The Divine Lamp

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The Son of God is the first-born of many brothers. Although by nature he is the only-begotten, by grace he has joined many to himself and made them one with him. For to those who receive him he has given the power to become the sons of God.

He became the Son of man and made many men sons of God, uniting them to himself by his love and power, so that they became as one. In themselves they are many by reason of their human descent, but in him they are one by divine rebirth.

The whole Christ and the unique Christ – the body and the head – are one: one because born of the same God in heaven, and of the same mother on earth. They are many sons, yet one son. Head and members are one son, yet many sons; in the same way, Mary and the Church are one mother, yet more than one mother; one virgin, yet more than one virgin.

Both are mothers, both are virgins. Each conceives of the same Spirit, without concupiscence. Each gives birth to a child of God the Father, without sin. Without any sin, Mary gave birth to Christ the head for the sake of his body. By the forgiveness of every sin, the Church gave birth to the body, for the sake of its head. Each is Christ’s mother, but neither gives birth to the whole Christ without the cooperation of the other.

In the inspired Scriptures, what is said in a universal sense of the virgin mother, the Church, is understood in an individual sense of the Virgin Mary, and what is said in a particular sense of the virgin mother Mary is rightly understood in a general sense of the virgin mother, the Church. When either is spoken of, the meaning can be understood of both, almost without qualification.

In a way, every Christian is also believed to be a bride of God’s Word, a mother of Christ, his daughter and sister, at once virginal and fruitful. These words are used in a universal sense of the Church, in a special sense of Mary, in a particular sense of the individual Christian. They are used by God’s Wisdom in person, the Word of the Father.

This is why Scripture says: I will dwell in the inheritance of the Lord. The Lord’s inheritance is, in a general sense, the Church; in a special sense, Mary; in an individual sense, the Christian.
Christ dwelt for nine months in the tabernacle of Mary’s womb. He dwells until the end of the ages in the tabernacle of the Church’s faith. He will dwell for ever in the knowledge and love of each faithful soul.

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The angel Gabriel had announced the news of something that was as yet hidden and so, to buttress the Virgin Mary’s faith by means of a real example, he told her also that an old and sterile woman had conceived, showing that everything that God willed was possible to God.

When Mary heard this she did not disbelieve the prophecy, she was not uncertain of the message, she did not doubt the example: but happy because of the promise that had been given, eager to fulfil her duty as a cousin, hurried by her joy, she went up into the hill country.

Where could she hurry to except to the hills, filled with God as she was? The grace of the Holy Spirit does not admit of delays. And Mary’s arrival and the presence of her Son quickly show their effects: As soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting her child leapt in her womb and she was filled with the Holy Spirit.

See the careful distinction in the choice of words. Elizabeth was the first to hear the voice but her son John was the first to feel the effects of grace. She heard as one hears in the natural course of things; he leapt because of the mystery that was there. She sensed the coming of Mary, he the coming of the Lord — the woman knew the woman, the child knew the child. The women speak of grace while inside them grace works on their babies. And by a double miracle the women prophesy under the inspiration of their unborn children.

The infant leapt and the mother was filled with the Spirit. The mother was not filled before her son: her son was filled with the Holy Spirit and in turn filled his mother. John leapt and so did Mary’s spirit. John leapt and filled Elizabeth with the Spirit; but we know that Mary was not filled but her spirit rejoiced. For the Incomprehensible was working incomprehensibly within his mother. Elizabeth had been filled with the Spirit after she conceived, but Mary before, at the moment the angel had come. “Blessed are you,” said Elizabeth, “who believed”.

You too, my people, are blessed, you who have heard and who believe. Every soul that believes — that soul both conceives and gives birth to the Word of God and recognises his works.

Let the soul of Mary be in each one of you, to proclaim the greatness of the Lord. Let the spirit of Mary be in each one of you, to rejoice in God. According to the flesh only one woman can be the mother of Christ but in the world of faith Christ is the fruit of all of us. For every soul can receive the Word of God if only it is pure and preserves itself in chastity and modesty.

The soul that has been able to reach this state proclaims the greatness of the Lord just as Mary did and rejoices in God its saviour just like her.

The Lord’s greatness is proclaimed, as you have read elsewhere, where it says Join me in magnifying the Lord. This does not mean that anything can be added to the Lord’s greatness by human words, but that he is magnified in us. Christ is the image of God and so any good or religious act that a soul performs magnifies that image of God in that soul, the God in whose likeness the soul itself was made. And thus the soul itself has some share in his greatness and is ennobled.

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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

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We must avoid relegating Mary’s maternity to the sphere of mere biology…If, therefore, Christ, and ecclesia are the hermeneutical center of the scriptural narration of the history of God’s saving dealings with man, then and only then is the placed fixed where Mary’s motherhood becomes theologically significant as the ultimate personal concretization of the Church.  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.  Luke suggests this in harmonizing 1:45 (”blessed is she who believed”) and 11:28 (”blessed…are those who hear the word of God and keep it”).  We can therefore say that the affirmation of Mary’s motherhood and the affirmation of her representation of the Church are related as factum and mysterium facti, as the fact and the sense that gives the fact its meaning.  The two things are inseparable: the fact without its sense would be empty.  Mariology cannot be developed from the naked fact, but only from the fact as it is understood in the hermeneutics of faith.  In consequence, Mariology can never be purely mariological.  Rather, it stands within the totality of the basic Christ-Church structure and is the most concrete expression of its inner coherence.

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Blessed Lady, sky and stars, earth and rivers, day and night, everything that is subject to the power or use of man, rejoice that through you they are in some sense restored to their lost beauty and are endowed with inexpressible new grace. All creatures were dead, as it were, useless for men or for the praise of God who made them. The world, contrary to its true destiny, was corrupted and tainted by the acts of men who served idols. Now all creation has been restored to life and rejoices that it is controlled and given splendor by men who believe in God.

The universe rejoices with new and indefinable loveliness. Not only does it feel the unseen presence of God Himself, its Creator, it sees Him openly, working and making it holy. These great blessings spring from the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb.

Through the fullness of grace that was given to you, dead things rejoice in their freedom, and those in heaven are glad to be made new. Through the Son Who was the glorious fruit of your virgin womb, just souls who died before His life-giving death rejoice as they are freed from captivity, and the angels are glad at the restoration of their shattered domain.

Lady, full and overflowing with grace, all creation receives new life from your abundance. Virgin, blessed above all creatures, through your blessing all creation is blessed, not only creation from its Creator, but the Creator Himself has been blessed by creation.

To Mary God gave His only-begotten Son, Whom He loved as Himself. Through Mary God made Himself a Son, not different but the same, by nature Son of God and Son of Mary. The whole universe was created by God, and God was born of Mary. God created all things, and Mary gave birth to God. The God Who made all things gave Himself form through Mary, and thus He made His own creation. He Who could create all things from nothing would not remake His ruined creation without Mary.

God, then, is the Father of the created world and Mary is the mother of the re-created world. God is the Father by Whom all things were given life, and Mary the mother through whom all things were given new life. For God begot the Son, through Whom all things were made, and Mary gave birth to Him as the Savior of the world. Without God’s Son, nothing could exist; without Mary’s Son, nothing could be redeemed.

Truly the Lord is with you, to whom the Lord granted that all nature should owe as much to you as to Himself. St Anselm

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Mary proclaims the greatness of the Lord working in her

“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior. With these words Mary first acknowledges the special gifts she has been given. Then she recalls God’s universal favors, bestowed unceasingly on the human race. When a man devotes all his thoughts to the praise and service of the Lord, he proclaims God’s greatness. His observance of God’s commands, moreover, shows that he has God’s power and greatness always at heart.

His spirit rejoices in God his savior and delights in the mere recollection of his creator who gives him hope for eternal salvation. These words are often for all Gods creations, but especially for the Mother of God. She alone was chosen, and she burned with spiritual love for the son she so joyously conceived. Above all other saints, she alone could truly rejoice in Jesus, her savior, for she knew that he who was the source of eternal salvation would be born in time in her body, in one person both her own son and her Lord.

For the Almighty, has done great things for me, and holy is his name. Mary attributes nothing to her own merits. She refers all her greatness to the gift of the one whose essence is power and whose nature is greatness, for he fills with greatness and strength the small and the weak who believe in him.

She did well to add: and holy is his name, to warn those who heard, and indeed all who would receive his words, that they must believe and call upon his name. For they too could share in everlasting holiness and true salvation according to the words of the prophet: and it will come to pass, that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. This is the name she spoke of earlier: and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.

Therefore it is an excellent and fruitful custom of holy Church that we should sing Mary’s hymn at the time of evening prayer. By meditating upon the incarnation, our devotion is kindled, and by remembering the example of God’s Mother, we are encouraged to lead a life of virtue. Such virtues are best achieved in the evening. We are weary after the day’s work and worn out by our distractions. The time for rest is near, and our minds are ready for contemplation.“

From a homily by Saint Bede the Venerable, priest (Lib. 1, 4: CCL 122, 25-26. 30)

Prayer

Eternal Father,
you inspired the Virgin Mary, mother of your Son,
to visit Elizabeth and assist her in her need.
Keep us open to the working of your Spirit,
and with Mary may we praise you for ever.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Source

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Mary, a disciple of Christ

“But look here, my brothers and sisters, concentrate more, I beg you, on what follows, concentrate more on what Christ the Lord said as he stretched out his hand over his disciples: This is my mother and these are my brothers; and whoever does the will of my Father who sent me, that person is a brother to me and a sister and a mother (Matthew 12:49-50). Didn’t the Virgin Mary do the will of the Father? I mean, she believed by faith, she conceived by faith, she was chosen to be the one from whom salvation in the very midst of the human race would be born for us, she was created by Christ before Christ was created in her. Yes, of course, holy Mary did the will of the Father. And therefore it means more for Mary to have been a disciple of Christ than to have been the mother of Christ. It means more for her, an altogether greater blessing, to have been Christ’s disciple than to have been Christ’s mother. That is why Mary was blessed, because even before she gave him birth, she bore her teacher in her womb.

Just see if it isn’t as I say. While the Lord was passing by, performing divine miracles, with the crowds following him, a woman said: Fortunate is the womb that bore you. And how did the Lord answer, to show that good fortune is not really to be sought in mere family ties? Rather blessed are those who hear the word of God and keepit (Luke 11:27-28). So that is why Mary, too, is blessed, because she heard the word of God and kept it. She kept truth safe in her mind even better than she kept flesh safe in her womb. Christ is truth, Christ is flesh; Christ as truth was in Mary’s mind, Christ as flesh in Mary’s womb; that which is in the mind is greater than what is carried in the womb.

Mary is holy, Mary is blessed, but the Church is something better than the Virgin Mary. Why? Because Mary is part of the Church, a holy member, a quite exceptional member, the supremely wonderful member, but still a member of the whole body. That being so, it follows that the body is something greater than the member. The Lord is the head, and the whole Christ is head and body. How shall I put it? We have a divine head, we have God as our head.“ St Augustine, from Sermon 72.

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Mary is the great believer who humbly offered herself to God as an empty vessel for him to use in his mysterious plan. She did not try to live by human calculations but put herself completely at the disposal of God’s mysterious,incomprehensible design. All she wanted to be was the instrument and servant of the Word. Therein lies her true fame: that she remained a true believer despite the darkness and all the inexplicable demands God made on her. She believed even in the face of incomprehensible facts…Today God is still mysterious; indeed he seems to have a special kind of obscurity in store for each person’s life. But could he render any life as dark and incomprehensible as he did Mary’s? This is the real reason for her greatness and her being called blessed: She is the great believer. Consequently she is represented to us not as a distant haloed figure but forever as the young girl who entered Elizabeth’s home with the shining light of mystery on her brow and surrounded by the radiance of purity and hope. But, like Elizabeth, Mary cannot remain silent at this moment. It is said that, even today, under the influence of a great joy Arabian women will improvise a song in which they pour forth the hidden poetry a simple heart composes when moved by a powerful joy. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in my savior.” Mary deflects Elizabeth’s praises from herself to God the Lord. It is he who deserves all the praise. In so acting, Mary has shown the way of all future praise of herself; it is to be praise of God as he is mirrored in his graciousness to human beings. -Pope Benedict XVI, BENEDICTUS, DAY BY DAY WITH POPE BENEDICT XVI. Originally published in DOGMA AND PREACHING. Both excellent books!

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23. Therefore, venerable Brothers, as we consider the piety that the liturgical Tradition of the universal Church and the renewed Roman Rite expresses towards the holy Mother of God, and as we remember that the liturgy through its pre-eminent value as worship constitutes the golden norm for Christian piety, and finally as we observe how the Church when she celebrates the sacred mysteries assumes an attitude of faith and love similar to that of the Virgin, we realize the rightness of the exhortation that the Second Vatican Council addresses to all the children of the Church, namely “that the cult, especially the liturgical cult, of the Blessed Virgin be generously fostered.”(66) This is an exhortation that we would like to see accepted everywhere without reservation and put into zealous practice. Pope Paul VI, Marialis Cultus (On Devotion to Mary)

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“The woman whom the Lord has prepared for my Master’s Son” (24:44).  Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the center of creation; according to St Paul, “the first-born of all creatures” (Colossians 1:15).  All things were made by Him, and in His image, and in order to lead up to Him; He is therefore the first conceived in the ideas of God.  All that concerns Him is important; every such thing was forseen and decreed from eternity.  Adam, Abraham, David, the prophets, the people of Israel, were great, solely because of Him who was to spring from that stock.  St John the Baptist, who announced Him and prepared the way before His face, was sanctified from his mother’s womb, and declared to be the greatest of men.  There was one who stood nearer to the Messiah than David, who prepared His way more than St John, viz., the woman who bore to him the closest of all possible relations, that of mother.  Wonderful were the privileges of the Magi, the shepherds, the Apostles; vastly more so were those of Mary.  She was greater and holier, and therefore more efficiently predestinated than any other of the human race after her Child.  Pay her the homage and love due to her singular and august position.

“The Most High has sanctified His own tabernacle; God is in the midst thereof” (Psalm 45:5-6).  Everyone of the elect is chosen and predestined by God in Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4).  Those who have a special function in the service of God are ordained to it and prepared for it.  Our Lord is the first, and He “was predestined Son of God in power” (Romans 1:4).  Next standing our beyond all the rest of mankind in the order of God’s predestination, is the Blessed Virgin.  No other one of the human race was necessary for the incarnation.  Not one of us would be missed had we not come into existence.  But such a mother was necessary in order that the Son of God should be made flesh.  The Virgin Mother is the correlative of God made man.  Her relation to Him joins her necessarily with Him in the divine disposition of things.  She is predestined in the predestination of  her child.  She is therefore a special object of divine care, and is, in an eminent degree, the daughter of the Eternal Father.  The Lord was with her in a unique manner, and therefore she was decreed to be full of grace and blessed among women (Luke 1:28).  Endeavour to correspond to your predestination as the Blessed Virgin did to hers.

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