To the offering of Christ are united not only the
members still here on earth, but also those already in the glory of heaven.
In communion with and commemorating the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the saints,
the Church offers the Eucharistic sacrifice. In the Eucharist the Church is as
it were at the foot of the cross with Mary, united with the offering and
intercession of Christ (Catechism of the Catholic Church: 1370).
The
Blessed Virgin Mary is intimately united both to Christ and to the Church and
is inseparable from both. She, therefore, is united in that which constitutes
the very essence of the liturgy: the sacramental celebration of Salvation for
the glory of God and the sanctification of man. Mary is present at the
liturgical action because she was present at the salvific event.
She
is next to every baptismal font where the members of the Mystical Body are born
to the divine life, in faith and in the Holy Spirit, since it was through faith
and the power of the Spirit that their divine Head, Christ, was conceived. She
is found next to each altar where the memorial of the Passion and Resurrection
is celebrated since she was present, adhering with all her being to the plan of
the Father, in the historical-salvific fact of the Death of Christ. She is
close to every cenacle where, through the laying on of hands and the holy
anointing, the Spirit is granted to the faithful, since with Peter and the
other Apostles, with the nascent Church, she was present in the Pentecostal effusion
of the Spirit. With Christ, the High Priest, the Church, the liturgical community, Mary is incessantly united with
both, Christ and the Church, in the saving
event and in the liturgical memorial.
So St. John Paul II said: “In the celebration of the
annual cycle of the mysteries of Christ, the holy Church venerates with special
love the blessed Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, united to her with an
indissoluble bond to the saving work of her Son”.
Mary in the liturgy: she is "united with an
indissoluble bond to the salvific work of her Son". It is an expression
pregnant with meaning that deserves a quiet pause of contemplation and
reflection in the light of the theology of the Sacrosanctum Concílium. The text offers a unique appreciation of
the association of Mary to the Mystery of the Incarnation, as a principle and
foundation of the totality of her association with the saving Economy.
Following the thread of the words of the Pope, it can be said that the one who
participated in the historical mysteries of his Son intérfuit mystériis is now present in the mysteries made present in
the liturgical memorial adest in
mystériis.
Hence,
the presence of Mary in the saving events of the life of Jesus are the
presuppositions for understanding the presence of Mary in the mysteries of the
celebrated historical events of the life of her Son, renewed in the liturgy.
The mysterious presence of Mary in the liturgy depends on the fact that Christ
himself wanted to assume as the constituent element of his salvific action (the
theandric act) the action of the Virgin (purely human act). In this case, the
act of the Virgin, insofar as assumed by the Word and constitutively inserted
in her salvific action, is, therefore, subsistent in Him and, hence,
susceptible of being mysteriously re-presented in the liturgical celebration.
This hypothesis is based on a double theological intuition.
A)
The
first is built on the basis that the saving acts of Christ have been assumed to
glory; carried out in history, they remain alive and effective meta-history. It
is a theological argument collected in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
"In the Liturgy of the Church, Christ means and performs mainly his
paschal mystery. During his earthly life Jesus announced with his teaching and
anticipated with his acts the paschal mystery. When his time came (cf. Jn 13,
1; 17, 1), he experienced the only event in history that does not just happen:
Jesus dies, is buried, rises from the dead and sits on the right hand of the
Father "once for all "(Rm 6, 10; Hb 7, 27; 9, 12). It is a real
event, it happened in our history, but absolutely unique: all other events
happen once, and then pass and are absorbed by the past. The paschal mystery of
Christ, on the contrary, cannot remain only in the past, because by his death
he destroyed death, and all that Christ is and all that he did and suffered for
men participates in divine eternity and dominates thus all times and in them it
remains permanently present. The event of the Cross and of the Resurrection
remains and attracts
B)
The second intuition refers
to the fact that not only the historical acts of Jesus have been assumed to
glory, but also those of his Mother. The latter have been so insofar as they
are indissolubly linked to the very acts of Christ (Sacrosanctum Concílium, 103). The historical acts of Mary, inserted
in the same economy of the Salvific Event, inseparable from it insofar as the
Event had not occurred in its salvific historicity without the presence and
cooperation of the Mother of the Lord who always worked in communion with her
Son and in the synergy of the Holy Spirit they also remain forever.
It is
in this sense that I have just noted where we find a
"pre-understanding" of that other important text of the Catechism of
the Catholic Church: "The Marian dimension of the Church precedes its
Petrine dimension". [CCC, 773.] From the Petrine dimension,
certainly, elements as substantial as its fundamental hierarchical structure
emerge for the Church ... but, at the same time, the Church is original and
constitutively Marian. Mary is present in the consilium salutis from the first moment, as a person actively
involved in it. Consilium, project,
plan of which She is, at the same time, fruit and cooperatively active with a
personal uniqueness, unique and unrepeatable. Thus, the Marian dimension of the
Church and, therefore, of its liturgy is not something merely devotional,
demanded for affective reasons or sentimental pietism. The Second Vatican
Council, confirming the teaching of the whole tradition, recalled that in the
hierarchy of holiness, precisely the woman, Mary of Nazareth, is a figure of
the Church. She "precedes" everyone on the path of holiness; in her
person the Church has already reached the perfection with which she exists
immaculate and without blemish. "[ Eph 5, 27. In this sense affirms John Paul II in an Apostolic
Letter it can be said that the Church is, at the same time, "Marian"
and "apostolic-petrine". Carta Apostólica Mulieris dignitatem, 27]
But le us return to our theme: Mary's mystic
presence in the liturgy. In the Roman Canon, Mary Most Holy is preceded by the
significant adverb imprimis,
(especially, in a particular way ...) which refers to the singularity of the
presence of the Virgin, unparalleled with the angelic presence or with others
in the communion of the Saints, because of the glorious and celestial condition
of the person of Mary in body and soul.
The questions that we proposed at the beginning of
our reflection were of this tenor: can we speak of a presence of Mary in the
celebration of Christian worship? In what sense? On what theological bases can
we dispose? How much of analogy and distinction? The answers must necessarily
be sober. Answers that illustrate but do not exhaust all that the questions they
intend to cover. Mary is present in the liturgy in a way "analogous"
to how her Son is present. This word "analogous" is taken from the
analogy fidei, from the analogy mysteriorum, and points to the nexus of
unity of all the mysteries in relation to the unique Mystery of Christ.
In
line with these final paragraphs, I take the opportunity to highlight two
liturgical testimonies, the one patristic and the other offered by J.
Castellano, which could corroborate, each from their own angle, the question we
are dealing with: the mysterious presence of Mary Most Holy in the liturgy.
They are two different witnesses who, in their respective fields, point to the
same feeling:
The
first consists in the very significant Byzantine liturgical use, according to
which, during the preparation of the gifts, the priest takes a particle of
bread not consecrated and says: "In honor and memory of the most blessed,
glorious and sovereign Mother of God and ever Virgin Mary and through her
intercession, welcome, Lord, this sacrifice that we present on your altar.
" The priest then takes that particle of unsacred bread, places it on the
right of the consecrated Bread and says: "Standing at your right is the
Queen, bejeweled with gold from Ophir, dressed in pearls and brocade (Ps
44)" [ ]
M.B. ARTIOLI, Liturgia eucaristica bizantina, Torino, 1988, p. 40-41].
The
second testimony is the confession of faith of St. Germain of Constantinople
who, through a theology that is simultaneously prayer, during a homily on the
Dormition of the Blessed Virgin and while conversing with her, confesses and
interprets the faith of the Church in the presence of Mary in the liturgy and,
beyond the liturgy, in the life of the People of God:
"O
Most Holy Mother of God ... just as when you lived on earth, you were no stranger
to the life of Heaven, so you are no stranger either, after your Assumption, to
the life of men, rather you are spiritually present to them. .. As in the time
you lived bodily with those who were your contemporaries, so now your spirit
lives next to us. The protection with which you assist us is a clear sign of
your presence in our midst. We all hear your voice and the voice of all of us
also reaches your ears ... You watch over us. Even though our eyes are not able
to contemplate you, or very happy, You yourself are gladly with us and manifest
in different ways to those who are worthy of you”[ S. GERMÁN DE
CONSTANTINOPLA, Homilia I de Dormitione, 4; PG 98, 341-348.].
