Mary, the Woman, Icon of the Mystery

Mons. Bruno Forte

Homily for the Feast of the Mater Populi Teatini
11 October 2007

“The very name of the Mother of God contains the whole mystery of the economy of the Incarnation”: this statement by St John Damascene (De fide orthodoxa, Book III, ch. 12), the “Seal of the Fathers,” as the East loves to call him, sums up a constant conviction of faith. The Virgin Mary, insofar as she is wholly joined to the mystery of the Incarnate Word, is a compendium of the Gospel and a concrete figure of the faith of the Church: one cannot speak of Mary except in relation to her Son and to the whole work of salvation manifested in Him; and, on the other hand, the very intensity of the Mother’s relationship with the Son causes the totality of what has been accomplished in Him to be reflected in her, from the side of the creature. Thus it can be said that Mary’s history is “the history of the world in compendium, its theology in a single word,” and that she is “the living dogma, the truth about the creature brought to fulfilment” (Pavel Evdokimov, Woman and the Salvation of the World, 54 and 216).

“Having entered deeply into the history of salvation,” the Second Vatican Council affirms, “Mary unites in herself and reflects the principal truths of the faith; thus, when she is preached and honoured, she leads believers to her Son, to His sacrifice and to the love of the Father” (Lumen Gentium 65). In the story of the Virgin Mother it becomes possible to discern the logic of God as it has been manifested throughout the whole course of salvation history: Mary points to the whole of the Mystery and, at the same time, reflects it in herself. Mary is truly the woman, icon of the Mystery.

Mary is the woman: a young woman from the land of Israel to whom it was given to live the extraordinary experience of becoming the mother of the Messiah. The greatness of what took place in her must not make us forget the humility of her condition, the everyday burdens of her life in the family of Nazareth, the obscurity of the journey of faith along which she advanced, the conditioning she received from the environment around her, the depth of her being a woman and of having known the different states of female experience: virgin, mother and wife.

Mary is not a myth, nor a vague abstraction, as is shown also by the profoundly Jewish features of her personality as a woman who knew how to live faith and messianic hope in the highest way, experiencing in herself, in an unheard-of manner, both their fulfilment and a new beginning. This concrete woman became the place of God’s advent in the flesh of the world, without losing anything of her full humanity or her profound femininity: in choosing this woman, God wishes above all to affirm the value of the feminine person. She is the “blessed among all women,” just as “blessed is the fruit of her womb,” Jesus (cf. Lk 1:42).

The universal significance of Mary, therefore, stands or falls with her singularity as a woman: at the school of Mary, all of us are called to be truly human and to desire to be so, according to the richness of humanity that God has given to each person in the concrete reality of his or her historical situation and eternal vocation. In Mary the dignity of every human being is celebrated, whether woman or man, together with the vocation to be God’s “partner,” allied with Him in bringing about the salvation of all.

At the same time, Mary is the icon of the Mystery: in her is found the twofold movement that runs through every icon, descent and ascent. In her shines forth the work of grace of the Eternal One and the free consent given to Him in faith. Just as the icon is the vision of things unseen, so the Virgin Mother, to the gaze of faith that contemplates her in the light of the mystery of the Incarnate Word, appears as the place of the divine Presence, the “Ark of the Covenant,” overshadowed by the Spirit, the dwelling place of the Word of life among human beings.

To look upon Mary as “icon of the Mystery” means, therefore, to search the depths of God that, through her, have been communicated to humanity in the Son Jesus. The Mystery is the divine plan of salvation, once enclosed in silence but now revealed in Jesus Christ (cf. Rom 16:25; 1 Cor 2:7ff.; Eph 1:9; etc.): it is the glory hidden beneath the signs of history. It implies simultaneously the visibility of the events in which it is accomplished and the invisible depth of the divine work brought about within them.

As such, the Mystery embraces the truth about God and the truth about the human being, created and redeemed by Him. Already the scene of the Annunciation, a dense anticipation of Easter, reveals the Trinity as the adorable womb that receives the holy Virgin, even as it manifests Mary as the womb of God. Enfolded within the plan of the Father, Mary will be overshadowed by the Spirit, who will make her the mother of the eternal Son made man.

Between Mary and the Trinity there is established a relationship of unique depth: “Redeemed in the most sublime manner in view of the merits of her Son and united to Him by a close and indissoluble bond, she is endowed with the supreme office and dignity of being Mother of the Son, and therefore she is the beloved daughter of the Father and the temple of the Holy Spirit” (Lumen Gentium 53). Mary is “the sanctuary and the repose of the Most Holy Trinity” (St Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 5).

At the school of Mary, then, we learn to live from the beauty of the divine Trinity, as our Synod invites us to do. As Virgin, she stands before the Father as pure receptivity and teaches us to love and cultivate contemplative silence and the Eucharistic action as the summit and source of life.

As Mother of the Incarnate Word, Mary lives the gratuitousness of the gift, becoming a source of love that gives life; she is therefore the icon of the Church of charity, which places above everything else the urgency of self-giving and seeks to live it especially toward the littlest and the weakest.

As Ark of the nuptial Covenant between heaven and earth, the Bride in whom the Eternal One unites history to Himself and fills it with the surprising newness of His gift, Mary calls us to unite heaven and earth through the service of evangelization and through our willingness to become God’s co-workers in the work of justice and peace.

In the Virgin Mother, the humble handmaid of the Almighty, there is offered to us the pattern of the believer’s full life, lived in participation in the eternal life of God, the Holy Trinity. Precisely in this way, Mary is the icon of the Church that comes from the Trinity and goes toward the Trinity in the pilgrimage of history, journeying toward the time when God will be all in all and the whole world will be His homeland (cf. 1 Cor 15:28).

Mary is the woman-Church, the daughter of Zion of the messianic age. In the concrete figure of the Mother of the Lord, the Church thus contemplates her own mystery, not only because she finds in Mary the model of virginal faith, maternal charity and the spousal covenant to which she is called, but also because she recognizes in Mary her own archetype, the ideal figure of what she is called to be: temple of the Spirit, mother of the children begotten in the Son, His Body, the people of God, pilgrim in faith along the paths of obedience to the Father.

By situating Mary within the mystery of Christ and the Church, Vatican II was able to recognize her as “the pre-eminent and wholly unique member of the Church, and as her image and outstanding model in faith and charity.” Therefore, “the Catholic Church, taught by the Holy Spirit, honours her with filial affection and piety as a most beloved mother” (Lumen Gentium 53).

May the Virgin-Mother-Bride teach us to love the Church and to be a Church of love, a people of dialogue, communion and shared responsibility.

To You, Mother of Fair Love,
we consecrate our heart,
that our yes may become, like Yours,
a source of tender and attentive love,
humble and concrete,
and that, like You, Ark of the Covenant,
we may bring to all whom we meet
the joy of the presence of the Beloved.

To You, Bride of the eternal wedding feast,
who sing the wonders wrought by the Bridegroom
in the humility of Your history and ours,
we entrust the thoughts, words and deeds
of each of our days,
so that, in faithfulness to the gift of Love,
they may all be thoughts of peace,
a song of praise,
words of hope,
works of justice
and sweetest charity.

Virgin, Mother and Bride,
all-beautiful Queen of heaven and earth,
intercede for us
that we may come to sing with You
and with all the Saints,
together with all those entrusted to us in love,
the new song of the Lamb
in the eternal Jerusalem,
radiant with the beauty
of the day of love that never dies.

Amen. Alleluia!