May 29 2008
May With Mary Day 29 Henri Cardinal De Lubac
In the Church’s tradition the same biblical symbols are applied, either in turn or simultaneously, with one and the same ever-increasing profusion , the the Church and Our Lady. Both are the New Eve; Paradise; the tree of Paradise, whose fruit is Christ, the great tree seen in the dream by Nebuchodonosor, planted in the center of the earth. Both are the Ark of the Covenant, Jacob’s Ladder, the Gate of Heaven, the House built on the mountaintop, the fleece of Gideon, the Tabernacle of the Highest, the throne of Solomon, the impregnable fortress. Both are the City of God, the mysterious City of which the Psalmist sang; the valiant woman of the Book of Proverbs, the Bride arrayed for her husband, the woman who is the foe of the serpent, and the great sign in heaven described in the Apocalypse-the woman clothed with the sun and victorious over the dragon. Both are-after Christ- the dwelling place place of wisdom, even wisdom herself; both are “a new world” and “a prodigious creation”; both rest in the shadow of Christ. There is in all of this something much more than a case of parallelism or the alternating use of ambivalent symbols. As far as the Christian mind is concerned, Mary is the “ideal figure of the Church”, the “sacrament” of it, and “the mirror in which the whole Church is reflected”. Everywhere the Church finds in her its type and model, its point of origin and perfection: “The form of our mother the Church is according to the form of His mother”.-excerpted from THE SPLENDOUR OF THE CHURCH 241-242
