk 14:36), so now we have the right to do likewise. “As you are sons, God has sent into our hearts the Spirit of his
Son crying, ‘Abba, Father’” (Gal 4:6). But this cannot be done only by ourselves. It is not in human capacity to recognize this truth and to act according to it. In Baptism we have received the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, who enables us to call God our Father (cf. Rm
8:15). It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we can grasp the meaning of those words and in this way to call God ‘Abba’. It is the work of the Holy Trinity, that we are being elevated to the dignity of the children of God.

1.3. The protoevangelium in Genesis 3:15 and the role of the woman
The role of a woman in the salvific plan of God is already indicated in the first book of the Bible: the Book of Genesis. After the fall of the first parents – Adam and Eve, all humanity was under the slavery of sin. But God did not leave humanity. Just after the fall,
God promised to redeem, to help the humanity. Speaking about the proto-evangelium (the first announcement of the Gospel) in Genesis, Blessed John Paul II says that the hope of personal redemption was planted in man’s heart immediately after the first sin of Adam and
Eve. God said to the serpent, “I shall put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; it will bruise your head and you will strike its heel” (Gen 3:15).32
In those words, the Church sees a promise of the New Adam and the New Eve: Jesus and Mary. The Second Vatican Council tells us:
The books of the Old Testament describe the history of salvation, by which the coming of
Christ into the world was slowly prepared. The earliest documents, as they are red in the
Church and are understood in the light of further and full revelation, bring the figure of a woman, mother of the Redeemer, into a gradually clearer light. Considered in this light, she is already prophetically foreshadowed in the promise of victory over the serpent which was given to our first parents after their fall into sin (see Gen 3:15).33

In the context of the Yahvistic text of Genesis 2 and 3, the indication is given of a moment when man have broken the original covenant with God. “But at the same time he
32

Cf. C. WEST, Theology of the Body Explained. A commentary on John Paul II’s Man and Woman He creathed
Them, Boston, Pauline, 2007, p. 262.
33

LG 55.

16

receives the very first promise of redemption, the promise of deliverance (cf. Gen 3:15) and starts to live in a theological perspective of redemption.”34 This perspective is an object of hope implanted in the human heart immediately after the fall. Recalling the words of Genesis that traditionally are defined as proto-evangelium, Christians think of the beginning of the
Good News, the first announcement of salvation.35
The text of the proto-evangelium reveals the ongoing struggle between the serpent and the woman. The oldest Jewish interpretations see in the serpent a symbol of Satan. The final victory over Satan will take place in the days of King Messiah. Also the Christian
Tradition, starting from the New Testament, understands this message in a broad messianic sense (cf. Rom 16:20, Hbr 2:14), and the words “her offspring” as the title for Jesus, and
“woman” as the prophecy about Mary.36 This struggle between Satan and the redeemer, Jesus
Christ, will come to the end in the triumph for the “seed of the woman.”37
One notification should be made: it was neither man nor the woman who were cursed in this passage. Only the serpent was cursed by God and precisely because of the man.38
Satan started this battle not only with the whole humanity. This struggle directly involved
God as well. It is a fight between the serpent and humanity but also eternal fight of serpent against God. Just as God has cursed the serpent, the victory of the divine power is expected.
The serpent is in a much weaker position: “it will bruise your head and you will strike its heel.” This curse was in a certain sense an announcement of a long struggle between good and evil, between humanity and Satan. But the triumph was to be on a mankind’s side.39 God has never abandoned men and that is why the struggle was to be won on the side of humanity with the final victory of Jesus Christ on the cross. It was precisely on the cross that the prophecy in Gen 3:15 “it will bruise your head” was accomplished. The offspring of a woman crushed the head of the serpent; Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the son of Mary, fully God and fully man, destroyed the power of Satan while taking upon him the sins and guilt of all humanity. He fulfilled the will of his Father: “Father, he said, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine” (Lk 22:42).

34

JOHN PAUL II, Man and Woman He Created Them. A Theology of the Body, Boston, Pauline, 2006, pp. 143144.
35

JOHN PAUL II, Man and Woman He Created Them, p. 459.

36

G. J. WENHAM, Word Biblical Commentary. Volume 1, Genesis 1-15, Mexico City, Thomas Nelson, 1987, pp.
80-81.
37

Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Redemptor Hominis, London, Catholic Truth Society, 1979, n. 8.

38

Cf. WENHAM, Word Biblical Commentary, p. 81.

39

Cf. WENHAM, Word Biblical Commentary, pp. 79-80.

17

Doing the will of God, Jesus destroyed the sin that was keeping in slavery the whole humanity. Mary, as the one who played a significant role in the salvific plan of God, is seen as the second Eve – New Eve. Just as through Eve sin came into the world, through Mary sin and Satan was defeated. Nevertheless, the connection between a woman as in Gen 3:15 and
Mary was not developed until Justin Martyr (+165) and after him Irenaeus of Lyons (+205).
They were the first who were saying about the messianic reference to Christ in that passage.
But more than half of the Fathers of the Church, and among them the great Doctors of the
East (such as Basil or Gregory of Naziansus) and of the West (Ambrose, Jerome or
Augustine) did not see any messianic connotations. This reference was definitively made later on. The bulls Ineffabilis Deus (December 8, 1854) of Pius IX and Munificentissimus
Deus (November 1, 1950) of Pius XII defining the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception
(1854) and the Assumption of Mary into heaven (1950) confirm the messianic and mariological interpretation of Gn 3:15.40 Pope Pius IX wrote:
By this divine prophecy [Gen 3:15], the merciful Redeemer of mankind, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, was clearly foretold; that His most blessed Mother, the Virgin
Mary, was prophetically indicated; and, at the same time, the very enmity of both against the Evil One was significantly expressed. Hence, just as Christ, the Mediator between
God and man, assumed human nature, blotted out the handwriting of the decree that stood against us, fastened it triumphantly to the cross, so the most holy Virgin, united with Him by a most intimate and indissoluble bond, was, with Him and through Him, eternally at enmity with the evil Serpent, and most completely triumphed over him.41

It was through the cooperation of the woman with the salvific plan of God, that the devil was finally defeated. Mary, a simple woman from Nazareth in Galilee, was the one who shared, in very intimate way, the triumph over Satan.42 She, by her obedience and the cooperation with the will of God, is called a New Eve who obeyed God. Justin Martyr was the first one in the history who developed the parallel between Christ and Adam, which St
Paul points in his Letter to the Romans:
Well then; it was through one man that sin came into the world, and through sin death, and thus death has spread through the whole human race because everyone has sinned.
Sin already existed in the world before there was any law, even though sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Nonetheless death reigned over all from Adam to Moses,
40

Cf. B. VAWTER, Genesis, pp. 181-182, in R. C. FULLER (ed.), A New Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture,
New Jersey, Nelson, 1969.
41

PIUS
IX,
Ineffabilis
Deus,
quotation drawn from
Papal
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9ineff.htm, accessed 14 January 2013.

Encyclicas

Online,

42

Cf. M. I. MIRAVALLE, Mary: Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate, Santa Barbara, Queenship Publishing,
1993, p. 2.

18

even over those whose sin was not the breaking of a commandment, as Adam’s was. He prefigured the One who was to come (Rom 5:12-14).

St Justin fulfils it by the parallel between Mary and Eve. In the book of Genesis Eve is called the mother of the living: “The man named his wife ‘Eve’ because she was the mother of all those who live” (Gen 3:20), because she transmitted physical life to her descendants. But she also transmitted the death because of her sin. For this reason Justin sees, in the title “mother of the living” attributed to the old Eve, the prophetic type of a New Eve, who would become the mother of the living in a truer and fuller sense of the word. This “new
Eve” could only be the Virgin Mary.43 This was the case that the earliest theological reflections about Mary were dedicated to her not as a person but rather to the role she has played in relation to Christ. She gave birth to Christ who came into the world to redeem humanity from the power of Satan.
The Fathers of the Church saw Mary as the New Eve who fully participated with the
New Adam – Jesus Christ in restoring the supernatural life of grace which has been lost with the fall of the first parents.44 Pope Pius XII refers to this Patristic parallel between Eve and
New Eve – Mary, in his apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus, when he infallibly defined the dogma of the Assumption of Mary:
Since the second century, the Virgin Mary has been designated by the holy Fathers as the
New Eve, who, although subjected to the New Adam, is most intimately associated with
Him in that struggle against the eternal foe, which, as foretold in the proto-evangelium, finally resulted in that most complete victory over sin and death.45

The Pope confirms the understanding of the Fathers of the Church. Mary is a New
Eve who becomes a mother of all the living in Jesus Christ. Jesus won the battle against sin and Satan while he died on the cross. But he could do this only through the cooperation of the Virgin Mary. She fully accepted the role of the mother of the Son of God; she totally accepted her role as the one who brings the Life – Jesus Christ.
Mary is called a virgin who, by her obedience, became the Mother of our Redeemer.
She, as “the Mother of the Redeemer has a precise place in the plan of salvation.”46 The
Saviour destroyed the serpent’s victory in Eden and, by doing it, he freed people from the

43

L. GAMBERO, Mary and the Fathers of the Church: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought, San
Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1999, p. 46.
44

Cf. MIRAVALLE, Mary: Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate, p. 2.

45

PIUS XII, Munificentissimus Deus, in H. DENZINGER, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, Fitzwilliam, Loreto
Publications, 2007, n 2331, p. 647.
46

JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Mater, n. 1.

19

dominion of death. But that could be done only by the fulfilment of God’s will in the life of
Mary. She gave birth to Jesus Christ. But she did not stop there. The role she had to play was not only to bring into the world “the Word who took a human flesh” (Jn 1:14). She was to play the role not only as the virginal mother of Jesus, but also to be his first and true disciple and to cooperate with him in his redemptive action.

20

CHAPTER 2
MARY IN THE LIFE OF JESUS
So Joseph set out from the town of Nazareth in Galilee for Judaea, to David’s town called
Bethlehem, since he was of David’s House and line, in order to be registered together with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. Now it happened that, while they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to a son, her first-born.
She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the living-space (Lk 2:4-7).

After the first chapter where I have focused on the topics regarding the saving plan of
God as in Galatians 4:4-6, and the role of a “woman”, as in Genesis 3:15, now I will be focusing on Mary in the life of Jesus. Most specifically I will consider the role of Mary as the virginal mother of Jesus, as the true disciple of her Son and her association in His redemptive action. To understand how an important role Mary had in the life of Jesus, first of all, it is important to have the correct idea about the Incarnation.
The Incarnation is the central and defining event of Christian faith and theology. This doctrine is primarily about the second person of the Holy Trinity who assumed the human nature, becoming a human being, in order to bring the salvation of fallen human beings, to redeem humanity from the power of Satan. This doctrine is expressed in several places of the
New Testament, particularly in the Prologue of the Gospel of John. It gives the most dramatic herald of the Incarnation, as he pus it in Jn 1:14, where he clearly states that “The
Word became flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glory, the glory that he has from the
Father and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.”47
By becoming a man Jesus took upon himself the human form from the Blessed Virgin
Mary. This cannot be compared with the birth of any other human beings, otherwise there is no uniqueness. Christ’s birth is different from men’ because he is God himself. Therefore
Christ, as a true God and true man, is the center, the climax of all humanity. Christian believers have to be aware that Jesus Christ is begotten of the Father and was born of the
Virgin Mary.

47

Cf. O. D. CRISP, Incarnation, in J. WEBSTER, K. TANNER, I. TORRANCE, (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of
Systematic Theology, New York, Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 160-161.

21

2.1. Virginal Mother of Jesus
The Virgin Mary is the Mother of God. This is the central belief in the doctrine with regard to the Blessed Virgin Mary. She had the grace to play this extraordinary role in the economy of salvation. When the Church calls Mary “Theotokos”, “the birth-giver of God”, she gives the most glorious name to Mary in the Catholic Tradition. This calling her
“Theotokos” has been continued by Christians in their prayers, invoking her aid for centuries.
The Second Vatican Council states:
Mary has by grace been exalted above all angels and humanity to a place after her Son, as the most holy mother of God who was involved in the mysteries of Christ: she is rightly honored with a special cult by the Church. From the earliest times the Blessed Virgin has been honored with the title of mother of God.48

Though the explicit title Theotokos, or Mother of God, is not found in the books of the New Testament, there are some expressions that are closely linked to that truth. Lk 1:3132 reads: “you are to conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus.
He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High”. Jn 2:1-3 refers to Mary the title
“Mother of Jesus”: “On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee. The mother of
Jesus was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited. And they ran out of wine, since the wine provided for the feast had all been used, and the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine”. Ac 1:14 says: “With one heart all these joined constantly in prayer, together with some women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.” But the most explicit expression of the truth that Mary is the mother of God is in the Gospel of
Matthew where it is written: “Look! The virgin is with child and will give birth to a son whom they will call Immanuel, which means God is with us” (Mt 1:23). This shows that the doctrin, though not yet the title ‘Mother of God’ is already expressed by Mathew. It is implicitly attributed to the Blessed Virgin Mary.49
The ‘Theotokos’ or ‘Mother of God’ was solemnly defined during the Council of
Ephesus (431). It was done against the Nestorian heresy that refused to believe in Mary as the Mother of God. According to Nestorius the Virgin Mary gave birth to a man that is, Godbearing man, who is called Christ because he is united with both the Word as well as the
Spirit of God. Therefore, it is the best way to call her Christotokos and not Theotokos. St
Cyril of Alexandria during the Synod of Ephesus condemned Nestorius and all his followers.
His statement against Nestorius was that Christ was not only a man but God’s Son and Word
48

LG 66.

49

Cf. P. HAFFNER, The Mystery of Mary, Leominster, Gracewing, 2004, pp. 107-108.

22

(Logos), born of the Father eternally and remaining God and eternally one with God. Christ was born as a man at a specific time from the Virgin Mary. Hence, St Cyril affirmed that his human mother should be called Theotokos.50
Christ has assumed human nature, both flesh and spirit. The Old Roman Creed: “Who was born from Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary”, reflects the idea that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the union of the divine nature and the human nature that came into being in the womb of the Blessed Virgin. The Apologists firmly confessed that the Son of God Most High descended from heaven and took flesh from a virgin by the power of the Holy Spirit. They affirmed that the Word became man by being born from the Virgin.51
This article of faith has been increasingly deepened by the Church. The Second
Vatican Council states that: the Blessed Virgin Mary was predestined to be the Mother of God from all eternity, together with the incarnation of the divine Word. She became the loving mother of the divine Redeemer here on earth by the grace and the divine will of God. As the humble handmaid of the Lord, Mary willingly co-operated with God by allowing her to be conceived and brought forth and nourished Christ the Savior.52

The Catechism of the Catholic Church expresses clearly the Church’s beliefs in several articles: “From the first formulations of her faith, the Church has confessed that Jesus was conceived solely by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, affirming also the corporeal aspect of this event: Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit without human seed” (CCC 496). “She herself is a virgin, who keeps in its entirety and purity the faith she pledged to her spouse” (CCC 507). “Mary’s virginity manifests God’s absolute initiative in the Incarnation” (CCC 503).
This shows clearly the teaching of the Church on the Virginity of Mary. The Fathers of the Church, like St Ignatius of Antioch and St Irenaeus, assert the virginity of Mary, particularly her virginitas in partu (virginity while giving birth). During the controversy with
Marcion, Tertullian explicitly defended the belief that Mary is the Mother of Christ because she engendered Christ in her virginal womb. Origin also defended it speaking about the virginity of Mary and taking her as a model and help of Christians by naming Mary the

50

Cf. ST CYRIL, Against Those who are Unwilling to Confess that the Holy Virgin is Theotokos, Rollinsford,
2004, pp. xi-xii.
51

Cf. J. KELLY, Early Christian Doctrine, London, Adam & Charles Black, 1958, pp. 144-145.

52

LG 61.

23

Mother of the Messiah.53 The Lateran Synod of 694 affirms that the perpetual virginity of
Mary is certainly part of the faith and preaching of the Church.54
St Ambrose of Milan was very strongly attached to the virginal life of Mary and her consecration to God. Whenever he spoke about Mary, he often emphasized her virginity.
Writing to his sister Marcellina who had consecrated herself to the Lord as a virgin, St
Ambrose states:
The first impulse to learn is inspired by the nobility of the teacher. Now, who could be nobler than the Mother of God? Who more splendid than she, whom splendor chose?
Who more chaste than she, who gave birth to a body without bodily contact? What should I say, then, about all her other virtues? She was a virgin, not only in body but in her mind as well and never mixed the sincerity of her affections with duplicity.55

He wrote that Mary is the model of virginity and a great example for all who want to follow it.56 St Jerome made a considerable contribution to the Church with regard to the Virginity of Mary in defending it against the heretics Helvidius and Jovinian. Both denied the virginity of Mary. He wrote a treatise On the Perpetual Virginity of Mary in order to fight against their heresies. By affirming strongly on the Virginity of Mary, he declares that her virginity is underscoring the superiority of the virginal life consecrated to God over married life. Finally, he said that Mary, Mother of God and a virgin, remains virgin before giving birth and even after giving birth.57
St Augustine, a true giant and one of the greatest geniuses of all time, affirms and supported Mary’s two titles: Virgin and Mother of God precisely because she was chosen by
God. He sees in her a miraculous sign of the divinity of the Child she bore. He said:
It was not the visible sun that made this day holy for us, but the sun’s invisible Creator, when the Virgin Mother brought to light, out of her fruitful womb and virginal body, the
Creator made visible for us the same invisible God who had also created the Virgin.
Virgin in conceiving, virgin in giving birth, virgin with child, virgin mother, virgin forever. God had to be born in this way, when he deigned to become man.58

53

Cf. B. L. JUAN, Mary Mother of the Redeemer: A Mariology Text Book, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2006, pp.
36-37.
54

Cf. M. SCHMAUS, Mariology in K. RAHNER (ed.), Encyclopedia of Theology, A Concise Sacramentum Mundi,
London, Burns & Oates, 1975, pp. 897-898.
55

Cf. GAMBERO, Mary and the Fathers Of the Church, pp. 190-191.

56

Cf. GAMBERO, Mary and the Fathers Of the Church, p. 190.

57

Cf. GAMBERO, Mary and the Fathers Of the Church, pp. 205-209.

58

Cf. GAMBERO, Mary and the Fathers Of the Church, p. 220.

24

The Catechism of the Catholic Church reaffirms this statement: “Mary remained a virgin in conceiving her Son, a virgin in giving birth to him, a virgin in carrying him, a virgin in nursing him at her breast, always a virgin: with her whole being she is the handmaid of the
Lord” (CCC 510).
St Augustine states that the Blessed Virgin Mary had intentionally offered her virginity to God in a kind of vow even before the Annunciation. It came in a spontaneous way from Mary’s own will. It was not imposed on her. This act could have been prompted by her love towards God, before he made his plans known to her. By insisting on the free character of virginity consecrated to God, St Augustine emphasized more visibly not only its spiritual aspect. He says that the spiritual aspect gives value to the physical as well. Among all the theologians in the West, he appears to be the first Father of the Church who has expressed the conviction that Mary made a kind of vow of perpetual virginity.59
St Leo the Great wrote:
And by a new nativity (Christ) was begotten, conceived by a Virgin, born of a Virgin, without paternal desire, without injury to the mother’s chastity. The origin is different but the nature like: not by intercourse with man but by the power of God was it brought about: for a Virgin conceived, a Virgin bare and a Virgin she remained.60

Mary’s perpetual virginity is shown from the fact that she was chosen by God from all eternity to be the Mother of his Son (cf. CCC 488). It is not easy to understand only by reason the mystery of Mary as the Virgin. It requires faith in order to know why God in his saving plan wanted his Son to be born of a virgin (cf. CCC 502). The Blessed Virgin Mary is the clear and best example of faith. It is Mary’s faith that made it possible for her to become the mother of God. Her virginity was also proved by the fact that she has shown her unfailing trust and faith in God’s will. Mary received the highest blessing from God because she embraced faith in Christ and extended complete cooperation with her Son in the great work of redemption (cf. CCC 506). The Church affirms that the virginity of Mary is proved in
God’s absolute initiative in the Incarnation of Christ. Therefore, Jesus was never separated from the Father even after taking the human nature. He is truly the Son of the Father as to his divinity and truly the son of Mary, his mother, as to his humanity (cf. CCC 503).

59

Cf. GAMBERO, Mary and the Fathers Of the Church, p. 221.

60

J. R. WILLS, The Teachings of the Church Fathers, New York, Ignatius Press, 1966, p. 359.

25

2.2. True Disciple of her Son
The fact that Mary is the disciple of her Son is based on the divinity of her Son, who became man. Mary as the follower of Jesus Christ is the result of her perfect obedience to him, who was her Son as human being. Mary’s discipleship initiates with her obedience as the New Eve compared with the disobedience of the first Eve. This concept was dealt with by several early Fathers of the Church of the West as well as of the East, such as St Irenaeus, St
Justin and Tertullian.61
There is a difference between those who were Jesus’ Apostles and his cooperators, and those who followed Him simply as disciples. Mary is considered as the first and principal disciple of her Son. She is placed in a different place, she is not as the other women who followed Jesus: “And many women were there, watching from a distance, the same women who had followed Jesus from Galilee and looked after him” (Mt 27:55). She is also to be distinguished from others who simply appeared in Jesus’ life but did not play any significant role in his ministry: “When it was evening, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, called
Joseph, who had himself become a disciple of Jesus” (Mt 27:57). The first and the principal disciple of Jesus is Mary – his own mother. She was Jesus’ first disciple because, when she found him as a young boy in the temple teaching and sitting among the doctors of the Law, she received from Jesus a lesson that she kept in her heart. Jesus himself, on his side, although Jesus was the Master and from the earliest years of his life was teaching about his heavenly Father, he did not refuse to obey and live under the authority of his earthly parents
(cf. Lk 2:41-51).
It is also clear that Mary was the first disciple above all else because there was nobody who has been taught by God in such a deep manner. In Jn 6:45 Jesus states: “It is written in the Prophets: They will all be taught by God; everyone who has listened to the
Father, and learnt from him comes to me.” Mary is the model of every one who does not only listen to the word of God that has been announced to her. She does not only listen but she receives it with a great joy and keeps it into her heart and her body. At the moment of her
“Yes” to the angel Gabriel, she received in herself the Word of God in a very deep and unique manner: she conceived the Word of God.
During the time when Jesus was preaching the good news, Mary was the one to whom he referred the words: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep
61

Cf. HAFFNER, The Mystery of Mary, pp. 175-176.
26

it” (Lk 11:28; see also Mk 3:35). Mary was in fact doing all this faithfully, as we see in Lk
2:19: “As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.” Christ himself spoke to his followers: “Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Mt 12:50). Mary adapted herself to the will of God and was the first to merit the words of praise that her Son spoke to his disciples.62
Pope John Paul II affirms this doctrine in his Encyclical Letter on the Mother of the
Redeemer: Redemptoris Mater. He writes that there is a clear relationship between Mary’s discipleship and her Motherhood. Through faith Mary accepted the Word of God and became the mother of the Son of God. It is the same faith that helped her to discover and accept the other dimension of her motherhood revealed by Jesus in his teachings: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Lk 11:28). During the time of the messianic mission of her Son, it became even clearer to the eyes and spirit of Mary that she is to constitute her “part” beside her Son in a totally new dimension of motherhood. She herself accepted this new role at the very beginning when the angel announced her the message that she will give birth to the Savior: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). It is through her faith that Mary continued to listen and to reflect on those words, in which there became ever clearer the revelation of God. Thus in a sense the Virgin Mary as Mother became the first “disciple” of Jesus, the first to whom he seemed to say, “Follow me,” even before Jesus pronounced this call to the Apostles or to anyone else, as we find in the Gospel (cf. Jn 1:43).63
On the special feast of Holy Mary, Disciple of the Lord, the Mass is celebrated in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The mother of Christ is shown as the one who gave us the good example of a discipleship, who is always faithful to the Words of life. Mary is the one who received a special grace from God in order to be the mother of Christ and above all she was the first and the most perfect disciple of her Son.64
Pope Paul VI presents Mary as the model for all Christans. He writes that Mary is worthy of imitation because she was the first and the most perfect disciple of Jesus. 65 And because of that, she serves Jesus also in others by leading them to her Son.66
Looking at the discipleship
62

Cf. HAFFNER, The Mystery of Mary, pp. 175-178.

63

Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Mater, n. 20.

64

Cf. CMBVM, p. 61.

65

Cf. PAUL VI, Marialis Cultus, Hales Corners, Priests of Sacred Heart, 1974, n. 35.

66

Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Mater, n. 41.

27

the figure of the Blessed Virgin does not disillusion any of the profound expectations of the men and women of our time but offers them the perfect model of the disciple of the
Lord: the disciple who builds up the earthly and temporal city while being a diligent pilgrim towards the heavenly and eternal city; the disciple who works for that justice which sets free the oppressed and for that charity which assists the needy; but above all, the disciple who is the active witness of that love which builds up Christ in people’s hearts.67 Mary, as the first and perfect disciple, freely puts herself at the service of her Son by giving her whole life for the fulfillment of God’s will. She lived the hidden years in Nazareth together with Jesus and Joseph but she was also present at the side of her Son in very important moments of his public ministry. By this, Mary is the teacher of the unconditional discipleship and diligent service.68
During the apostolic life of her Son, Mary was in many ways a hidden disciple. But she was seen in important moments of Jesus’ life such as at Cana where Christ has performed his first sign. He has changed water into wine and, by doing this, he has opened the hearts of the disciples to faith. But this was done after the clear intervention of Mary who is the first among believers (cf. Jn 2:1-12).69 In this episode of Jesus’ life, she is presenting herself with a great faith. Even if Jesus did not perform any miracles before, she strongly believed that he is the one who can work in a marvelous way. It is Mary who told to the servants to obey him:
“Do whatever he tells you”. And finally it is she through whom the disciples saw the first sign and started to believe in Jesus. St John recorded that Mary precedes in faith the disciples who would believe only after the miracle of Jesus when he manifested his glory (cf. Jn 2:11).
So Mary strengthened the faith of her Son’s disciples by obtaining this miraculous sign.70
Mary is the best example of faith for all Christians. This faith and trust can be clearly seen from the moment of the Annunciation. When the angel Gabriel came to her and announced the message from God, she humbly accepted to be the mother of the Savior. This is presented by St Luke: “Mary said, ‘You see before you the Lord’s servant, let it happen to me as you have said” (Lk 1:38). The question of the Virgin Mary ‘How can this be?” (Lk
1:34), shows the expression of her deep faith in the divine power to make virginity compatible with her exceptional and unique Motherhood.71

67

PAUL VI, Marialis Cultus, n. 37.

68

Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Vita Consecrata, Pasay City, Daughters of St Paul, 1996, n. 28.

69

Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, London, Catholic Truth Society,, 2002, n. 21.

70

Cf. PAUL VI, Marialis Cultus, n. 18.

71

Cf. HAFFNER, The Mystery of Mary, p. 179.

28

According to some scholars, the three dramatic days of the Son’s withdrawal from
Mary and Joseph in order to stay in the temple was an anticipation of the Triduum of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection. This scene anticipates also what Jesus would later accomplish with His disciples through the announcement of His Passover. The finding of
Jesus in the temple on the Third day shows another aspect of His person as well as His mission. In this scene Mary expressed the pain of the growth of her faith: “My child, why have you done this to us? See how worried your father and I have been, looking for you” (Lk
2:48). But the reply of Jesus to his mother: “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Lk 2:49) is an invitation for both Mary and
Joseph to go beyond appearances and unfolding before them new horizons for His future.
The growth of Mary’s faith is indicated in the Evangelist’s words, who says that Mary did not fully understand what Jesus spoke to them (cf. Lk 2:50) but at the same time Mary “kept all those things in her heart” (Lk 2:51). The Blessed Virgin Mary was able to associate these events with the mystery of her Son, which was revealed to her by the angel at the
Annunciation, and she meditated on them in the silence of her heart. Because of Mary’s faith in Jesus, she was led beyond the natural role deriving from her motherhood, to put her at the service of her divine Son’s mission.72
Von Balthasar defines faith as that which is not, in the first instance, an act of the mind but rather an act of the whole person, an act of surrender of one’s whole existence to
God in Jesus Christ. Therefore, faith can never be separated from obedience. He recalls in his thought the patristic tradition that during the Annunciation, Mary conceived Christ in her heart by faith before she conceived him in her womb. Von Balthasar presents the Blessed
Virgin Mary as the best and unique model of faith.73
The angel Gabriel greeted Mary: “Hail Mary, full of grace” (Lk 1:28). This shows that Mary has been present from eternity in the salvific plan of God. Through her faith, Mary became a sharer in that mystery in every step of her earthly journey. From the day of
Pentecost begins the Church’s pilgrimage through the history of individuals and peoples.
Mary is present at the beginning of this journey because she was present in the midst of the apostles in the Upper Room, “praying imploring the gift of the Spirit, who had already overshadowed her at the Annunciation.”74 And because of that, Mary’s journey of faith is longer than that of the apostles. Mary became God’s faithful spouse at the annunciation,
72

Cf. HAFFNER, The Mystery of Mary, pp. 179-180.

73

Cf. J. O’DONNELL, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, B. DAVIES (ed.), London, Biddles Ltd, 1992, p. 22.

74

LG 59.

29

when she welcomed the Word of the true God, by giving her total submission of intellect and will and freely assenting to the truth revealed by him. Mary abandoned herself fully to God through the obedience of faith.75
Blessed Virgin Mary is considered to be the model and example of faith and trust in divine providence. Although she had to face a totally new reality, she willingly accepted to be the mother of the Son of God. Even if she did not understand what was to happen, she obeyed God and accepted His invitation to take a unique role in the history of salvation. She had to go through the journey of growing her faith, but she did not give up and treasured all things in her heart. By doing this, she could reflect, she could meditate on the mysteries of her Son and later on to be able to draw others to him. She is like a mirror where one can see the meaning of true discipleship: submission and obedience to the will of God, faith, trust, pointing Jesus as the one whom one should follow, meditating on the mysteries of God and bringing Jesus to others.

2.3. Associated in His redemptive action
Mary, the Mother of the Eternal Son of God who took on the human flesh (cf. Jn
1:14), is considered to be a very unique person in the whole human history. She did not only give birth to the Son of God, not only became a mother while still a virgin, she was not only the true disciple – the model of a disciple of her Son, but she was to play an important role in the redemptive action of her Son Jesus Christ. She, the humble servant of the Lord (cf. Lk
1:38), was chosen by God the Father and overshadowed by the Holy Spirit (cf. Lk 1:35) because of her task associated with her redeeming Son as the Coredemptrix (“co” in the meaning of “with” and not “equal to”).76
The first prophecy of Mary’s cooperation with God is mentioned already in the protoevangelium in the Book of Genesis: “I shall put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; it will bruise your head and you will strike its heel”
(Gen 3:15). The Mother of the one who would redeem the whole humanity from the power of sin is prophetically announced. The offspring of the woman will crush the head of the offspring of the serpent.

75

Cf. J. NEUNER - J. DUPUIS, The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church,
Bangalore, Theological Publications, 2001, pp. 295-296.
76

Cf. MIRAVALLE, Mary: Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate, p. 23.

30

Mary, the mother of the Offspring who would redeem humanity, is foretold by the word “woman” in the above mentioned passage. She was to share the same struggles and the same victory as her Son, just as the woman shares in the same enmity between herself and the serpent. This struggle will have its end in the triumph of the “seed of the woman.”77
Besides the protoevangelium in Gen 3:15, the Old Testament contains some other prophecies that foretell the coming of the Messiah. Prophet Isaiah speaks to Ahaz about the sign that God will give to the people of Israel: “The Lord will give you a sign in any case: It is this: the young woman is with child and will give birth to a son whom she will call
Immanuel.” (Is 7:14) It is through this young woman – a virgin, that the Emmanuel – “God with us”, will enter the world.78 The young woman, a virgin is to be the Blessed Virgin Mary who will give birth to the Son of God, the Messiah.
The redemption of humanity from the power of sin needed a sacrifice. The Messiah would have to pay a ransom for us, according to the words God has spoken to the serpent:
“and you will strike its heel” (Gen 3:15). The Redeemer was to suffer a great pain. In the
Book of the Prophet Isaiah, the prophet describes the price the Messiah had to pay, in the description about the “suffering servant” of God:
He had no form or charm to attract us, no beauty to win our hearts; he was despised, the lowest of men, a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering, one from whom, as it were, we averted our gaze, despised, for whom we had no regard. Yet ours were the sufferings he was bearing, ours the sorrows he was carrying, while we thought of him as someone being punished and struck with affliction by God; whereas he was being wounded for our rebellions, crushed because of our guilt; the punishment reconciling us fell on him, and we have been healed by his bruises (Is 53:2-5).

The eternal plan of God to send the only begotten Son of the Father also included the role of a woman. It was precisely because of the woman that the Son came into the world.
The Second Vatican Council states:
The Father of mercies willed that the incarnation should be preceded by the acceptance of her who was predestined to be the mother of His Son, so that just as a woman contributed to death, so also a woman should contribute to life. That is true in outstanding fashion of the mother of Jesus, who gave to the world Him who is Life itself and who renews all things, and who was enriched by God with the gifts which befit such a role.79

The Redeemer had to suffer for all. But also the one who brought him into the world had to suffer. By the nature of her maternal relation to the Suffering Servant – Jesus Christ,
77

PIUS IX, Ineffabilis Deus.

78

Cf. MIRAVALLE, Mary: Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate, p. 3.

79

LG 56.

31

Mary was destined to suffer as well.80 She was elected by God to cooperate with the
Redeemer. With this election and with the acceptance of Mary to be the Handmaid and the
Mother (cf. Lk 1:38), her active co-redemptive role began. But she was prepared by God earlier, at the time of her Immaculate Conception. Because of her unique role as the human being, she was granted this unique grace, this once in the whole history privilege. The sin of the first parents affects the human nature of all people81 except Mary. She was conceived without the original sin.82 It was her Immaculate Conception that made her worthy and prepared her for this unique role she was to play as the Mother of the Redeemer.83
Blessed John Paul II, during one of the General Audiences, said:
We must above all note that Mary was created immaculate in order to be better able to act on our behalf. The fullness of grace allowed her to fulfill perfectly her mission of collaboration with the work of salvation: it gave the maximum value to her cooperation in the sacrifice.84

The Pope speaks about the cooperation of Mary in the sacrifice. By her conception without the original sin she was better prepared to welcome into her heart and her womb the
Son of God. Just as she enters in to the physical union with her Son by giving him birth, so also “willfully and physically enters into the heart of the new covenant established for the redemption of the human family.”85
By her free consent at the Annunciation (cf. Lk 1:28), Mary started to play her new role, the role of the Coredemptrix with her Son. The climax of that role was to take place at the foot of the cross, but was prophesied to her earlier by the old man Simeon in the Temple of Jerusalem. Just as during the Annunciation the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary, Simeon was inspired by the same Holy Spirit to come to the Temple when Mary and Joseph came with the child Jesus to fulfill the obligation of the law of Moses (cf. Lk 2:22-27).
80

Cf. MIRAVALLE, Mary: Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate, p. 3.

81

CCC 404 reads: “How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? the whole human race is in
Adam ‘as one body of one man’. By this ‘unity of the human race’ all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. and that is why original sin is called ‘sin’ only in an analogical sense: it is a sin ‘contracted’ and not
‘committed’ - a state and not an act.”
82

Cf. PIUS IX, Ineffabilis Deus.

83

Cf. MIRAVALLE, Mary: Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate, p. 4.

84

JOHN PAUL II, Mary Immaculate the First Marvel of Redemption, General Audience, 7 December 1983, in
L’Osservatore Romano, Issue n, 50, 1983, p. 1.
85

MIRAVALLE, Mary: Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate, p. 5.

32

After the fulfillment of the obligation of the Law, the old prophet Simeon spoke the prophecy about the Redeemer: “he is destined for the fall and for the rise of many in Israel, destined to be a sign that is opposed” (Lk 2:34). But immediately after this, he spoke another prophecy, this time concerning Mary: “and a sword will pierce your soul too – so that the secret thoughts of many may be laid bare” (Lk 2:35). Simeon foretold Mary that she has to suffer together with her Son. She also had to play her role in the redemption of the humanity filled with pain. Blessed John Paul II wrote:
Simeon’s words seem like a second Annunciation to Mary, for they tell her of the actual historical situation in which the Son is to accomplish his mission, namely, in misunderstanding and sorrow. While this announcement, on the one hand, confirms her faith in the accomplishment of the divine promises of salvation, on the other hand, it also reveals to her that she will have to live her obedience of faith in suffering, at the side of the suffering Savior, and that her motherhood will be mysterious and sorrowful.86

Just as Mary anticipated Jesus’ sinless coming into the world by the grace of the
Immaculate Conception, so too she anticipated his sufferings started already from the prophecy of Simeon. The climax of this suffering would be at the foot of the cross.87
Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of
Cleopas, and Mary of Magdala. Seeing his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing near her, Jesus said to his mother, ‘Woman, this is your son.’ Then to the disciple he said, ‘This is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his home. After this, Jesus knew that everything had now been completed and, so that the scripture should be completely fulfilled, he said: I am thirsty. After Jesus had taken the wine he said, ‘It is fulfilled’; and bowing his head he gave up his spirit (Jn 19:25-30).

Jesus addresses his Mother by using the word Woman. By this Mary, who stands at the foot of the cross, is in some way described as the “Woman” of the seed of redemption in
Genesis (cf. Gen 3:15), who would work with the Redeemer in the triumph over Satan and his seed of sin and death. In this way, through the bitter suffering on the Calvary, Mary becomes the Woman with the Man of Redemption, the Mother with the Son of Salvation, the
Lady with the Lord of all.88
Through the history, many theologians acknowledged Mary’s role as Coredemptrix.89
There are many documents of the Magisterium of the Church that confirm this role of her.
There are also some Christian writers from outside the Catholic tradition that support this truth. One of them is J. Macquarrie who states: “It is Mary who has come to symbolize that
86

JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Mater, n. 16.

87

Cf. MIRAVALLE, Mary: Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate, p. 10.

88

Cf. MIRAVALLE, Mary: Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate, p. 12.

89

Cf. HAFFNER, The Mystery of Mary, p. 187.

33

perfect harmony between the divine will and the human response, so that it is she who gives meaning to the expression Coredemptrix.”90 He points that there must be not only the passive acceptance of the will of God, not only a full submission to God. Mary is the perfect example of someone who accepts it but goes beyond this. She did not only receive the task with a total submission, but she totally cooperated with the divine plan through her whole life. From the moment of Annunciation, through the climax of the redemption – the cross, till the end of her life, Mary was in a total union, total harmony with her response to the will of God.
In the Papal teaching we see many references to Mary calling her the cooperatrix or
Coredemptrix with her Son. Pope Leo XIII wrote: “She, who had been the cooperatrix in the sacrament of man’s Redemption, would be likewise the cooperatrix in the dispensation of graces deriving from it.”91 The Pope goes even further. Mary is not only the Coredemptrix while here on earth, but she is the one through whom all graces come upon humanity.
Pope Benedict XV confirms this doctrine and clarifies it:
The fact that she was with her Son crucified and dying, was in accord with the divine plan. To such extent did she suffer and almost die with her suffering and dying Son; to such extent did she surrender her maternal rights over her Son for man’s salvation, and immolated Him – insofar as she could – in order to appease the justice of God, that we may rightly say she redeemed the human race together with Christ.92

Pope Pius XI emphasizes the unique grace Mary has received. And that grace helped her to cooperate with the Redeemer: “She brought forth Jesus the Redeemer, fed Him, offered Him as a victim at the cross, by her hidden union with Christ, and an altogether singular grace from Him, was likewise the Reparatrix.”93
Second Vatican Council points at the last words of Jesus: ‘Woman, this is your son’
(Jn 19:26-27), announced the near end of Mary’s coredemptive suffering on Calvary, as well as the fruit of this climax of her association with the Redeemer. The Coredemptrix who shared in her Son’s sufferings as he died on the cross and who in a wholly singular way cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope, and burning charity in the work of the Savior in restoring supernatural life to souls, was rightfully rewarded by the Redeemer before leaving the cross and returning to the Father as the mother to us in the order of grace.94

90

J. MACQUARRIE, Mary of All Christians, London, Collins, 1990, p. 113.

91

LEO XIII, Adiutricem populi, 1895, ASS. v. 28, p. 130.

92

BENEDICTXV, Inter Sodalicia, 1918, AAS 10, 1918, p. 182.

93

PIUS XI, Miserentissimus Redemptor, AAS 20, 1928, p. 178.

94

Cf. LG 61.

34

Finally one of the passage from the teaching of Blessed John Paul II:
In her, the many and intense sufferings were amassed in such an interconnected way that they were not only a proof of her unshakable faith, but also a contribution to the
Redemption of all. It was on Calvary that Mary’s suffering, besides the suffering of
Jesus, reached an intensity which can hardly be imagined from a human point of view, but which was mysteriously and supernaturally fruitful for the Redemption of the world.
Her ascent of Calvary and her standing at the foot of the cross together with the beloved disciple were a special sort of sharing in the redeeming death of her Son.95

It was Mary’s free will to take part in the sufferings of her Son. Accepting the mission of being the Mother of the suffering Redeemer, she also accepted to suffer with him.
The climax of her role as the Coredemptrix, which took place on Calvary, was already foretold by the old prophet Simeon in the Temple. Mary, who gave the human flesh to the
Son of God, did not only share her life with him. She fully and willingly decided to suffer with Jesus, the Redeemer. Thus she is rightly called the Coredemptrix.

95

JOHN PAUL II, Salvifici Doloris, London, Catholic Truth Society, 1984, n. 25.

35

CHAPTER 3
MARY IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH

Going through the whole history of salvation and looking at the role that the Blessed
Virgin Mary was to play in it, it is impossible not to mention her role in the primitive Church, starting from the crucifixion. After dealing with the role of the Virgin Mary in the saving plan of God in general, and her role in the life of Jesus, it is now time to focus on the important task that she took upon herself after the death of her Son. Jesus himself gave her a unique mission to fulfill while hanging on the cross. Just before he died, Jesus gave his own mother to his beloved disciple and through him, he gave her to all humanity: “Woman, this is your son... This is your mother” (cf. Jn 19:26-27).
From the moment when she became not only the mother of the Son of God, but when that Son gave her to us as our mother, she had a very important place. 96 Starting from the time after the crucifixion even until today, she is honored with a very special and unique admiration in the Church. This comes from the fact that it was Jesus himself that came into the world thanks to her cooperation with the will of God and that he gave her to us as our mother and us to her as her children.
Just after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Mary is seen together with the
Apostles. They stayed together: the Mother with her children. They stayed together and they prayed together (cf. Acts 1:14). She was the one who joined the Apostles in their prayers and in their lives.
In this chapter the main focus will precisely be on her mission given to her by Jesus
“Woman, this is your son... This is your mother” (cf. Jn 19:26-27), on her life and practice after the Paschal Event of Christ: “they were joined constantly in prayer, including Mary”
(Acts 1:14), and it will finish recalling the tradition of her assumption to Heaven.

96

Cf. LG 57.

36

3.1. Her mission: “Woman, this is your son... This is your mother”
“Seeing his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing near her, Jesus said to his mother, ‘Woman, this is your son.’ Then to the disciple he said, ‘This is your mother.’
And from that hour the disciple took her into his home” (Jn 19:26-27).
The role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Church is inseparable from the union between her and Christ. This union flows directly from Jesus especially at the hour of the
Passion. The Second Vatican Council affirms:
After this manner the Blessed Virgin advanced in her pilgrimage of faith, and faithfully persevered in her union with her Son unto the cross, where she stood, in keeping with the divine plan, grieving exceedingly with her only begotten Son, uniting herself with a maternal heart with His sacrifice, and lovingly consenting to the immolation of this
Victim which she herself had brought forth. Finally, she was given by the same Christ
Jesus dying on the cross as a mother to His disciple with these words: ‘Woman, behold thy son.’97

This new role of Mary in the salvific plan of God started in a very difficult moment not only for her but for the whole community of Jesus’ believers. Mary was to become the
Mother of all at the time of a great physical and spiritual pain. It was a great pain for both:
Mary and Jesus. Jesus was left alone, just as he has predicted, all of his followers were to leave him at the time of his Passion: “You will all fall away from me tonight, for the scripture says: I shall strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered” (Mat
26:31). The only Apostle who was at the foot of the cross was the Beloved Disciple: “Seeing his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing near Her...” (Jn 19:26). It was the hour when Jesus was suffering the physical pain because of the scourging, because of the wounds made by the crown made of thorns: “the soldiers twisted some thorns into a crown and put it on his head” (Jn 19:2). But even more it was a spiritual pain, the pain of loneliness, the pain of the abandoned Master. But even on that difficult and painful moment, Jesus was thinking not about himself but about those dear to him: first of all his own Mother and his disciples.
Near the cross of Jesus there was standing Mary, his Mother. For her also it was a very difficult, very painful time. Somehow she was prepared for that moment from the very first days of Jesus childhood.
Mary too had to live her motherhood amid suffering: ‘This child is set... for a sign that is spoken against, and a sword will pierce through your own soul also, that thoughts out of
97

LG 58.

37

many hearts may be revealed’ (Lk 2:34-35). The words which Simeon addresses to Mary at the very beginning of the Savior’s earthly life sum up and prefigure the rejection of
Jesus, and with him of Mary, a rejection which will reach its culmination on Calvary.
‘Standing by the cross of Jesus’ (Jn 19:25), Mary shares in the gift which the Son makes of himself: she offers Jesus, gives him over, and begets him to the end for our sake. The
‘yes’ spoken on the day of the Annunciation reaches full maturity on the day of the
Cross, when the time comes for Mary to receive and beget as her children all those who become disciples, pouring out upon them the saving love of her Son: ‘When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, Woman, behold, your son!’ (Jn 19:26).98

The testament of Jesus from the cross is a gift that comes out of his love. It is a gift that is given personally to each human being. The Redeemer gives Mary as mother to every individual person. This new motherhood is expressed in the singular, in the reference to one man: “This is your son” (Jn 19:26). By using the singular form, Jesus wanted to express in a deeper way Mary’s new mission. She was to be no longer only the mother of Jesus but of all.
To be a mother means to have a unique and unrepeatable relationship between two people: the mother and her child. It does not matter whether a mother has one, two or more children.
To each one of them individually the Mother has this personal, intimate relationship. To each of them she is the mother and for her each child is her own child. Each child comes to be in a very special, unique way and is given a special attention, special love of his/her mother. A mother loves her all children individually with a special love. That love helps the child to grow and mature as an individual human being.99
It is a tradition to call Mary, the mother of Jesus, our Blessed Mother. This title has its special meaning. To be a mother means to transmit life. In reference to Jesus, Mary gave him life as a human being, she brought the Son of God into the world in the human body. In the case of Mary’s motherhood regarding all humanity, it is connected to our life in Christ. From the first years of Christianity, the Church was called “Mother Church”. Gradually the relation of Mary to the sons and daughters of the Church was seen as the spiritual motherhood.
Physically she was the mother of Christ but in a spiritual way Mary is the mother of all the members of Christ’s family because Jesus died for all.100
Mary is the mother of Jesus not only because she gave a physical birth to him. The full meaning of her role as mother comes from the moment even before she has conceived the eternal Son of God. When the angel Gabriel came to her with the message that she was to
98

JOHN PAUL II, Evangelium vitae, Paperback, Veritatis Publications, 1996, n. 103.

99

Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Mater, n. 45.

100

NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS, A Pastoral Letter on the Blessed Virgin Mary: Behold your
Mother; Woman of Faith, Washington, D.C., Publications Office United States Catholic Conference, 1973, n.
70.

38

conceive and give birth to Christ, Mary first have conceived Him through her faith in the heart: ‘You see before you the Lord’s servant, let it happen to me as you have said’ (Lk
1:38). She has conceived the Word of God in her heart before in her womb. She conceived with her whole being: first in her faith and then in her body. First was Mary’s trust and faith and after that her physical motherhood. Faith is the key to her spiritual motherhood. By her faith she became a perfect spiritual mother.101 By the same faith she is the mother of all the people. The motherhood of Mary in the order of grace continues uninterruptedly from the consent which she loyally gave at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross, until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect.102

It is precisely because of her obedience, faith, hope and love towards her Son, she was given this special role to be the mother of all.
The moment when Jesus gives his Mother as the Mother to all humanity, is the expression of his particular solicitude for her. He is leaving Mary in a great sorrow. Although the motherhood of Mary of the human race had already been outlined, it is clearly stated and confirmed at the foot of the cross when she is given to John as his mother.103 But Mary is given as the mother not only to the Beloved Disciple. Following the tradition, the Second
Vatican Council calls Mary “the Mother of Christ and mother of mankind”: because she belongs to the offspring of Adam she is one with all those who are to be saved. She is ‘the mother of the members of Christ... having cooperated by charity that faithful might be born in the Church, who are members of that Head.’ Wherefore she is hailed as a preeminent and singular member of the Church, and as its type and excellent exemplar in faith and charity. The Catholic Church, taught by the Holy Spirit, honors her with filial affection and piety as a most beloved mother.104

Pope Paul VI proclaimed that Mary is the Mother of the Church, “that is, Mother of the entire Christian people, both faithful and pastors”.105 But this mission of Mary as the
Mother of all the Church and even more: of all the humanity does not stop only on one side, only from the Mary’s perspective to be the Mother. It is not enough that Mary is our Mother.
There must be the response from the side of her children, they have to accept that mission which Jesus gave to his Mother Mary: “This is your mother” (Jn 19:27). This acceptance of the last will of Jesus starts to be fulfilled with the Beloved Disciple: “And from that hour the
101

NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS, A Pastoral Letter on the Blessed Virgin Mary, n. 71.

102

LG 62.

103

Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Mater, n. 23.

104

LG 53.

105

Cf. POPE PAUL VI, Discourse of 21 November 1964: AAS 56 (1964) 1015.

39

disciple took her into his home” (Jn 19:27). The role of a new son of Mary, Jesus attributed to the disciple who assumed the full responsibility for his new Mother.
And since Mary was given as a mother to him personally, the statement indicates, even though indirectly, everything expressed by the intimate relationship of a child with its mother. And all of this can be included in the word ‘entrusting.’ Such entrusting is the response to a person’s love and in particular to the love of a mother.106

In the Middle Ages St Anselm develops the idea of Mary being the Mother not only of Jesus but of all. He addresses Mary: “You are the mother of justification and of the justified, the mother of reconciliation and of the reconciled, the mother of salvation and of the saved.”107 Rupert of Deutz indicated how the Mother of Jesus became our mother: “In the passion of her only Son, the Blessed Virgin brought forth salvation to us all; from that time on, she is obviously, to all of us, our mother.”108
Many contemporary scholars think that the spiritual maternity is seen more through the use of the typology of Eve in regard to Mary – the New Eve.109 They have better scriptural arguments for the title of the new Eve than the Fathers of the Church. In the Gospel according to St John, Jesus compares his disciples’ future sorrow and joy because of his death and resurrection to a woman who has sorrow while in birth pangs, but rejoices when the child is born:
In all truth I tell you, you will be weeping and wailing while the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy. A woman in childbirth suffers, because her time has come; but when she has given birth to the child she forgets the suffering in her joy that a human being has been born into the world. So it is with you: you are sad now, but I shall see you again, and your hearts will be full of joy, and that joy no one shall take from you (Jn 16:20-22).

In the book of the prophet Isaiah Israel is described as the woman whose childbirth brings forth a new people:
Before being in labor she has given birth. Before the birth pangs came, she has been delivered of a child. Who ever heard of such a thing, who ever saw anything like this?
Can a country be born in one day? Can a nation be brought forth all at once? For Zion, scarcely in labor, has brought forth her children! (Is 66:7-8).

106

JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Mater, n. 45.

107

ST ANSELM, Oratio 52, 8, in PL 158, 957.

108

RUPERT OF DEUTZ, In Evangelium Sancti Johannis, in PL 169, 790.

109

Typology has been defined as “that form of biblical interpretation which deals with the correspondence between traditions concerning divinely appointed persons, events, and institutions, within the frame work of salvation history”. (Cf. J. E. ALSUP, Typology, in D. N. FREEDMAN, (ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 6,
Si-Z, New York, Doubleday, 1992, p. 682.)

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In the same way Eve was told that she will give birth to her children in pain: “To the woman he said: I shall give you intense pain in childbearing, you will give birth to your children in pain” (Gn 3:16). Those allusions are in the mind of St John the Evangelist when he names Mary “woman” in his Gospel. For John, Mary is the Israel who brings forth a new community of disciples in the risen life of Christ. It is Mary, the new Eve, who gives birth to
Christ in his risen life and hence became the mother of the Church.110
The words: “Woman, this is your son... This is your mother” (Jn 19:26-27) were almost like an official proclamation of the divine motherhood of Mary in our regard. Just as she was the Mother of Jesus, so she is for us. She is the mother who warms and nourishes us with her tenderness when we are young and who loves us every day. In the times of difficulties she is always there. When we suffer, she suffers with us. She is there to pray and intercede for us. There is no greater love than the love of a mother.111

3.2. Her practice: “they were joined constantly in prayer, including Mary”
“With one heart all these joined constantly in prayer, together with some women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers” (Acts 1:14).
St Luke numbers all those who were present, who were praying together in the Upper
Room after the ascension of Jesus into heaven. He explicitly points that there were the
Eleven Apostles, the women including Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers. This is the last time in the Bible, where the Blessed Virgin Mary is referred to. There is a special purpose of the list of those present there. It shows the continuity of the Gospels. Some things have changed after Jesus’ Paschal Mysteries. They have changed but they did not finish. The apostles could bear witness to the public ministry of Jesus, to his preaching and miracles; the women to the truth about his death, burial and empty tomb (cf. Lk 23:55-24:10); Mary, to the events before Jesus’ birth and then all about his birth and youth (cf. Lk 1-2).112
By listing Mary using her name among all others, St Luke emphasizes her special place in the new Community of believers. This special role that she plays comes from her union with Christ, the union between the Son and the Mother. She is with the new
Community, she prays, believes and practices her faith with the others. She is one of those,
110

Cf. A. J. TAMBASCO, What are they saying about Mary, New York, Paulist Press, 1984, pp. 42-44.

111

Cf. V. DEL MAZZA, Our Lady Among Us, Boston, St Paul Editions, 1978, pp. 37-38.

112

Cf. BROWN, An introduction to the New Testament, p. 282.

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who receive the Holy Spirit in order to bear witness to the risen Lord. And this is Mary’s new mission: to practice her experiences by sharing them with others. As during the earthly life of
Jesus, Mary continues to respond to God’s call and continues to be an example of faith.113
Mary was present in the first Community of believers in Jerusalem. She played in this way her maternal role in the new-born Church. Jesus gave her to the Church as the Mother:
“This is your mother” (Jn 19:27). This maternal dimension becomes a fundamental element of Mary’s relationship with the new Community.114
Being the Mother of the new humanity redeemed by her Son, Mary has a new role, a new mission to fulfill. She is to be always present with the Community. She is there to support those who believe in Christ, her Son. She is with the believers to practice with them the faith in the resurrected Lord. This practice is expressed in staying together; in being
“joined constantly in prayer” (Acts 1:14). Although the Blessed Virgin Mary has already received the Holy Spirit during the Annunciation (cf. Lk 1:35), she is faithful to the last will of her Son. She stays and shares together with the disciples and some women the expectation of the gift of the Holy Spirit.115 They were all united in prayer asking God to send the gift that Jesus has promised: “I shall ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete to be with you forever” (Jn 14:16).
This promise is about to be fulfilled. The closest family, disciples and friends of Jesus went to the Upper Room. They are all united in prayer. The brothers of Jesus are also present.
Those who wanted to take him home because they thought that he was going out of his mind:
“When his relations heard of this, they set out to take charge of him; they said, He is out of his mind” (Mk 3:21), now are sharing the same faith and believe in him. They were all praying waiting for the Holy Spirit.
St Luke makes it clear that, after Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension into heaven, there is an established Community of believers in Jerusalem. The Apostles were not the only ones waiting for the gift of the Holy Spirit. They play an important role in the Community,

113

Cf. HAFFNER, Mystery of Creation, pp. 63-64.

114

Cf. HAFFNER, Mystery of Creation, p. 244.

115

Cf. P. HAFFNER, Mystery of the Church, Leominster, Gracewing, 2007, p. 25.

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but they are only a part of it. The complete Community is a communion of both men and women. The Holy Spirit is a promised gift for all.116
Already in the Old Testament prophet Joel prophesied that the gift of the Holy Spirit will be for all people:
After this I shall pour out my spirit on all humanity. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old people shall dream dreams, and your young people see visions. Even on the slaves, men and women, shall I pour out my spirit in those days (Joel 3:1-2).

This prophecy started to be fulfilled even before the Incarnation of the Son of God. Mary is the one who was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit when the angel Gabriel came to her with the message that she will be the Mother of God: “The angel answered, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God” (Lk 1:35). After receiving the eternal Son of God to her womb, Mary went to see her cousin Elisabeth. And Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit as soon as Mary greeted her: “Now it happened that as soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy
Spirit” (Lk 1:41). When the time came and new born Jesus was to be circumcised, Mary and
Joseph took him to the Temple in Jerusalem. And there they have met the old prophet
Simeon who “prompted by the Spirit came to the Temple, when the Parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the Law required” (Lk 2:27).
The outpouring the Holy Spirit took place earlier, even before the Incarnation. But it was a gift for the individuals. It was something which was given only to some chosen persons who had some important tasks to do. But at the time of Pentecost this gift, the gift of the Holy Spirit was given to many. First it was given to the Apostles and those who were with them in the Upper Room (Acts 2:4). Then, after the speach of St Peter, this gift was given also to those who started to join the Community:
Hearing this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘What are we to do, brothers?’ ‘You must repent,’ Peter answered, ‘and every one of you must be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’ They accepted what he said and were baptised. That very day about three thousand were added to their number (Acts 2:37-38.41).

The Holy Spirit is a freely given gift. But there must be a response on the side of the believers. As St Peter tells those who listen to him, in order to receive this special gift one

116

Cf. D. BERGANT – R. J. KARRIS (eds.), The Collegeville Bible Commentary, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1989, p.
1038.

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must repent and be baptized. That involves a strong faith. Being believer means to have faith, to listen to the Word of God, to pray and to put it into practise. And the best example of this is Mary. She listened to the Word, she is the woman of faith, she constantly prays. She is united with the others in prayer. Her presence in the Upper Room is significant. Blessed John
Paul II said: “In the light of Christ’s statement on the Calvary, Mary’s presence in the community as it waited for Pentecost acquired its full value. St Luke, who called attention to
Mary’s role in Jesus’ birth, wanted to stress her significant presence at the Church’s birth.”117
Although it is a simple “being” there, Mary’s presence is very important.
God’s Spirit overshadowed her (cf. Lk 1:35) that she might bring into this world him who would be the Lord and Messiah (Lk 2:11). Now she sits as a believer among those who gathered together and will become the church of her son at its birth through the Spirit’s outpouring.118 This presence in the upper room is not something extraordinary. Mary’ presence is something normal. There are two indications about Mary’s presence: she is there and she is united with the others in prayers. “With her kindness and love, Mary helped others to share her faith.”119 Being the woman of faith, Mary’s new role is to support the new born
Community. She does it by a simple being and practicing her faith.
The Church began her existence at Pentecost. Mary was present in the Upper Room, she was united with others, she prayed with others. Just as she was present at the birth of
Jesus Christ so she is also present at the birth of the Church – the mystical body of Christ.
She connects those two important moments. In both moments Holy Spirit is the one who acts and strengthen those involved. From this simple sharing of faith and the outpouring of the
Holy Spirit the Church began. There is a unique relation between the Incarnation of the Son of God and the moment of the birth of the Church.
The person who links these two moments is Mary: Mary at Nazareth and Mary in the
Upper Room at Jerusalem. In both cases her discreet yet essential presence indicates the path of birth from the Holy Spirit. Thus she who is present in the mystery of Christ as
Mother becomes – by the will of the Son and the power of the Holy Spirit – present in the mystery of the Church. In the Church too she continues to be a maternal presence, as is shown by the words spoken from the Cross: Woman, behold your son!; Behold, your mother.120 117

JOHN PAUL II, Mary’s Motherhood is linked to the Spirit, General Audience, 9 December 1998, in POPE
JOHN PAUL II, The Trinity’s Embrace. God’s Saving Plan. A catechesis on Salvation History, p. 163.
118

J. A. FITZMYER, The Acts of the Apostles, A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, in The
Anchor Bible vol. 31, Doubleday, New York, 1998, p. 216.
119

JOHN PAUL II, Mary Is Our Model and Guide in Faith, General Audience, 6 May 1998, in POPE JOHN PAUL
II, The Trinity’s Embrace. God’s Saving Plan. A catechesis on Salvation History, p. 50.
120

JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Mater, n. 24.

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“The last description of Mary’s life presents her as praying.”121 God wanted that after the ascension into Heaven, Mary was present in the Upper Room. She was to stay there united in prayer while waiting for the outpouring the Holy Spirit. It was not possible that she would not be present at the birth of the Church. Jesus gave her the community of believers as children and gave her as the mother to the Community. She was praying asking for the gift of the Holy Spirit. But she was praying for this gift not for herself. She was already filled with the Holy Spirit at the Annunciation. Then she has received all the graces and gifts which were started with her Immaculate Conception. From the first moment of her existence, Mary was filled with the Holy Spirit.
Pope Leo XIII summerized Mary’s role, her importance, her attributes and her practise which can be seen in the Upper Room. He wrote:
The mystery of Christ’s immense love for us is revealed with dazzling brilliance in the fact that the dying Saviour bequeathed His Mother to His disciple John in the memorable testament: ‘Behold thy son.’ Now in John, as the Church has constantly taught, Christ designated the whole human race, and in the first rank are they who are joined with Him by faith. It is in this sense that St Anselm of Canterbury says: ‘What dignity, O Virgin, could be more highly prized than to be the Mother of those to whom Christ deigned to be
Father and Brother!’ With a generous heart Mary undertook and discharged the duties of her high but laborious office, the beginnings of which were consecrated in the Cenacle.
With wonderful care she nurtured the first Christians by her holy example, her authoritative counsel, her sweet consolation, her fruitful prayers. She was, in very truth, the Mother of the Church, the Teacher and Queen of the Apostles, to whom, besides, she confided no small part of the divine mysteries which she kept in her heart.122

The Pope attributes to Mary the titles “Mother of the Church, the Teacher and Queen of the Apostles”. Just as she is the Mother of “ the Head of the Body” (Col 1:18), she is also considered as the Mother of the Body. She is rightly called the Mother of the Church. She is also called “the Teacher and Queen of the Apostles.” What does she teach them? Being present in the Upper Room, Mary does not only practice her faith; she does not close herself in her own faith. She shares her experience of faith with the Apostles and all those who were present there. She teaches the Apostles not only how to believe but how to live this faith, how to put it into practice. She teaches them how to listen and accept the Word of God (cf.
Lk 1:26-38). Being the Mother of the King, she is the Queen. She does not take away the dignity of Christ as the King. Christ is not the King because Mary is the Queen. It is the other way round. Mary’s Queenship comes from her Son: she is the Queen because her Son is the
King.

121

PAUL VI, Marialis Cultus, n. 18.

122

LEO XIII, Adiutricem populi, n. 6.

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The practice of Mary’s unity and prayer with the new born Church is the work of the
Most Holy Trinity. God the Father has given her the grace of being conceived without the original sin. Doing this, he has prepared Mary for being the Mother of God’s only begotten
Son. Jesus came into the world thanks to the cooperation of Mary with the saving plan. The
Holy Spirit came upon her when she accepted to be the Mother, and helped her to fulfill her new role. Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man gave his own Mother to be the Mother of the humanity while hanging on the cross. After this, Mary took the new responsibility and stayed with the first Community of the believers. She is there to invoke the gifts of the Holy
Spirit. She is present in the Upper Room to pray, to intercede for the new born Church and to share her faith. She can practice her faith by simple being and joining the Community in constant prayer.

3.3. The tradition of her assumption to Heaven
The prayer of the Apostles together with Mary and the brothers of Jesus in the Upper
Room while waiting for the sending of the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14) is the last time when the Blessed Virgin Mary is mentioned in the Bible. After that moment, after the birth of the
Church, the Holy Scripture is silent in regard to Mary: she becomes a silent Mother of the
Church. There is no indication in the Bible about the last years of the Mother of Jesus.
The Tradition of the Church teaches that at the end of her life, Mary was taken up to heaven. Second Vatican Council says:
The Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all guilt of original sin, on the completion of her earthly sojourn, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the
Lord as Queen of the universe, that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and the conqueror of sin and death.123

The Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium of the Second Vatican Council once more expresses the belief of the Church that Immaculate Virgin Mary was taken into heaven with her body and soul. Similar incidents have happened already on the Old Testament. The book of Genesis speaks about a mysterious departure from this life while speaking about
Enoch: “Enoch walked with God, then was no more, because God took him” (Gen 5:24).
There are more information about this particular event in the New Testament, where the
Letter to the Hebrews states: “It was because of his faith that Enoch was taken up and did not experience death: he was no more, because God took him; because before his assumption he
123

LG 59.

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was acknowledged to have pleased God” (Hbr 11:5). Enoch was taken into heaven because of his faith, because God was pleased with him.
Another similar event took place at the time of the prophet Elijah. At the end of prophet’s life he was also taken in an extraordinary way into heaven: “Now as they walked on, talking as they went, a chariot of fire appeared and horses of fire coming between the two of them; and Elijah went up to heaven in the whirlwind” (2Kgs 2:11).124 Elijah was doing
God’s will; he was zealous for His law and had put all his trust on God. That is why he was granted this grace.
Those two examples from the Old Testament are in some way prefiguration of what had happened at the end of Mary’s earthly life. Just as Enoch, Mary is a woman of faith who in faith has received the Word of God (cf. Lk 1:26-38). She is also the one, with whom God is pleased, as angel has told her: “Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God’s favor” (Lk
1:30). Mary is also the woman who, without any fear, was fulfilling God’s will. In her full freedom she offered her life to obey the will of God.
In the New Testament St Paul also speaks about taking up to heaven all those who will be still living at the end of times. In the First Letter to the Thessalonians he writes:
At the signal given by the voice of the Archangel and the trumpet of God, the Lord himself will come down from heaven; those who have died in Christ will be the first to rise, and only after that shall we who remain alive be taken up in the clouds, together with them, to meet the Lord in the air. This is the way we shall be with the Lord forever
(1Thes 4:16-17).

This is also supported by the opinion of some Fathers of the Church including St
Gregory of Nyssa, St John Chrysostom, Tertullian and St Jerome. The Creed also follows this teaching when says that Jesus will come for the second time and the he will judge the living and the death.125
The Apostolic Constitution of Pope Pius XII Munificentissimus Deus states as a dogma to be believed what the early Tradition of the Church was teaching about the end of
Marys’ life.
For which reason, after we have poured forth prayers of supplication again and again to
God, and have invoked the light of the Spirit of Truth, for the glory of Almighty God who has lavished his special affection upon the Virgin Mary, for the honor of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages and the Victor over sin and death, for the increase of the glory
124

Cf. HAFFNER, The Mystery of Mary, p. 208.

125

Cf. HAFFNER, The Mystery of Mary, p. 209.

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of that same august Mother, and for the joy and exultation of the entire Church; by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.126

In the later fourth century there is already a direct evidence of an annual liturgical commemoration in the honor of Mary in Jerusalem. This commemoration is the earliest tradition of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption.127 There are some Apocrypha dating from that time. These texts such as “The Passing Away of Mary” and “The Obsequies of Mary” survived in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic and Ethiopic and attributed to various authors, e.g. to St John the Evangelist and St Melito of Sardis.128 Tradition transmits that after the death of Mary, her body was taken to the Valley of Graves which was outside
Jerusalem. This valley is better known as the Valley of Brook Kedron or the Valley of
Jehoshaphat. Mary was buried in the grave near Gethsemane and from there she was assumed into heaven. In the present time the tomb of Mary is included into a church.129
St John Damascene, who lived in the St Saba monastery near Jerusalem, testifies to the tradition that Mary has passed from this world in Jerusalem: “Sion is the mother of churches in the whole world, who offered a resting-place to the Mother of God after her
Son’s Resurrection from the dead. In it, lastly, the Blessed Virgin was stretched on a small bed.”130 He also indicated Gethsemane as the place of Mary’s Assumption:
Then they reached the most sacred Gethsemane, and once more there were embraces and prayers and panegyrics, hymns and tears, poured forth by sorrowful and loving hearts.
They mingled a flood of weeping and sweating. And thus the immaculate body was laid in the tomb. Then it was assumed after three days to the heavenly mansions.131

Another tradition speaks of Ephesus as the place where Mary lived and ended her earthly life. The argument for this opinion is that St John had lived in Ephesus 132 and he could take Mary with him, just as Jesus has commanded: “This is your mother” and he himself had accomplished, as it is written: “And from that hour the disciple took her into his

126

PIUS XII, Munificentissimus Deus, n. 44.

127

Cf. S. J. SHOEMAKER, Marian Liturgies and Devotion in Early Christianity, p. 134, in S. J. BOSS (ed.), Mary
The Complete Resource, London, Continuum, 2009, pp. 130-145.
128

F. L. CROOS (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, New York, Oxford University Press,
2005, p.118.
129

Cf. DEL MAZZA, Our Lady Among Us, p. 49.

130

ST JOHN DAMASCENE, Homily 2 on the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin, 4, in PG 96, 730.

131

ST JOHN DAMASCENE, Homily 2 on the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin, 14, in PG 96, 739.

132

EUSEBIUS, Historia Ecclesiastica, III, 31; V, 24, in PG 20, 280; 493.

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home” (Jn 19:27). Nevertheless this opinion was not certain and gave way to the tradition of
Mary’s transitus in Jerusalem.
Another problem arose concerning the nature of Mary’s transitus. There was a question whether she died or not; whether her soul separated from the body. The dogmatic definition lives this question open, does not give any dogmatic statements. There is a small group of theologians who say that Mary did not suffer death. 133 The earliest known testimony dates back to St Epiphanius, the bishop of Constantia in Cyprus, writes:
Whether she died or was buried we do not know... Say she died a natural death. In that case she fell asleep in glory, and departed in purity, and received the crown of her virginity. Or say she was slain with the sword according to Simeon’s prophecy. Then her glory is with the martyrs, and she through whom the divine light shone upon the world is in the place of bliss with her sacred body. Or say she left this world without dying, for
God can do what He wills. Then she was simply transferred to eternal glory.134

St John Damascene points that Mary, as the descendant of Adam, went through death just like Jesus – who is the real life and who has also died.135 St Andrew of Crete did also follow the same line in his writings. He affirmed that Mary died because Jesus – her Son died.136 Many theologians tried to connect the tradition of the Immaculate Conception of
Mary with the death; it was difficult for them to assume that one cannot die. Even John Duns
Scotus, who was clear in his thoughts about the Immaculate Conception, did not follow the idea that Mary would not die, that she would be exempted from death. For him death is something general, even Jesus himself died on the cross. In this case Mary also had to die.
For Scotus the real victory over death is the resurrection of the body, like that of Jesus and
Mary.137 Later on, in the eighteenth century, and especially after the dogmatic definition on
Mary’s Immaculate Conception, the opinions of various theologians were divided whether
Mary did die or did not.138
Blessed Pope John Paul II, in one of his discourses said:

133

Cf. HAFFNER, The Mystery of Mary, p. 210.

134

ST EPIPHANIUS, Adversus Octaginta Haereses, Book 3, Tom 2, Heresy 78, 11 and 24 in PG 42, 715-716,
738.
135

ST JOHN DAMASCENE, Homily 2 on the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin, 2, in PG 96, 726.

136

ST ANDREW OF CRETE, Oratio 12 in dormitione SS. Deiparae, in PG 97, 1051-1054.

137

BL. JOHN DUNS SCOTUS, Fragmenta, in K. BALIC (ed.), Theologiae Marianae elementa, Sibenik, Kacik,
1933, p. 172.
138

Cf. HAFFNER, The Mystery of Mary, p. 214.

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The fact that the Church proclaims Mary free from original sin by a unique divine privilege does not lead to the conclusion that she also received physical immortality. The
Mother is not superior to the Son who underwent death, giving it a new meaning and changing it into a means of salvation.139

The Pope did not close the question whether Mary has died or not but in some way indicated the theological thinking in favor of the position that Mary participated to some extent in the mystery of death.140
Recent theology has outlined some consequences of Mary’s Assumption. In Jesus’ death and resurrection together with Mary’s Assumption the natural origin of humanity has been regenerated, the position of a woman was highlighted, an indication of the glory for
Christians who are the home of the Body of Crist, and the exaltation of the poor and oppressed.141 The Assumption of Mary is the glorious culmination of the mystery of God’s preference for what is poor, small, and unprotected in this world, so as to make God’s presence and glory shine there. It offers hope and promise for the poor of all times and for those who stand in solidarity with them; it is hope and promise that they will share in the final victory of the incarnated
God.142

The whole mystery about the dogma of the Assumption of Mary into heaven is very close connected to Jesus’ raising from the death but also to our own end.
Christ has risen from the dead; we need no further assurance of our faith. ‘Mary assumed into heaven’ serves rather as a gracious reminder to the Church that our Lord wishes all whom the Father has given him to be raised with him. In Mary taken to glory, to union with Christ, the Church sees herself answering the invitation of the heavenly
Bridegroom.143

At the end of times the whole Church is invited “to the wedding feast of the Lamb”
(Rev 19:9). The glorification of Mary by giving her the grace of being with her body and soul in heave is something what we all hope to experience.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, writes that the belief of the end of Mary’s earthly life and of her glorification when she was taken into heaven with body and soul does not concern only Her. It has a much wider meaning. The dogmatic definition of the
Assumption of Our Lady into heaven was proclaimed for the honor of the Son, for the
139

JOHN PAUL II, Discourse at General Audience, 25 June 1997, 3.

140

Cf. HAFFNER, The Mystery of Mary, p. 215.

141

Cf. P. HAFFNER, The Mystery of Mary, pp. 228-229.

142

I. GEBARA – M. C. BINGEMER, Mary, Mother of God, Mother of the Poor, vol. 7 of Liberation and Theology,
Tunbridge Wells, Burns and Oates, 1989, pp. 120-121.
143

NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS, Behold your Mother; Woman of Faith, n. 60.

50

glorification of the mother, and for the joy of the entire Church. It was an act of veneration of
Mary. He also writes that the achievement of the oriental form of liturgy in the hymns and rites took place in the occident through the proclamation of the dogmatic definition, which was in itself a most solemn form of hymnology.144

144

Cf. I. J. RATZINGER, Daughter Zion, Meditations on the Church’s Marian Belief, San Francisco, Ignatius
Press, 1983, p. 73.

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CHAPTER 4
MARY IN THE CATHOLIC LITURGY
As the Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary is given a very special, a unique place in the Christian Faith and Liturgy. She was honored not only to be the chosen one who would give Christ to the world; not only the only one whom the Holy Spirit overshadowed in a totally special way; not only the one who was with Jesus during his whole life and then was given as the mother of all at the foot of the cross. Mary has an important place in the Church while praying for the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the earth. From the very beginning of her existence until her last moment of earthly life, she was granted special graces and privileges, that were not granted to others: Immaculate Conception and the Assumption into heaven. Because of all this, the Catholic Church gives Mary a special place in the Liturgical celebration. The Church’s devotion to the Blessed Virgin is intrinsic to Christian worship. The
Church rightly honors the Blessed Virgin with special devotion. From the most ancient times the Blessed Virgin has been honored with the title of ‘Mother of God’, to whose protection the faithful fly in all their dangers and needs.... This very special devotion... differs essentially from the adoration which is given to the incarnate Word and equally to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and greatly fosters this adoration. The liturgical feasts dedicated to the Mother of God and Marian prayer, such as the rosary, an ‘epitome of the whole Gospel’, express this devotion to the Virgin Mary.(CCC 971)

The place of Mary in the Catholic Liturgy is not the same as the place of God. She is a human being. It is true that she was granted special and unique graces. She is the Mother of
God’s Son but she is still a human being. Nevertheless, to point her special role that she played and her unique place in the history of salvation, the Church honors Mary with the veneration higher that other saints.
In this chapter the main focus will be on the place of Mary in the Liturgy of the
Catholic Church. Firstly the historical view of her cult in the Church. Then the specific place that Mary has in the Liturgical celebration of the Catholic Church and finally the devotion to
Our Lady in the popular piety.

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4.1. The cult of Mary in the Church: an historical view
The Blessed Virgin Mary has a special place in the Liturgy of the Catholic Church.
Nevertheless her cult in the Church has to be understood in a correct way. It is not an adoration that is given to her. It is not adoration but veneration145. The Second Vatican
Council states: “This cult, as it has always existed, although it is altogether singular, differs essentially from the cult of adoration which is offered to the Incarnate Word, as well to the
Father and the Holy Spirit, and it is most favorable to it.” 146
Mary has played a unique role in the history of humanity. That is why she has a special place among all other beings. Even among the Saints she is the first one. The tradition of her veneration starts already in the Bible. When the angel Gabriel came to her with the message from God that she would conceive and give birth to the Son of God, he addressed her as the favored one, full of grace (cf. Lk 1:28). Already at the time of the Annunciation she is given a special name, a special position among all the people. When Mary went to visit
Elisabeth, her elder cousin greets her with the words “blessed are you among all women” and gives her the name: “the mother of my Lord” (cf. Lk 2:42-43). As the response to this greeting, Mary proclaims a canticle Magnificat where she herself realizes her uniqueness “all generations shall call me blessed, because the Almighty has done great things for me” (Lk
1:48). Later on Jesus himself underlined Mary’s special position in the human race when he gave her as the mother to his Beloved Disciple (cf. Jn 19:26) and by doing this he gave her as the Mother of all.147
After the descending of the Holy Spirit, where Mary is present in the Upper Room together with the Apostles and the brothers of Jesus (cf. Acts l:l4), there is no more any indication about her in the Bible. During the first proclamations of the Gospel by the
Disciples, Mary is much less present in the books of Acts than in the Gospels. The Apostles

145

Adoration - in strict terminology the expression. from Latin adoratio. is equivalent to the Greek theological term λατρεία, designating an act of worship due to God alone. If used more loosely, however, it also covers the
Greek προσκύνησις which, in early times, was used for adoration of God as well as for veneration such as is paid to persons or subjects of sacred character. Until the 5th century Christians seem not to have distinguished between λατρεία and προσκύνησις. The Second Council of Nicea (787) reserved the term λατρεία to the worship of God alone (including God incarnate), whereas προσκύνησις might be applied also to the cult of creatures. (cf.
F. L. CROOS (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, p. 20).
146

LG 66.

147

Cf. V. B. J. BROWN, Venerarion of Mary in R. J. HUNTER (ed.), Dictionary of Pastoral Care and
Counseling, Nashville, Abingdon Press, 2005, p. 690.

53

do not mention her in their speeches. She is not mentioned in the earliest confessions of faith and is not a central issue in the first ecumenical councils.148
It might be surprising that the cult of Mary, the piety and veneration did not develope in the first centuries of the Christianity. There are some references to Mary in connection to the theology in the second century, as St Irenaeus of Lyons and the Protoevangelium of
James shows.149 The writers of the second century speak of Mary as the new Eve and put her together with the New Adam – Christ. The creeds used during baptisms in that century describe Jesus as one who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. Only later on, in the fourth century, Mary was seen as the example for Christian chastity and consecrated virginity.150 In the first centuries of the developing of the Liturgy, Mary seems to be absent. This silence about the Mother of God can be explained in a mystical way:
Just as, after the Incarnation, Mary loved to adore her Son within herself, so when she became the Mother of the Church on Pentecost she preferred a silent role, working in a mother’s capacity through suffering love and prayer. This, then, does not mean that the
Virgin was not honored in the liturgy of these ages; it means only that her cult was not explicit and outward as it was soon to become.151

It is in the second part of the fourth century that the evidence of the cult and prayer to
Mary appears.
Testimony from a variety of different sources, including early liturgical manuals, homiletics, archeology, hagiography, papyrology, and especially the early Dormition
Apocrypha, witnesses to a thriving cult of the Virgin in the east Roman provinces already at the end of the fourth century.152

Before there was given no much importance to the veneration of Mary in the
Liturgical celebrations.

148

Cf. A. BLANCY – M. JOURJON, Mary in the Plan of God and in the Communion of Saints, New York, Paulist
Press, 2002, p. 17.
149

Cf. L. GAMBERO, Mary and the Fathers of the Church: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought, pp.
51-58.
150

Cf. V. B. J. BROWN, Veneration of Mary, in R. J. HUNTER (ed.), Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling,
p. 690.
151

V. DEL MAZZA, Our Lady Among Us, pp. 79-80.

152

S. J. SHOEMAKER, Marian Liturgies and Devotion in Early Christianity, p. 130, in S. J. BOSS (ed.), Mary: the
Complete Resource, London, Continuum, 2009, pp. 130-145.

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In the fifth century the feast of the Dormition and Assumption of Mary was instituted and after that, in the seventh and eight centuries, other Marian festivals followed, like the festivals of the nativity and the presentation in the Temple.153
Meanwhile, the situation of the devotion to Our Lady started to change from the time of the Council of Ephesus (431). The dogmatic definition of Mary as Theotokos - Mother of
God gave impetus to her veneration.154 Although this definition was meant to underline that the Eternal Word of God took a human flesh, it also points the importance of the role of the
Virgin Mary in this historical event. It shows that it was from Mary that The Word, the Son of God, took flesh, and therefore she is the rightly called Mother of God.
After this definition, the liturgical veneration of the Virgin Mary developed more and more. Many churches were dedicated to her and prayers offered in her praise. By the year
450 there were already some Marian feasts established, e.g. the Annunciation of Mary was celebrated on March 25. Starting from the sixth century there is her commemoration in the canon of Mass.155
The open devotion to the Virgin Mary seems to be quite late. The reason for that might be because of the cult of goddesses that was in the pagan society. To avoid the situation that Christians could understand Mary as a new goddess, it was very wise to delay the wide spread devotion to her. That is why her cult could develop only after her recognition as the Mother of Christ, the human mother of the Son of God during the Council of Ephesus.
After the time of the Council different hymns and prayers were composed. In 1938 the prayer Sub mum praesidium156 was discovered written on a papyrus and it is considered to be written at the time of Ephesus. In this prayer the term Theotokos, Mother of God already appears. ‘Later on, from the beginning of the Middle Ages, the cult of Mary has its development and at the end of the tenth century the prayer Regina caeli was written. The
Salve Regina, Alma redemtoris and Ave Maris Stella come from the eleven century. The Tota pulchra es was written in the fourteen century.157

153

Cf. J. BUR, How to Understand the Virgin Mary, London, SCM Press LTd, 1994, p. 115.

154

Cf. BROWN, Veneration of Mary, in R. J. HUNTER (ed.), Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling, p. 690.

155

Cf. BROWN, Veneration of Mary, in R. J. HUNTER (ed.), Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling, p. 690.

156

For the English translation of the following prayers see: BUR, How to Understand the Virgin Mary, p. 116.

157

Cf. BUR, How to Understand the Virgin Mary, p. 115.

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The eleventh and twelfth centuries in European culture were a period of a vigorous stage of the Marian popular cult. Many churches were dedicated to her including many shrines and places of different pilgrimages, where many miracles have happened. There was also a wide spread tendency of distributing her different relics. Mary was bodily assumed into heaven; therefore no corporal relic of her was available. Nevertheless there were other bits and pieces that had some connection with Mary. It was believed that her maternity dress was enshrined at Chartres and her slipper at Soisson.158
During the Middle Ages the cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary was so much developed that it became excessively exuberant. There were many abuses concerning both the liturgy and popular devotion. This provoked the Protestant dissent in the sixteenth century. Not only
Protestants were against this exaggeration. The Holy See itself, until the nineteenth century, reacted against all distortions and deviations of the cult of Mary.159
During the Reformation, many Protestants rejected the veneration of Mary on scriptural grounds but even some Catholics opposed the excesses of popular belief.160 Martin
Luther strongly wrote against it: “I desire that the cult of Mary be totally abandoned solely because of the abuses that arise from it.”161 He criticized various forms of the cult of Mary because he was afraid that to her - a human person would be given divine honors. Despite that he preserved the beliefs in Mary‘s divine motherhood, her perpetual virginity and her intercession for humanity. Martin Luther saw in Mary an example of humility and faith.162
The nineteenth century was the beginning of the so called, “Age of Mary”. There were many apparitions of Mary in Europe and especially in France: Paris in 1830. Rome in
1842, La Salette in 1846, Lourdes in 1858, Croatia in 1865, Bohemia in 1866. Normandy in
1871, Knock in 1879. It was also the time when took place the dogmatic proclamation of
Mary’s Immaculate Conception by the Pope Pius XI in 1854.163
The first half of the twentieth century was a continuation of the enthusiasm about
Mary. There were more apparitions: Fatima in 1917, Belgium in 1932 and l933. Also many
158

Cf. B. WARD, Miracles and the Medieval Mind. Theory, Record and Event 1000-1215, Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982, pp. 142, 153-154.
159

Cf. BUR, How to Understand the Virgin Mary, p. 115.

160

Cf. J. R. SHINNERS, Mary and the People: The Cult of Mary and Popular Belief, p. 165, in D. DONNELLY
(ed.), Mary woman of Nazareth, Biblical Theological Perspectives, New York, Paulist Press, 1990, pp. 161186.
161

R. LAURENTIN, The Question of Mary, New York, Rinehart and Winston, 1965, p. 49.

162

Cf. BUR, How to Understand the Virgin Mary, p. 115.

163

Cf. SHINNERS, Mary and the People: The Cult of Mary and Popular Belief, pp. 166-167.

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Marian confraternities were founded: Father Kolbe’s Militia of the Immaculate Conception founded in 1917, Frank Duff’s Legion of Mary - l92l, the Blue Army - 1947.164
In the year 1950 Pope Pius XII issued an Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus
Deus where he proclaimed the Dogmatic Definition of the Assumption of Mary with her body and soul into heaven. This was a fitting accolade for most mariologists whose motto had become de Maria numquam satis - never enough honor can be given to Mary.165
The Second Vatican Council presented the whole chapter of the Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium regarding the Blessed Virgin Mary. In it the
Council recalls how ancient the cult of Mary is in the Church and specifies its nature and foundation: Placed by the grace of God, as God 's Mother, next to her Son, and exalted above all angels and men, Mary intervened in the mysteries of Christ and is justly honored by a special cult in the Church. This cult, as it always existed, although it is altogether singular, differs essentially from the cult of adoration which is offered to the Incarnate
Word, as well to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and it is most favorable to it.166

In the next paragraph of the same document the Fathers of the Council specified the spirit of the preaching and cult of Mary:
This most Holy Synod deliberately teaches this Catholic doctrine and at the same time admonishes all the sons of the Church that the cult, especially the liturgical cult of the
Blessed Virgin, be generously fostered, and the practices and exercises of piety, recommended by the magisterium of the Church toward her in the comes of centuries be made of great moment, and those decrees, which have been given in the early days regarding the cult of images of Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the saints, be religiously observed. But it exhorts theologians and preachers of the divine word to abstain zealously both from all gross exaggerations as well as from petty narrow-mindedness in considering the singular dignity of the Mother of God. Let the faithful remember moreover that true devotion consists neither in sterile or transitory affection. nor in a certain vain credulity, but proceeds from true faith, by which we are led to know the excellence of the Mother of God, and we are moved to a filial love toward our mother and to the imitation of her virtues.167

After the Council, in 1966, the decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites Cum nostra aetate was issued. It gave the norms to prepare a book Collectio Missarum de Beata
Maria Virgine which would contain the texts of the Masses in honor of the Blessed Virgin
Mary.

164

Cf. LAURENTIN, The Question of Mary, p. 10.

165

Cf. LAURENTIN, The Question of Mary, p. 54.

166

LG 66.

167

LG 67.

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4.2. Mary in the liturgical celebrations
“In celebrating the annual cycle of Christ’s mysteries, the Church honors with special love Mary, the Mother of God, who is joined by an inseparable bond to the saving work of her Son.”168 The Second Vatican Council has pointed that, by celebrating the Lord’s Feast
Days each year, the Church is also celebrating Blessed Virgin Mary. First and foremost,
Mary is associated with the celebration of the Lord’s Feast Days, and Mary’s Feast Days also involve the Lord to whom Mary is indissolubly associated. In the Roman Liturgy veneration toward Mary is expressed in many different ways, as the General Roman Calendar integrates commemorations of her into the cycle of the liturgical year.169
The honor given to Mary in the Liturgical celebrations comes from the role that she has played in God’s salvific plan. “She was intimately involved in the history of salvation”170 and fully as well as in a very active way participated in the mysteries of Christ’s life.171 All the different ways of praising Mary draw people closer to Christ. When she is honored, her
Son is duly acknowledged, loved and glorified, and His commandments are observed.172
Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary have their meaning and purpose from her close participation in the history of salvation. Therefore when the Church commemorates the role of the Mother of the Lord in the work of redemption or honors her privileges, it is above all celebrating the events of the salvation in which, by God’s salvific plan, the
Blessed Virgin was involved in view of the mystery of Christ.173

In 1974 Pope Paul VI wrote the apostolic exhortation Marialis Culus, on the devotion to the Virgin Mary. By this document he wanted “to remove doubts and, especially, to help the development of that devotion to the Blessed Virgin which is motivated in the Church by the Word of God and practiced in the Spirit of Christ.”174 Once more the Pope stressed that the Liturgical Celebrations are based first of all on the redemptive actions of Jesus Christ.
Any other commemorations are always to be directed towards God and Christ’s Paschal
Mystery. It is the mystery of salvation that has the greatest importance in the Liturgy.
In the Liturgy the Church invites the faithful to imitate the Blessed Virgin, above all for the faith and obedience with which she lovingly embraced the divine plan of salvation.
168

SC 103.

169

Cf. PAUL VI, Marialis Cultus, n. 2.

170

LG 65.

171

Cf. General Introduction to the Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Vol. 1 Sacramentary, New
York, Catholic Book Publishing CO, 1992, n. 5.
172

LG 66.

173

General Introduction to the Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary, n. 6.

174

PAUL VI, Marialis Cultus, Introduction.

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The hymns and euchological texts of the liturgy unfold the beautiful panoply of virtues in the Mother of Christ that the Church, led by the Holy Spirit, has discovered in its prayer and has learned in its contemplation.175

There are different ways of commemorating the Virgin Mary in the Liturgical
Celebration and in a particular way during the Eucharist. The General Roman Calendar contains some Solemnities, Feasts and memorials of the Blessed Virgin Mary. All the
Eucharistic Prayers contain a prayer of remembrance of Mary. Actually, Eucharistic Prayer I:
“In communion with those whose memory we venerate, especially the glorious ever-Virgin
Mary, Mother of our God and Lord, Jesus Christ”; Eucharistic Prayer II: “Have mercy on us all, we pray, that with the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, (...) we may merit to be coheirs to eternal life, and may praise and glorify you through your Son, Jesus Christ”;
Eucharistic Prayer III: “May he make of us an eternal offering to you, so that we may obtain an inheritance with your elect, especially with the most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of
God”; Eucharistic Prayer IV: “And you so loved the world, Father most holy, that in the fullness of time you sent your Only Begotten Son to be our Savior, made incarnate by the
Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, he shared our human nature in all things but sin”176
Each one of the Eucharistic Prayers mentions the Blessed Virgin Mary as the first one among the saints. But even then, she is placed always with a connection with Christ and his
Paschal Mysteries. Mary as well as other saints, is seen as one who intercedes for the people.
Intercession means that the blessed who are one with the risen Christ are still interested in us; they can and do pray for us. It is erroneous to think that the intercession of Mary and the saints is necessary in the sense that we do not have direct access to the merciful
Savior. We believe that, having Christ, we have all things together with Him. However, it is part of God’s loving plan that, even as we help one another on earth by our prayers and deeds, so we can rely on the blessed in heaven, above all the Blessed Virgin Mary, to assist us by their prayers.177

Another way of indicating the important place of Mary in the Liturgy is a bow when her name is being pronounced. “A bow of the head is made when the three Divine Persons are named together and at the names of Jesus, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of the Saint in whose honor Mass is being celebrated.”178 The Commentary on the General Instruction of the
Roman Missal stresses the difference between the bow of the head, by which Mary is honored, and the bow of the body. This paragraph puts it clearly that whenever the name of
175

General Introduction to the Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary, n. 16.

176

Cf. The Roman Missal, English Translation according to the Third Typical Edition, New Jersey, Catholic
Book Publishing Corp., 2011.
177

CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS, Behold your Mother; Woman of Faith, n. 84.

178

General Instruction of the Roman Missal n. 275, in The Roman Missal, pp. 21*-73*.

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Mary is mentioned in the Liturgy, everyone should bow his head to honor the Mother of
God.179
Another article of the General Instruction points that it is not only a decision of a priest to choose to commemorate or not the optional memorials of Mary: “Where, however, the optional memorials of the Blessed Virgin Mary or of the Saints are dear to the faithful, the priest should satisfy their legitimate devotion.”180 In choosing the optional memorials neither the priest’s preferences, nor the individual’s preferences should take priority.181 The devotion of the people of the place where the Mass is celebrated should take the priority over the preferences of a priest.
Further on the General Instruction speaks about the Votive Masses and the time when they should be used: “Votive Masses of the mysteries of the Lord or in honor of the Blessed
Virgin Mary (...) may be said for the sake of the faithful’s devotion on weekdays in Ordinary
Time, even if an optional memorial occurs.”182 Those Masses are given especially for strengthening the people’s devotion. But it also points that those Masses can be chosen during the Ordinary Time and only on the weekdays. If there are optional memorials on those days, one of the Votive Masses can be said.
Article 378 of the General Instruction is based on the paragraph n. 54 of the Dogmatic
Constitution of the Second Vatican Council Lumen Gentium. It reads as follows: “It is especially recommended to celebrate the commemoration of the Blessed Virgin Mary on
Saturday, because it is to the Mother of the Redeemer in the Liturgy of the Church that in the first place and before all the Saints veneration is given.”183 This paragraph highlights the role of Mary in the Liturgy. Masses in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary are recommended to be celebrated on Saturdays because of her unique role in the salvific plan of God and her special place among all the Saints.184
Looking at the Liturgical Calendar the feasts and commemorations of the Blessed
Virgin Mary can be divided according to the seasons. Advent seems to be a time particularly
179

Cf. E. FOLEY – N. D. MITCHELL – J. M. PIERCE (eds.), A Commentary on the General Instruction of the
Roman Missal, Minnesota, The Liturgical Press, 2008, p. 328.
180

General Instruction of the Roman Missal n. 355.

181

FOLEY –MITCHELL –PIERCE (eds.), A Commentary on the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, p. 411.

182

General Instruction of the Roman Missal n. 375.

183

General Instruction of the Roman Missal n. 378.

184

Cf. FOLEY –MITCHELL –PIERCE (eds.), A Commentary on the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, p.
434.

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suitable for the cult of Mary. During this period there is a celebration of the feast of the
Immaculate Conception on 8 December. The whole time of Advent prepares the faithful with the help of Mary for the coming of Jesus Christ at Christmas. Just as Mary we also await with love and true devotion the coming of the Savior till the end of times.185
Such liturgical references are found especially on the days from 17 to 24 December, and more particularly on the Sunday before Christmas, which recalls the ancient prophecies concerning the Virgin Mother and the Messiah and includes readings from the Gospel concerning the imminent birth of Christ and his Precursor.186

Christmas is also a commemoration of the divine motherhood of Mary. This cannot be separated from the Incarnation of the Son of God.
On the Epiphany, when she celebrates the universal call to salvation, the Church contemplates the Blessed Virgin, the true Seat of Wisdom and true Mother of the King, who presents to the Wise Men, for their adoration, the Redeemer of all peoples (cf. Mt.
2:11). On the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph (the Sunday within the octave of Christmas) the Church meditates with profound reverence upon the holy life led in the house at Nazareth by Jesus, the Son of God and Son of Man, Mary His Mother, and
Joseph the just man (cf. Mt. 1:19).187

To these celebrations it is necessary to add two other great solemnities: the
Annunciation and the Assumption of Our Lady. The first one commemorates the saving fiat of the Son of God, who, becoming a human being, says: “God, here I am! I am coming to obey your will” (cf. Hbr 10:7) as well as the fiat of Mary who accepted God’s will to be the
Mother of Christ (cf. Lk 1:38). By this feast the Church celebrate the salvific dialogue between God and man and the free consent of Mary to cooperate in the plan of salvation.188
The Assumption of Mary into heaven is a feast of her destiny, fullness, blessedness, glorification and a perfect configuration to the Risen Christ; a feast that sets before the eyes of the people the image and the consoling proof of the fulfillment of the final hope, namely, that this full glorification is the destiny of all those whom Christ has made His brothers, having “flesh and blood in common with them” (Heb. 2:14; cf. Gal. 4:4).189 Pope Paul VI speaks also about some celebrations that commemorate saving events in which Mary was close connected with Jesus. 190

185

Cf. BUR, How to Understand the Virgin Mary, p. 118.

186

PAUL VI, Marialis Cultus, n. 3.

187

PAUL VI, Marialis Cultus, n. 5.

188

Cf. PAUL VI, Marialis Cultus, n. 6.

189

Cf. PAUL VI, Marialis Cultus, n. 6.

190

Cf. BUR, How to Understand the Virgin Mary, p. 120.

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The Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as a response to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (cf. LG 67, SC 103), gives the set of 46 votive Masses in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary. They are also divided into the celebrations during the Liturgical
Year: Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter and Masses during the Ordinary Time.
The Collection seeks to promote celebrations that are marked by sound doctrine, the rich variety of their themes, and their rightful commemoration of the saving deeds that the
Lord God has accomplished in the Blessed Virgin in view of the mystery of Christ and the Church.191

The different Solemnities, feasts and commemorations of the Blessed Virgin Mary, apart from the celebrating the mysteries of the salvation, have one more important aspect.
They help the faithful to better understand those mysteries and to strengthen their devotion.

4.3. Mary in the popular piety
The veneration and honor given to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Catholic Liturgy does not stop only on the celebrations of different feasts and commemorations of Mary. The importance of this honor is also given to the popular devotion to Our Lady. But, just as in the case of the place of Mary in the Liturgical celebration, also the popular piety toward Mary comes out and directs to Christ. She is the mother not only of Jesus Christ, but also of all the people. The faithful easily understand the vital link uniting Son and Mother. They realize that the
Son is God and that she, the Mother, is also their mother. They intuit the immaculate holiness of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and in venerating her as the glorious queen of
Heaven, they are absolutely certain that she who is full of mercy intercedes for them.
Hence, they confidently have recourse to her patronage. The poorest of the poor feel especially close to her. They know that she, like them, was poor, and greatly suffered in meekness and patience. They can identify with her suffering at the crucifixion and death of her Son, as well as rejoice with her in his resurrection. The faithful joyfully celebrate her feasts, make pilgrimage to her sanctuary, sing hymns in her honor, and make votive offerings to her. They instinctively distrust whoever does not honor her and will not tolerate those who dishonor her.192

These words perfectly explain the reason why people have this special devotion to
Mary. She is someone who experienced not only joys but also many sorrows in her life. She
191

General Introduction to the Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary, n. 19.

192

CONGREGATION FOR DIVINE WORSHIP AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SACRAMENTS, Guidelines and proposals for the celebration of the Marian Year (03.04.1987), n. 67, quotation drawn from The Holy See – Roman Curia http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20020513_versdirettorio_en.html, accessed 10 February 2013

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knows how to suffer, she experiences poverty, abandon and pain of losing someone whom she loved. She is someone who feels and understands the needs of others.
The most important thing that the Magisterium stresses about the devotion to the
Blessed Virgin Mary is its Trinitarian dimension. This devotion is originated in Christ, has its fulfillment in Christ and it is through Christ in the Holy Spirit, that leads to the Father. That is why the honor given to Mary should give expression to the Trinity because it characterizes the worship of God revealed in the New Testament. It should also have a constant recourse to the Sacred Scripture, as understood in the Tradition.193
The title of the third part of the Apostolic Exhortation of Paul VI Marialis Cultus, states: “Observations on Two Exercises of Piety: The Angelus and the Rosary”. The Pope lingers with pastoral attitudes over these most popular Marian devotions. He points that
“what we have to say about the Angelus is meant to be only a simple but earnest exhortation to continue its traditional recitation wherever and whenever possible.”194 This prayer traditionally commemorates the event that happened in the life of Mary from Nazareth, namely the Annunciation of the Archangel to her. It is said by the faithful three times a day: in the morning, at mid-day and in the evening. It recalls the salvific event when the Eternal
Word of God took on a human flesh after the free consent of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit. It has a deep Trinitarian meaning. 195 The Angelus “over the centuries has conserved its value and freshness with its simple structure, biblical character (...) quasi liturgical rhythm by which the various time of the day are sanctified, and by its openness to the Paschal Mystery”196
During the Easter Time the Angelus is replaced with the antiphon Regina Coeli. This antiphon was added by Pope Benedict XIV in 1742. It probably comes from the eleventh century. It joins the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word of God with the Paschal event.197
As mentioned earlier, Pope Paul VI points the Rosary as one of the well-known exercises of piety.

193

Cf. CONGREGATION FOR DIVINE WORSHIP AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SACRAMENTS, Directory on popular piety and the Liturgy, Principles and Guidelines, 2001, n. 186.
194

PAUL VI, Marialis Cultus, n. 41.

195

Cf. CONGREGATION FOR DIVINE WORSHIP AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SACRAMENTS, Directory on popular piety and the Liturgy, Principles and Guidelines, n. 195.
196

PAUL VI, Marialis Cultus, n. 41.

197

Cf. CONGREGATION FOR DIVINE WORSHIP AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SACRAMENTS Directory on popular piety and the Liturgy, Principles and Guidelines, n. 196.

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The Roman Pontiffs have repeatedly exhorted the faithful to the frequent recitation of this biblically inspired prayer which is centered on contemplation of the salvific events of
Christ 's life, and their close association with his Virgin Mother. The value and efficacy of this prayer have often been attested by saintly Bishops and those advanced in holiness of life.198 This prayer encourages faithful to meditate together with Mary, on the mysteries of the life of Jesus Christ.199 It is a prayer that Pope Pius XII called to be “the compendium of the entire Gospel.”200 This prayer “gradually took form in the second millennium under the guidance of the Spirit of God.”201 Traditionally it invited the faithful to meditate upon three types of mysteries: joyful, sorrowful and glorious which were assigned to particular days of a week.202 It was only in the year 2002 that Pope John Paul II introduced the fourth group to this prayer which is the Mysteries of Light. He wrote:
Moving on from the infancy and the hidden life in Nazareth to the public life of Jesus, our contemplation brings us to those mysteries which may be called in a special way
‘mysteries of light.’ Certainly the whole mystery of Christ is a mystery of light. He is the
‘light of the world’ (Jn 8:12). Yet this truth emerges in a special way during the years of his public life, when he proclaims the Gospel of the Kingdom. In proposing to the
Christian community five significant moments – ‘luminous’ mysteries – during this phase of Christ’s life, I think that the following can be fittingly singled out: (1) his Baptism in the Jordan, (2) his self-manifestation at the wedding of Cana, (3) his proclamation of the
Kingdom of God, with his call to conversion, (4) his Transfiguration, and finally, (5) his institution of the Eucharist, as the sacramental expression of the Paschal Mystery.203

One thing has to be remembered while praying the Rosary. “The Rosary is an excellent prayer, but the faithful should feel serenely free in its regard.” 204 This is an important statement because it shows that there should not be a sense of guilt in those faithful who do not feel to recite often the Rosary.
Another type of a popular devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary is a recitation of different Litanies. They are among the prayers to Mary that are recommended by the
Magisterium. They are lists of short invocations of Virgin Mary and are concluded with a

198

CONGREGATION FOR DIVINE WORSHIP AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SACRAMENTS, Guidelines and proposals for the celebration of the Marian Year, n. 62.
199

PAUL VI, Marialis Cultus, n. 62.

200

PIUS XII, Letter to the Archibishop of Manila: Philippinas Insulas, in AAS 38, 1946, n. 419.

201

JOHN PAUL II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, n. 1.

202

Cf. CONGREGATION FOR DIVINE WORSHIP AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SACRAMENTS Directory on popular piety and the Liturgy, Principles and Guidelines, n. 200.
203

JOHN PAUL II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, n. 21.

204

PAUL VI, Marialis Cultus, n. 55.

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supplication: Pray for us. The most popular and best known is The Litany of Loretto. This kind of popular piety is an important act of homage given to Mary.205
Consecration and Entrustment to Mary is considered as another practice of popular piety. This devotion is reflected in the prayer manuals and statutes of many associations where the formulas of consecration are used. This practice is appreciated not only by the
Popes 206 but also by many great Saints who had a special devotion to Our Lady. One of them is St Louis Grignon the Montfort, a great master of the spiritual life. He “proposed to the faithful consecration to Jesus through Mary, as an effective way of living out their baptismal commitment.”207 It reflects the last will of Christ (cf. Jn 19:25-27). It is also an appreciation of Mary’s role in the mystery of Christ and of the Church as well as of her example and witness to the Gospel and trust in her intercession. All this is based on her maternal love that she has not only for her Son but also for each one of the human beings. 208 The Guidelines of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments very clearly point the nature of Consecration and Entrustment to Mary: “The faithful should be carefully instructed about the practice of consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary. While such can give the impression of being a solemn and perpetual act, it is, in reality, only analogously a consecration to God.”209
The same document speaks of The Brown Scapular and other Scapulars as act of special devotions to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The most common of them is the Scapular of
Our Lady of Mount Carmel. It is a universal practice “recommended by the Magisterium throughout the centuries.”210 Although the Brown Scapular is a reduced form of a habit of the
Order of the Friars of the Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel, it is often an independent act of a devotion to Mary of faithful not connected with the Carmelite family.211 It is “a reminder that in Baptism we have been clothed in Christ, with the assistance of the Blessed Virgin Mary,

205

Cf. CONGREGATION FOR DIVINE WORSHIP AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SACRAMENTS Directory on popular piety and the Liturgy, Principles and Guidelines, n. 203.
206

Cf. CONGREGATION FOR DIVINE WORSHIP AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SACRAMENTS, Directory on popular piety and the Liturgy, Principles and Guidelines, n. 204.
207

JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Mater, n. 48.

208

Cf. LG 61.

209

CONGREGATION FOR DIVINE WORSHIP AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SACRAMENTS, Directory on popular piety and the Liturgy, Principles and Guidelines, n. 204.
210

LG 67.

211

CONGREGATION FOR DIVINE WORSHIP AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SACRAMENTS, Directory on popular piety and the Liturgy, Principles and Guidelines, n. 205.

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solicitous for our conformation to the Word Incarnate, to the praise of the Trinity, we may come to our heavenly home wearing our nuptial garb.”212
Wearing Medals with an image of Our Lady is also seen as a special kind of popular piety. The faithful who wear it, give witness of their faith and veneration of Mary in whose motherly protection they trust.213 The prayer of the blessing of any object of Marian devotion, including also Medals, says that those objects express the faith of those who use them. This faith is manifested in different ways but first of all they help to reflect on Lord’s great love for all the people. They also help the faithful to increase the confidence in the power of Marys’ help. To wear Medals also means to live in such a way, that one will become a true witness of Christian way of living.214
One of the best examples of popularizing this devotion was a Polish Conventual Friar
Minor St Maximilian Maria Kolbe who was martyred in the Concentration Camp in
Auschwitz (1941). He adopted the miraculous medal as the badge of the “Pious Union of the
Militia of the Immaculate Conception” which he has founded in Rome in 1917.215 But it is necessary to be aware that all objects of this devotion are never to be regarded as any kind of a talisman or lead to any form of blind credulity.216 They are only a help and not an object or an end of the Christian faith.
“The blessed Virgin was chosen to be the Mother of God as part of the eternal plan for the incarnation of the Word of God. On this earth she was the cherished Mother of the
Redeemer and in a unique way the companion of his saving work.”217 That is the reason why the Church encourages the faithful to have this special devotion and to honor Our Lady with a special kind of love. While the popular piety should always lead to Christ and reflect on
God’s plan of salvation, this devotion to Mary can help and strengthen the spiritual life of the people. 212

Cf. CONGREGATION FOR DIVINE WORSHIP AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SACRAMENTS, Guidelines and proposals for the celebration of the Marian Year, n. 88.
213

Cf. CONGREGATION FOR DIVINE WORSHIP AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SACRAMENTS, Directory on popular piety and the Liturgy, Principles and Guidelines, n. 206.
214

Cf. Book of Blessings, Minnesota, The Liturgical Press, 1989, n. 1448, p. 544.

215

Cf. CONGREGATION FOR DIVINE WORSHIP AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SACRAMENTS, Directory on popular piety and the Liturgy, Principles and Guidelines, n. 206.
216

Cf. LG 67.

217

Book of Blessings, n. 1478, p. 552.

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CHAPTER 5
MARY IN THE CHRISTIAN SPIRITUAL LIFE
The first and the most important goal of every Christian is the total union with God.
By dying on the cross, Jesus – the Son of God and the Son of Man, freed the humanity from the slavery of sin. That is why all the peoples should life in such a way to be united with the
Father. Every act of faith, every kind of personal devotion or popular piety has to lead to this unification. The veneration or devotion to Saints does not stop only on praising them and taking them as examples of how to live a really Christian life. All of them must point to God and his plan of salvation, to Jesus Christ and his paschal events and to the Holy Spirit who sanctifies all.
“Christian spirituality draws its vitality from the salvific deed of God in Jesus Christ present in the Church and transmitted through its preaching and sacraments.”218 It is stressed that the Christian Spirituality is based on God’s plan of salvation and it has its high point is
Jesus himself and is offered to all. Everyone is called to the perfection which has its final point in the union with God.
To make it easier to rich this final goal, the Church proposes to the faithful many aids.
One of which is the life and example of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is a perfect model of
Christian life in fulfilling the will of God, in conforming one’s life to Christ and in living the life in the Spirit. She is the model of many great masters of spiritual life. Throughout the centuries she played an important role in the life of many saints who now can be called
“Marian saints”, like St Louis Mary of Montfort and St John Bosco, the founder of the
Society of St Francis de Sales, common known as Salesians of Don Bosco. Because of her important role in both the life of Jesus and in every Christian, she can be consider as a kind of a bridge, a mother of unity for the Christian East and West. By the common devotion and form of popular piety, and through the faith in her constant prayers and intercessions the unity is possible and it should be desire by all.

218

J. SUDBRACK, Spirituality, p1626, in K. RAHNER (ed.), Encyclopedia of Theology, A Concise Sacramentum
Mundi, London, Burns&Oates, 1975, pp. 1623-1634.

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5.1. Mary, perfect model of Christian life
“The Christian faithful learns the example of holiness and recognizes its model and source in the all-holy Virgin Mary.” (CCC 2030). Throughout the centuries Mary was considered to be the perfect example of faith. Countless Saints have seen in her the perfect model of Christian life. She was and still is considered to be someone from whom people of all times can learn how to live their lives in a perfect unity with God. This universality of her example comes from her way of life as well as from her role that she has played in the history of salvation.
Mary is considered to be a perfect model of christian life in fulfilling the will of God.
It was the will of the Father to choose from all eternity Mary to become the Mother of God’s only Son. She humbly accepted this honor. Because of this unique role that she was to play,
God sent upon her special graces and the Holy Spirit overshadowed her:
You are to conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God. Mary said, ‘You see before you the Lord 's servant, let it happen to me as you have said.’ (Lk 1:31-32,35,38)219

God has bestowed on Mary a special grace from the very first moment of her life: at her Immaculate Conception and at the end of her earthly life again a unique grace of being completely configured to Jesus Christ in the Assumption into heaven. But during her life she conferred her cooperation to those graces. She is a person in whom full freedom and complete obedience to the will of God are perfectly combined.220
This obedience is seen during the Annunciation when she accepted to be the Mother of the Son of God (cf. Lk 1:38). It was not easy for a young girl from Nazareth to fully understand what God wanted her to do: “But how can this come about, since I have no knowledge of man?” (Lk 1:34) By asking the archangel this question, Mary expresses her faith in the divine power to make her virginity compatible with this exceptional and unique
Motherhood.221 That is also why she accepted this role and faithfully fulfilled this task.

219

Cf. PAUL VI, Marialis Cultus, n. 25.

220

Cf. HAFFNER, The Mystery of Mary, pp. 16-17.

221

JOHN PAUL II, Discourse at General Audience, 3 July 1996.

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The will of God was that his Eternal Son would be born and become man (cf. Jn
1:14). God does not do anything by forcing people.
God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. God willed that man should be left in the hand of his own counsel, so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him. Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts. (CCC 1730)

Looking at this paragraph from the Catechism of the Catholic Church it is clear that man has freedom to choose or not to choose to fulfill God’s will. Mary, the humble servant, has chosen to fulfill in her life what God has offered. From the very beginning of her Fiat to the archangel, through her quiet life during Jesus’ ministry, death and sending the Holy
Spirit, until her last moment of earthly life, Mary was constantly fulfilling the will of God.
“By proclaiming herself as the Lord’s servant, Mary enters into the work of salvation with total availability. Her Fiat is a positive and immediate cooperation in the redemptive
Incarnation.”222 She accepted this great honor to be the Mother of the Son of God. But she was also aware of her humanity. She knew that no human being is worthy of such a great gift. That is why calls herself a servant of the Lord. Mary has remained to be a servant while being honored with a special grace. Therefore Mary is a perfect model for Christians by giving an example of how to accept and faithfully fulfill the will of God, even if it brings some difficulties.
But the Blessed Virgin Mary is also a model for the faithful in conforming one’s life to Christ. She was not only the mother of Jesus but she also was the one who followed him, who listened to him and who stood by him till the end. “She is joined by an inseparable bond to the saving work of her Son.”223
The very first aspect of Mary conforming her life to Christ was her acceptance to be his Mother (cf. Lk 1:38). She is the one who did not only listen to the Word of God conveyed to her by the archangel, but she is also the one who fulfills It and shares with others. Jesus himself said: “Who are my mother and my brothers? And looking at those sitting in a circle round him, he said, Here are my mother and my brothers. Anyone who does the will of God, that person is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mk 3:33-35)

222

HAFFNER, The Mystery of Mary, p. 56.

223

SC 103.

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The fulfilling of the will of God has to be done with joy because only in this way one can really be close to God.
This close relationship between God’s word and joy is evident in the Mary. Saint
Elizabeth said: ‘Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord’ (1:45). Mary is blessed because she believed, and in this faith she received the Word of God into her womb in order to give him to the world. The joy born of the Word can now expand to all those who, by faith, let themselves be changed by God’s word. The Gospel of Luke presents this mystery of hearing and joy in two texts.
Jesus says: ‘My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it’
(Lk 8:21). And in reply to a woman from the crowd who blesses the womb that bore him and the breasts that nursed him, Jesus reveals the secret of true joy: ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’ (11:28). Jesus points out Mary’s true grandeur, making it possible for each of us to attain that blessedness which is born of the word received and put into practice.224

One of the aspects of conforming Mary’s life to Christ is her total trust in his power.
This can be seen during the weeding feast in Cana (cf. Jn 2:1-11). Mary has noticed that there was no more wine and, not wanting the couple to be embarrassed, turned in full confidence to her Son for help: “the mother of Jesus said to him: They have no wine.” (Jn 2:3). Having full trust in him, Mary shares this trust with the others. She invite invites the servants to listen to
Jesus, to have confidence and to trust him: “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2:5).
At the foot of the cross Mary once more gives the example of conforming her life to the will of her Son (cf. Jn 19:25-27). The very fact that she was there, that she did not leave
Jesus in a difficult time, is already a great sign of her love. It was difficult for her, she also suffered a great pain while seeing her Son dying but she was there with and for him. Not only can her presence at the cross be seen as a perfect model of being totally attached to Christ.
There is one more important detail. Just as during the Annunciation Mary totally submitted herself to the will of God the Father, so now she accepts and againg fulfills the will of her
Son who speaks of Mary’s new role in the Christian Community. Jesus tells her to be with the Christian Community, to embrace it with her motherly love, just as she did for Jesus. He gave Mary as the Mother of the Beloved Disciple and in this way as a Mother of the whole
Church. But also gives the Church to Mary to be her community of children: “Seeing his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing near her, Jesus said to his mother, ‘Woman, this is your son.’ Then to the disciple he said, ‘This is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his home” (Jn 19:26-27).
Mary is a perfect model for the Christians not only in fulfilling the will of God and in conforming her life to Christ but also in living her whole life in the Spirit. God has granted
224

BENEDICT XVI, Verbum Domini, Paperback, Word Among Us Press, 2010, n. 124.

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Mary supernatural gifts because of the role she was to play. The Catechism of the Catholic
Church states:
The Holy Spirit prepared Mary by his grace. It was fitting that the mother of him in whom “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col 2:9) should herself be “full of grace.” She was, by sheer grace, conceived without sin as the most humble of creatures, the most capable of welcoming the inexpressible gift of the Almighty. It was quite correct for the angel Gabriel to greet her as the ‘Daughter of Zion’: ‘Rejoice’ (cf. Zeph 3:14,
Zech 2:14). It is the thanksgiving of the whole People of God, and thus of the Church, which Mary in her canticle (cf. Lk 1:46-55) lifts up to the Father in the Holy Spirit while carrying within her the eternal Son (CCC 722).

It was the work of the Holy Spirit to prepare Mary of Nazareth to this great role to be the Mother of the Son of God. “Mary of the Magnificat is, after Jesus himself, the supreme
New Testament example of one who is led by the Holy Spirit. Not only Magnificat, but
Mary’s whole life was a song of love inspired by the Holy Spirit.”225
The Scripture says that during the Annunciation the Holy Spirit already overshadowed Mary. “The expression which the angel used is characteristic of a consecration of the temple”.226 Thus Mary became the Temple of the Holy Spirit. She is the Temple from which the Spirit is given to others. When Mary went to visit her cousin, she first of all greeted Elizabeth. “Mary’s greeting to Elizabeth causes John, filled with the Holy Spirit, to leap with joy.”227 It is now Mary’s task and privilege not only to bring Jesus to others but also to share the joy of the Holy Spirit. But doing this, one has to live in the Spirit, has to accept and to be transformed by the Spirit.
In the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary there are many stages when her life is associated with the Holy Spirit. She is the masterwork of the mission of Christ and of the
Holy Spirit in the fullness of time. The same Spirit has prepared Mary to be a dwelling place for the Son and the Spirit himself in order to give them to the people (cf. CCC 721). “In
Mary, the Holy Spirit manifests the Son of the Father, now become the Son of the Virgin.
She is the burning bush of the definitive theophany. Filled with the Holy Spirit she makes the
Word visible in the humility of his flesh” (CCC 724).
At the end of this mission of the Spirit, Mary became the Woman, the new Eve (‘mother of the living’), the mother of the ‘whole Christ’ (cf. Jn 19:25-27). As such, she was present with the Twelve, who ‘with one accord devoted themselves to prayer’ (Acts
1:14), at the dawn of the ‘end time’ which the Spirit was to inaugurate on the morning of
Pentecost with the manifestation of the Church (CCC 726).
225

CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS, Behold your Mother; Woman of Faith, n. 118.

226

HAFFNER, The Mystery of Mary, p. 59.

227

HAFFNER, The Mystery of Mary, p. 60.

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Therefore, the Holy Spirit was with Mary during her entire life. But there was a positive response of her. She was not only gifted with the grace of the Holy Spirit but she totally submitted herself to him, she lived in the Spirit, she shared this gift with others and she prayed that the Spirit might come on the Church on the day of Pentecost.
Thus Mary lived her life in the full sense of belonging to God. Her life is like a mirror of the Trinity: she fully and humbly fulfilled the will of God; she offered her life to the life of her Son; she was filled and lived her life in the Holy Spirit. She, therefore, is rightly called to be a perfect model of Christian life which ought to be admired and follow by all Christians.

5.2. Two typical “Marian” saints: St Louis Mary de Montfort and St John
Bosco
“The Christian learns the example of holiness and recognizes its model and source in the all-holy Virgin Mary” (CCC 2030). Throughout the centuries Mary was considered to be a great example of how to live in the union with God. In her God has done marvelous things
(cf. Lk 1:49). Many Saints, religious, popes and common people had, and still have, a special devotion to her. They took her as their model of life in order to better understand and strengthen their communion with God. Today they are called Marian Saints. Among them there are two great saints: St Louis Marie de Montfort and St John Bosco.
St Louis Marie de Montfort (31 January 1673 – 28 April 1716) was a French catholic priest who was known to be a great preacher and one greatly devoted to the Blessed Virgin
Mary. He presented his deep love towards Mary in many books that he has written but especially in “The Secret of Mary” and “Treatise on the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin
Mary.” In the last one St Louis gives the foundation of the devotion to Mary. He speaks of the nature of this devotion:
As our whole perfection consists in being conformed, united and consecrated to Jesus
Christ, it follows that the most perfect of all devotions is clearly the one which conforms, unites and consecrates us most perfectly to Jesus Christ. Now, as Mary is of all creatures the most conformed to Jesus Christ, it follows that of all devotions, the one that most consecrates and conforms a soul to Our Lord is the devotion to the Blessed Virgin, His
Holy Mother, and that the more a soul is consecrated to Mary, the more will it be consecrated to Jesus Christ.228

228

ST L. M. DE MONTFORT, Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, n. 120.

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St Louis confirms what has been thought by the Magisterium from the beginning of
Christianity. He stresses that it is only because of Jesus Christ and the desire to be more united with him that one venerates Mary. The true devotion to Our Lady has to be always directed and founded on this principle. Mary helps us to come closer to her Son, to be united with his just as she was totally united with Jesus.
Already in the Introduction to the Treatise St Louis points the work of the Blessed
Trinity in the life of Mary. By doing this, he again stresses the importance of directing all prayers, hopes and glories towards God but through Mary.
God the Father permitted that she should work no miracles during her life, at least no public ones, although He had given her the power to do so. God the Son permitted that she should hardly ever speak, although He had communicated to her His wisdom. God the Holy Ghost, although she was His faithful spouse, permitted that His Apostles and
Evangelists should say but very little about her, and then only inasmuch as was necessary to make known Jesus Christ.229

Every action, every word, every moment of Mary’s life was directed towards her Son and by doing this, Mary was glorifying the Trinity.
Treatise on the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary is a masterpiece of St
Louis. It contains eight chapters dealing with this topic. In the first chapter de Montfort speaks of the necessity of devotion to Mary. He gives two important principles that contain already the whole understanding of Mary’s role: God willed to make use of Mary in the incarnation and God wishes to make use of Mary in the Sanctification of souls. Then he speaks about some consequences of those principles. “Mary is the Queen of heaven and earth by grace, as Jesus is their King by nature and by conquest. Now just as the Kingdom of Jesus
Christ is chiefly in the heart of man, we can call Mary the Queen of our hearts.” 230 The second consequence speaks of the necessity of devotion to Mary to attain salvation.
St Louis’s devotion to Our Lady was based and had its end in Jesus Christ. For him
Jesus is the ultimate end of that devotion and the faithful are slaves of him and his Mother.
But because we are corrupted with the stain of sin, we have to empty ourselves of what is evil in us. To obtain this emptiness, we need someone who will be our mediator with Jesus and someone who will help us to persevere in this difficult task to cherish the graces received

229

DE MONTFORT,

Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, n. 4.

230

DE MONTFORT,

Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, n. 38.

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from God. There is only one person who can help us to free ourselves from evil and to persevere: the Mother of Jesus.231
But there is a danger in having a false devotion. De Montfort distinguished them giving examples of how not to venerate Mary and how to do it. He presents seven kinds of false devotions to Our Lady. Those are: critical devotion, scrupulous devotion, external devotion, presumptuous devotion, inconstant devotion, hypocritical devotion and selfinterested devotion. But he also states in what the true devotion consist. It is interior, tender, holy, constant and disinterested.232
In the later part of Treatise St Louis gives some motives which should recommend this devotion. By this devotion faithful give themselves entirely to the service of God. It also helps to imitate the example given by Jesus and by God himself. It helps Christians to practice humility and to obtained different favors of Mary. But there is something greater.
This devotion is an excellent means of giving greater glory to God and be more united with
Christ. It also helps to obtain interior liberty, to help our neighbors with charity, to persevere in virtues and remain faithful.233
From his experience, St Louis shares some wondrous effects which the devotion to
Our Lady produces in a soul. He speaks of: the real knowledge and contempt of self, the participation in Mary’s Faith, the communication of Mary to the faithful in order to give greater glory to God. He also speaks of transformation of our souls into the image of Jesus
Christ to give him greater glory.234 And finally he proposes some exterior and interior practices of the devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.235
Having presented the masterpiece of this great saint, one can conclude that this work comes not from a philosopher or a thinker but from a very devoted servant of God. St Louis
Mary de Montfort wanted to manifest his faith and love towards God and especially to Jesus
Christ by his total devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. This deep devotion gains for him the title Marian Saint.

231

Cf. DE MONTFORT, Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, nn. 60-89.

232

Cf. DE MONTFORT, Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, nn. 90-119.

233

Cf. DE MONTFORT, Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, nn. 135-182.

234

Cf. DE MONTFORT, Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, nn. 213-225.

235

Cf. DE MONTFORT, Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, nn. 226-265.

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Another great Saint who had special, filial devotion to Mary is the Founder of the
Society of St Francis de Sales, St John Bosco (16 August 1815 – 31 January 1888). He was a catholic priest of the diocese of Turin, Italy. He lived in the time of the industrial revolution when many young people were orphans who had to work very hard in order to survive.
Aware that their physical and moral life is in danger, he started to gather them to teach them a catechism. “Speaking about the presence of Mary in the life story of Don Bosco means in practice to consider his whole life.”236
Archbishop Angelo Amato, SDB speaks of four pillars of Salesian Spirituality which are based on the spirituality of St John Bosco. As the first one he points Don Bosco’s devotion to Mary Help of Christians.
For Don Bosco, the Immaculate Virgin, Mary Help of Christians, was the ever-present
Mother who helps her children daily, going to their rescue and leading them to Jesus. ‘Be devoted to Mary Help of Christians’, he would habitually say, ‘and you will see what miracles are!’. For Don Bosco, Marian devotion had an intrinsically ecclesial dimension since he saw Mary as the powerful Helper who defends the Church and the Pope from every kind of danger. This is why in the Salesian tradition the daily recitation of the
Rosary is not only an element of Marian devotion, but above all the contemplation of
Jesus in the mysteries of his saving Incarnation.237

The summary of his devotion to Our Lady can be found in the Salesian Constitutions where the article 8 gives some key words which capture the maternal presence of Mary in the life of John Bosco.238 They are: she showed Don Bosco his field of labor among the young and was the constant guide and support, especially in the foundation of our Society.”239
Mary has “showed Don Bosco his field of labor among the young” already in his childhood when he had a dream at nine years of age. This dream shows the close connection between the Lord Jesus and his Mother Mary.240 In the account of this dream one reads: “’I will give you a teacher. Under her guidance you can become wise. Without her, all wisdom is
236

P. CHAVEZ VILLANUEVA, “This is your mother” (Jn 18,27), Mary the Immaculate Help of Christians Mother and teacher of Don Bosco, p. 5 in Acts of the General Council of the Salesian Society of St John Bosco, Year
XCIII september-december 2012, N. 414, Rome Tipolitografia Istituto Salesiano Pio XI, 2012, pp 3-38.
237

A. AMATO, The Four Pillars of Salesian Spirituality, in L 'Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English,
12 January 2005, p. 8.
238

Cf. CHAVEZ VILLANUEVA, “This is your mother” (Jn 18,27), Mary the Immaculate Help of Christians
Mother and teacher of Don Bosco, p. 5.
239

Article 8 of the Constitutions of the Society of St Francis de Sales: “The Virgin Mary showed Don Bosco his field of labour among the young and was the constant guide and support of his work, especially in the foundation of our Society. We believe that Mary is present among us and continues her ‘mission as Mother of the Church and Help of Christians’. We entrust ourselves to her, the humble servant in whom the Lord has done great things, that we may become witnesses to the young of her Son’s boundless love.”
240

Cf. CHAVEZ VILLANUEVA, “This is your mother” (Jn 18,27), Mary the Immaculate Help of Christians
Mother and teacher of Don Bosco, p. 5.

75

foolishness.’ ‘But who are you that speak to so?’ ‘I am the son of the woman whom your mother has taught you to greet three times a day.’”241 In this dream the Lady showed the little
Giovanni Bosco his field of future work. It also shows that he was taught from his early years to have a devotion to Our Lady. His mother, Margareth Occhienna, taught him and his brothers to pray to Mary three times a day.
Don Bosco had a special devotion to Mary Immaculate – Help of Christians. It was some years before the solemn proclamation of the Dogma that Mary Immaculate was at the start of Salesian work.242 On 8 December 1841 there was a meeting between Don Bosco and
Bartholomew Garelli when the fulfillment of the dream started with the “Hail Mary” with which “everything began.”243
No one could adequately describe Don Bosco’s love for Our Lady. His devotion to Her came second only to his devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and he continually fostered with visible filial love, whether preaching, hearing confessions, or talking informally. He seemed to live only for Her. He often visited Her shrines, and he always had a supply of medals and holy pictures to give away, especially to the children. As they crowded about him, he urged them to wear the medals devoutly and pray every day to the Blessed
Virgin.244

During the month of May and the novenas St John Bosco would speak of her different virtues, prerogatives or favors and always urged his boys to pray and receive communion in her honor. He also wanted them to recite rosary every day. Before the beginning, during and after completed his undertakings he was always invoking her aid. His favorable invocation was: “O Mary, Mother of Grace, sweet Mother of Mercy, defend us against the enemy, and receive us at the hour of death.” It was wide spread that Don Bosco has received many favors through Mary’s intercessions. That is why so many people were asking him for prayers and blessing for the sick and those in need. He has never claimed credit for nothing but kept repeating: “How good Our Lady is!”245
St Jon Bosco had a great love to Mary and was always invited others to have full trust in her, especially in difficult times when everyone should invoke her as the Help of
Christians.
241

ST JOHN BOSCO, Memoirs of the Oratory of Saint Francis de Sales from 1815 to 1855, New York, Don
Bosco Publications, 1989, pp. 18-19.
242

Cf. CHAVEZ VILLANUEVA, “This is your mother” (Jn 18,27), Mary the Immaculate Help of Christians
Mother and teacher of Don Bosco, p. 9.
243

Cf. CHAVEZ VILLANUEVA, “This is your mother” (Jn 18,27), Mary the Immaculate Help of Christians
Mother and teacher of Don Bosco, p. 10.
244

G. B. LEMOYNE, The Biographical Memoirs of Saint John Bosco, vol. V, New York, Salesiana Publishers,
1969, p. 98.
245

Cf. LEMOYNE, The Biographical Memoirs of Saint John Bosco, vol. V, pp. 99-100.

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There is a reason that derives from a characteristic aspect of devotion to Mary Help of
Christians: it is a Marian dimension that is of its very nature for critical times. Don Bosco himself expressed it to Fr Cagliero: The Madonna wishes us to honor her under the title of Help of Christians; the times are so sad that we have real need of the most holy
Virgin’s assistance in preserving and defending the Christian faith.246

The crowning of his devotion to Our Lady was his idea to build a church in her honor and in
1868 the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians in Turin was ready to be consecrated. This solemn celebration took place in the morning 9 June 1868. But even on this occasion Don
Bosco was so humble to admit his role in the building of this Marian shrine: “I claim no credit... It is due to the Lord and to the Blessed Virgin Mary who chose to avail themselves of a poor priest for such undertakings. I put nothing of myself into it. Mary built Herself this church. Each stone, each ornament, recalls a favor of Hers.”247
Both of those great Saints: Louis Marie de Montfort and John Bosco are rightly considered to be called Marian Saints. By the way of their lifes, they trust and spreading devotion to Our Lady they are real models of the filial love toward Our Lady. This devotion did not stop only with Mary but helped them to grow in holiness and be even more attached and to love Jesus Christ.

5.3. Mary mother of unity for the Christian East and West
“Christ bestowed unity on his Church from the beginning. This unity, we believe, subsists in the Catholic Church as something she can never lose, and we hope that it will continue to increase until the end of time.”248 The Church which Jesus has established was to be recognized by its unity. He himself gave this command and reasons for that, in his speeches. He pointed that the kingdom divided against itself cannot survive (cf. Mt 12:25,
Mk 3:25, Lk 11:17). To Peter Jesus said “I will build my Church” (Mt 16:18) using a singular form for the Church. Then Christ speaks of one flock and one shepherd (cf. Jn
10:16).249
Just before the Passion of Jesus Christ, he himself was praying for the unity among his followers. “May they all be one, just as, Father, you are in me and I am in you, so that
246

E. VIGANÒ, Mary is renewing the Salesian Family of Don Bosco, in Acts of the General Council of the
Salesian Society of St John Bosco, N. 289, Rome Tipolitografia Istituto Salesiano Pio XI, 1978, pp 10-11.
247

LEMOYNE, The Biographical Memoirs of Saint John Bosco, vol. IX, p. 127.

248

UR 4§3.

249

Cf. HAFFNER, Mystery of the Church, p. 72.

77

they also may be in us, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me” (Jn 178:21). It is necessary to be united not only with God but with the others as well. This is the starting point of giving the witness to the whole world.
The early Church Fathers understood this inner spiritual unity of the Church in a common confession of faith by the entire body of this Church, in participation in the same sacraments and submission to the same canons and ecclesiastical decrees.250 Unfortunately the history shows that this unity was very difficult to obtain among Christians.
Even in the beginnings of this one and only Church of God there arose certain rifts (cf.
1Cor 11:18-19; Gal 1:6-9; 1Jn 2:18-19) which the Apostle strongly condemned (cf. 1Cor
1:11). But in subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions made their appearance and quite large communities came to be separated from full communion with the Catholic
Church - for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame.251

Already in the year 431 the first big division took place. It was prompted by the condemnation by the Council of Ephesus of the heresy of Nestorius who did not accept the
Virgin Mary to be called the Mother of God – Theotokos, but only as Mother of Christ. Soon after another separation took place during the Council of Chalcedon (451) when the Old
Oriental Churches refuse to accept the teaching of this Council concerning the two natures of
Jesus Christ. After that, in 1054, the Great Schism took place between Rome and
Constantinople and led to the separation between the Roman Catholic Church (West) and
Eastern Orthodox Church (East). Another breaking of the unity in the Church took place during the time of Reformation in the XVI century. From this separation were formed
Churches which are called Protestants.252
Despite those divisions, the Catholic Church always seeks the unity. The desire to recover the unity of all Christians is a gift of Christ and a call of the Holy Spirit. 253 To obtain this call, the Second Vatican Council points certain things that are necessary: the renewal of the Church, conversion of heart, prayer in common, fraternal knowledge of each other, ecumenical formation, and dialogue among theologians and collaboration among
Christians.254
Because of its ecclesial character devotion to the Blessed Virgin reflects the preoccupations of the Church herself. Among these especially in our day is her anxiety
250

Cf. HAFFNER, Mystery of the Church, p. 73.

251

UR 3.

252

Cf. HAFFNER, Mystery of the Church, pp. 83-88.

253

Cf. UR 1.

254

Cf. UR 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

78

for the reestablishment of Christian unity. In this way devotion to the Mother of the Lord is in accord with the deep desires and aims of the ecumenical movement, that is, it acquires an ecumenical aspect.255

In those last years there seems to be a friendly relationship between Catholics and members of other Christian Churches. But in the history, even frankly recently, the matter concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary caused acrimonious differences between those
Churches. The dialogues from both sides have brought Christians to consider the difficulties of doctrine about the devotion to Mary openly and with charity. But the no one expects that the sudden break down of all the barriers will take place.256
All Christians share a basic reverence for Mary. It is based on the acceptance of the
Gospel, where Mary is presented not only as the Mother of Jesus, but also as the handmaid of the Lord, woman of faith, model of prayer, servant of the Spirit. The teaching of the first
Councils is also a base for the unity. The phrase “born of the Virgin Mary” was already used in the second century to defend Jesus’ humanity and later at Ephesus in 431 A.D., was defined giving Mary the title Theotokos.257 Mary, being the Mother of the Eternal Son of
God, and being accepted under this title, is also a Mother of all Christians. Therefore she can be rightly called also a Mother of unity among Christians.
Orientalium Ecclesiarum of the Second Vatican Council encourages to invoke
Mary’s help in the process towards unity: “all Christians, Eastern and Western, are strongly urged to pray to God daily with fervor and constancy in order that, by the help of God’s most holy Mother, all may be one.”258 This appeal is based on the fact that is accepted by all, namely that Mary is really the Mother of God and has the power to intercede for all those who seek her help.
The Second Vatican Council teaches the appreciation for the heritage of the Christian
East.
Nor must we underestimate the fact that the basic dogmas of the Christian faith concerning the Trinity and the Word of God made flesh from the Virgin Mary were defined in Ecumenical Councils held in the East. To preserve this faith, these Churches have suffered, and still suffer much.259

255

CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS, Behold your Mother; Woman of Faith, n. 32.

256

Cf. CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS, Behold your Mother; Woman of Faith, n. 101.

257

Cf. CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS, Behold your Mother; Woman of Faith, n. 106.

258

OE 30.

259

UR 14.

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Also in this document the Fathers of the Council speak of the common faith in Mary as the
Mother of God. They point out that this teaching is accepted by both East and West. The
Eastern Church had its big role in defining those truths because they were defined during the
Councils help precisely in the East.
In the following paragraph of the same document, two expressions confirm the unity of the Churches of the East and West in regard to the two early Marian teachings: Mother of
God (Theotokos) and ever Virgin. This time it is centered on the liturgy:
In this liturgical worship, the Eastern Christians pay high tribute, in beautiful hymns of praise, to Mary ever Virgin, whom the ecumenical Synod of Ephesus solemnly proclaimed to be the holy Mother of God in order that Christ might be truly and properly acknowledged as Son of God and Son of Man, according to the scriptures.260

The Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium puts Mary’s faith as an example for the
Church, who “strives energetically and constantly to bring all humanity... back to Christ its
Head and in the unity of his Spirit.”261 The same faith of Mary can be taken as an example for all Christians and in this way they all will be able to go together in the “pilgrimage of faith”. And because Mary is the model of this pilgrimage, she is the one who will lead them to the unity.262
Christians who belong to different Churches have experienced a complex history.
There were times of peace but also of persecutions, even to the point of bloodshed. But despite of that, they always desired for Christian commitment and apostolic activity. They all wanted to be faithful to Jesus Christ. It was an authentic pilgrimage of faith in a specific time and place. Nevertheless, during this time of different difficulties, Eastern Christians have always full trust in the help of the Mother of Christ.263 In the difficult moments of their troubled Christian existence, “they have taken refuge under her protection.”264 That is why
Mary has a unique place in the worship of the Oriental Churches with an incomparable abundance of feasts and hymns.265
The presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary as an Icon can also be a sign on the way toward unity. Her images have a place of honor in churches and houses. She is presented in
260

UR 15.

261

LG 13.

262

Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Mater, n. 30.

263

Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Mater, n. 31.

264

LG 66.

265

Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Mater, n. 31.

80

many different ways: as Mother of God, as one praying, as protectress, as the merciful
Virgin. Usually Mary is presented together with child Jesus in her arms. Those Icons are images which give witness to the faith and prayer of those Christians. They trust in Mary’s presence, help and protection.266
Mary, the Mother of God, can be seen as a bridge. In venerating her with a particular love, Catholics unite themselves with their brothers and sisters of the Orthodox Churches.
There the devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary is expressed in a wonderful way through strong doctrine and many lyrics in her honor. The unity that is acquired between Catholics and Anglicans, whose classical theologians have already drawn attention to the undisputable scriptural basis for devotion to Mary and those more recent theologians speaks of her importance in the life of every Christian faithful.267
The document Mary, Grace and Hope in Christ, issued by Anglican-Roman Catholic
International Commission in 2004, is the best example of the recent agreements on the topic of Mary between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church. As the conclussion of it, the members of the members of the Commission wrote: that any interpretation of the role of Mary must not obscure the unique mediation of
Christ; that any consideration of Mary must be linked with the doctrines of Christ and the
Church; that we recognize the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Theotókos, the mother of God incarnate, and so observe her festivals and accord her honor among the saints; that Mary was prepared by grace to be the mother of our Redeemer, by whom she herself was redeemed and received into glory; that we recognize Mary as a model of holiness, faith and obedience for all Christians; and that Mary can be seen as a prophetic figure of the
Church.268

Those statements proof that there is a common belief of both Anglicans and Roman Catholics in the unique role of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and this belief is based on the Scripture.269
As in every other aspect of the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, she is a way, a mean that shows the true and only goal of every Christians: the glory and honor given to God and

266

Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Mater, n. 33.

267

Cf. PAUL VI, Marialis Cultus, n. 32.

268

ANGLICAN-ROMAN CATHOLIC INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION, Mary, Grace and Hope in Christ, 2004, n. 76, quotation drawn from The
Holy
See
–
Roman
Curia,
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/angl-commdocs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20050516_mary-grace-hope-christ_en.html, accessed 14 February 2013.
269
ANGLICAN-ROMAN CATHOLIC INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION, Mary, Grace and Hope in Christ, 2004,
Preface by the Co-Chairmen.

81

his Son Jesus Christ. “The Son should be duly known, loved and glorified... when the Mother is honored.”270
Blessed John Paul II saw in Mary the real hope in every aspect.
The ‘Kingdom’ of Jesus was not as might have been imagined. It began in that hour, and of this ‘Kingdom’ there will be no end. Thus you remain in the midst of the disciples as their Mother, as the Mother of hope. Holy Mary, Mother of God, our Mother, teach us to believe, to hope, to love with you. Show us the way to his Kingdom! Star of the Sea, shine upon us and guide us on our way!271

270

LG 66.

271

BENEDICT XVI, Spe Salvi, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2008, n. 50.

82

CONCLUSION
As I conclude my synthesis I would like to summarize in short what I have written in the preceding chapters. As I went through my paper work, I realized the presence of the exemplary figure of our Lady. Certainly it is important for us to know the main identity and role that our Blessed Mother played in the history of salvation. The Loving God had a special plan for Mary from the very beginning. She has been chosen by Him to receive His only Son in her womb. Mary willingly cooperated with the Father’s plan to bring His Son into the world as a man. Finally we see the Lord our Savior who took human flesh and dwelt among us. In the first chapter I have presented the role that the Blessed Virgin Mary has in the saving plan of God. Everything that God has created was good. He created the whole universe out of his love, and crowned it with the creation of man, Adam and Eve, in His own image. But they were not faithful to God and disobeyed His commandment. But even after the fall God was with them, He has never abandon humanity. Just after the fall God promised to deliver man from sin. In Gen 3:15 He points the role of “a woman” in this deliverance. Her offspring will destroy the power of evil. This “woman” is to be the Virgin Mary who will give birth to the Son of God. He will be the one, the offspring of a woman, who will deliver the whole human race from the slavery of sin. In order to do this, the Son of God had to become man. Mary willingly accepted God’s proposal, and gave birth to Jesus Christ. He was born of a woman and under the law, as Gal 4:4-6 tells us. The role of the Virgin Mary was first of all to accept in full freedom the call of God to become the Mother of His Son. By obedience, Mary fulfilled the mission of the woman that was foretold in the
Protoevangelium.
In the second chapter I focused on the Blessed Virgin Mary and her place in the life of Jesus, her Son. First of all it is necessary to point and even more to explain the meaning of the virginal birth of the Son of God. Mary has conceived the Eternal Word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. There was not a sexual relationship with a man. Mary has conceived as a virgin, gave birth as a virgin and remained a virgin after that. But her mission did not finish with bringing Christ into the world. She was the one, who was with him, who followed him and who was the first and the most faithful disciple of her Son. She took care of Jesus when he was young. She was with him during his public ministry and remained with him even at the foot of the cross when he was dying. She kept his words in her heart and put
83

them into practice. By bringing the Savior into the world, by taking care of him, by being with him and most of all by sharing his sorrows and pains, Mary was totally cooperating in
Jesus’ redemptive actions. She was always present with her Son, even till the point of his death, burial and finally his glorious resurrection.
The third chapter is enlightens the presence of Mary in the primitive Church. While dying on the cross, Jesus himself gave to Mary his Beloved Disciple as her son, and in this way he gave her all of the whole humanity as her children. So his will is that we accept Mary as Our Mother. Mary again obeyed the will of God and started immediately to practice her new mission. This we can see in the Upper Room when she was present at the moment of the birth of the Church. She was there united with the disciples in prayers, asking for the gift of the Holy Spirit. After this important event the Church started to spread, just as Jesus has commanded before ascending to Heaven. After the descent of the Holy Spirit, there is no more indication about Mary in the Bible. The Tradition of the Church says that at the end of her earthly life, Mary was assumed with her body and soul into heaven. This was a unique grace that Mary has received from God, just as earlier she has received the grace of her
Immaculate Conception. Both graces have been recognized by the Church as very important for the faithful and eventually became Dogmas of the Faith.
In the fourth chapter I have presented the place that has been given to Mary in the
Catholic Liturgy. First of all I have tried to look at this theme from the historical point of view. Already in the Bible there are some direct and explicit verses that show the importance of Mary. When the Mother of God went to her cousin Elisabeth she herself proclaimed, inspired by the Holy Spirit this beautiful canticle Magnificat, where she puts the words that all generations will call her blessed because it was God who has raised her to the highest levels of humanity. In the first centuries there are no many indications about the cult of Mary.
There has been a strong tradition of her assumption into heaven. Then different heresies concerning Christ gave way to a better understanding of Mary’s importance as the Virgin and
Mother of God. She was given this special veneration not only in the popular piety but also in the Liturgical Celebrations. Many hymns and special prayers were composed in her honor.
The veneration of Mary was more and more spread and she has this unique place in the
Liturgy even to this day. There are many days during the year where different feasts or memorials of Mary are kept. After the Second Vatican Council, a special book was prepared.
This book consists of several votive Masses in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But Mary is honored not only in the Liturgy. There is a strong and deep devotion to Our Blessed
Mother among the common people. There are many different ways whereby Mary is
84

venerated in the popular piety, just to mention the Rosary, Angelus, Litanies, Medals, special consecrations and many others. All this helps the faithful to deepen their faith and come closer to God: through Mary to Jesus.
The final, fifth chapter is dedicated to the place of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the
Christian Spiritual life. Being the Mother of Jesus, she has a special relation towards God.
She is a perfect model for all the faithful. She lived her life in a full communion with God.
She is our model in fulfilling God’s will. When the angel came to announce the news from
God, Mary immediately accepted this task as the servant of the Lord. Through her entire life she was obeying God by taking care of His Only Son, by listening and obeying his commands and by putting them into practice. Mary has dedicated her life to Christ. She lived only for Jesus and after his death and resurrection, she still remained faithful to his words.
She was in constant union with her Son. But she is also a perfect model in living in the Spirit.
From the very first moment of her life she was given this gift. The Holy Spirit prepared her to be Theotokos. During the Annunciation the Holy Spirit came down and overshadowed her.
She also stayed together with the apostles in the Upper Room praying for the gifts of this
Spirit. She was constantly aware of the work of the Spirit in her and she shared this Spirit with the others. By doing this, she might be considered to be the mother of the unity between
Christian East and West. She is also venerated by many Churches not yet in full communion with Rome. They all confess to believe in what is written about her in the Scriptures: that she is the Virgin Mother of the Son of God. Since there are common beliefs and venerations, she might be like a bridge that one day will connect and unite the separated Christian Churches.
I consider myself to be honored to have this opportunity to research and to write this thesis. It helps me not only in knowing more about Mary from the historical or even exegetical point of view. The most important aspect of this research is the pastoral and spiritual dimension. I really felt Mary’s presence and her support while reading and writing about her but also during my preparation towards priesthood. I strongly believe that Mary will help me to become a worthy servant of her Son and to share my experiences with the others. 85

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