More on Mary: Some Quotes and a Poem

With apologies in advance to all the theologians, I just want to add another thought from a non-theologian trying to make sense of Mariology in general, and, especially today, of the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.  I'm currently trying to work through a collection of writings by Pope Benedict XVI and von Balthasar gathered in Mary:  Church at the Source for a reading group formed out of last June's meeting of Catholic legal scholars at Fordham.  The richness and depth of the ideas suggested by these readings is overwhelming.  Quoting Newman:  "When once we have mastered the idea that Mary bore, suckled, and handled the Eternal in the form of a child, what limit is conceivable to the rush and flood of thoughts which such a doctrine involves?"  I probably should have started with Michael S.'s recommendation, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Mary of Nazareth, but I didn't...

What is emerging from my reading, though, is the emphasis that both Benedict and von Balthasar place on the theological significance of Mary's "Yes" to God (and the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception) for both Christology and ecclesiology.  The probably much more accessible essays offered by Rob and Rick both made the same point about the significance of the Immaculate Conception that Benedict makes in the book I'm reading: 

Without this free consent on Mary's part, God cannot become man.  To be sure, Mary's Yes is wholly grace.  The dogma of Mary's freedom from original sin is at bottom meant solely to show that it is not a human being who sets the redemption in motion by her power; rather, her Yes is contained wholly within the primacy and priority of divine love, which already embraces her before she is born.  "All is grace."  Yet grace does not cancel freedom;  it creates it.  The entire mystery of redemption is present in this narrative and becomes concentrated in the figure of the Virgin Mary:  "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word" (Lk 1:30).

Von Balthasar addresses the Christological significance of the Doctrine: 

As Christ's mother, Mary seems to enjoy a prius that no one else can equal.  But let us not forget that she got this prius, not from her physiological motherhood taken in isolation, but from her total personal attitude of faith as perfect readiness to serve.  And where does she get this faith if not from the grace that God communicates to the world thorugh the work of Jesus Christ?  Mary is, then, as much redeemed as everyone else is, only in a special way grounded in her mission to become the Mother of Jesus.  She is 'pre-redeemed' so that she can give birth to the Redeemer.

And Benedict addresses its ecclesiological significance:

At the moment when she pronounces her Yes, Mary is Israel in person; she is the Church in person and as a person.  She is the personal concretization of the Church because her Fiat makes her the bodily Mother of the Lord.  But this biological fact is a theological reality, because it realizes the deepest spiritual content of the covenant that God intended to make with Israel.

And, in a wonderful essay on the encyclical Redemptoris Mater, Benedict expands on the significance of Mary's maternity to the birth of the Church:

"...Mary's maternity is not simply a uniquely occuring biological event;  . . . she was and, therefore, also remains a mother with her whole person.  This becomes concrete on the day of Pentecost, at the moment of the Church's birth from the Holy Spirit:  Mary is in the midst of the praying community that becomes the Church thanks to the coming of the Spirit.  The correspondence between Jesus' Incarnation by the power of the Spirit in Nazareth and the birth of the Church at Pentecost is unmistakable.  'The person who unites the two moments is Mary."

So many quotes (I apologize), but the point I am trying to make is simple -- the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is, I think, as significant for making sense of the possibility of the birth of the Church as it is for making sense of the possibility of the birth of Jesus.

Theologians are probably cringing at the mash I'm making of this, so let me try to atone by sharing a favorite poem about Mary, by Rainer Maria Rilke.  Yes, I know, its title refers to a different Marian feast day, but it's still relevant (and beautiful).

The Annunciation

Not the angel entering frightened her

(take note of this).  However little others

startled at a sunbeam or the moon at night

peering into their room, she was

filled with indignation

at the form in which the angel

came; she scarcely knew

that such a sojourn for angels required effort.

(Oh, if we knew how pure she was.

Did not a hind lying in a forest once glimpse her, unable to take its eyes off her

so that, without pairing, a unicorn was conceived,

a creature made of light, the purest of creatures.)

Not his entering, but that he,

an angel with a young man's face,

bent closely down to her; that his gaze

and her raised eyes collided

as if suddenly outside all were empty,

and what millions saw, did, carried,

cramped into the two of them: just she and he;

looking and looked at, eye and feast for the eyes

nowhere but here at this point:  behold,

this frightens.  And they were both frightened.

Then the Angel sang his song.

Lisa