Monday, January 24, 2005

The mother of my Lord is my mother...

I was seized by these words today in Mass during the pre-Eucharistic prayers (II):

By the power of the Holy Spirit
he took flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary.


Pretty familiar stuff, I know, but what hooked me was this: insofar as the Mass is a re-presentation and indeed re-offering of Christ to the Father in the Church and the Church to the Father in Christ, we receive Christ in the Eucharist FROM Mary as a sacramental mystery, just as the world recieved Him from her as a historical fact. I accepted the Christological dimensions of the priest's role quite easily, but I never realized the mariological dimensions of the Mass till today. Pretty cool.

Insofar as we re-approach and approproate the life-giving horror of Calvary in the Mass, so too we approach Mary to receive Christ from her in the ordo salutis. This is what I call "charismatic realism," and figures quite largely into a meditation on Mary's role in the Redemption which I hope to post some time in the coming weeks or months.

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