M ary in the Liturgy by David W. Fagerberg
All booklets are published thanks to the generous support of the members of the Catholic Truth Society
CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY PUBLISHERS TO THE HOLY SEE
Contents Where is Mary in the Liturgy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 What is Liturgy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Spiritual attitudes belonging to Mary and the Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 Attentive virgin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 Virgin in Prayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 Virgin mother . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 Virgin presenting offerings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50
Mary in the Mass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57 The Church as it dawns in a single person . . . . . . . . .66
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Where is M ary in the Liturgy? hat role does Mary have in our liturgical life? Do we think of Mary being involved in the liturgy? Does she participate with us, does she pray with us, is she present in it? It may seem difficult to locate her, because her name is only mentioned aloud three times in the Mass. (Maybe that is why there is a tendency to go first to Marian devotions instead of the liturgy.) But given her place in the history of salvation, and given that the Eucharist celebrates the climax of that history, it would seem that she should have an important role in the liturgy. But what is it? Where is Our Lady in the Mass? That is the question that we would like to explore in this booklet. We hope to connect Catholic teaching about Mary with our experience of the liturgy. It will be like looking through binoculars with two lenses. Marian doctrine will illuminate our understanding of liturgy, and a deeper appreciation of liturgy will bring us closer to Mary. We will explain what happens at liturgy by looking
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at Mary; and we will explain Mary’s role in the Church by looking at the liturgy. She is the supreme liturgical person, and an exemplar for the Church at liturgy. A path already trodden by Mary At each liturgy, the believer is strengthened for a journey that goes from this age to the next, ascending toward the heavenly Jerusalem. The nourishment we receive at the table of the Lord – his own body and blood – is a heavenly manna that fortifies us. Like the Israelites received manna as they crossed the desert from Egypt to the promised land, Jesus promises his own flesh to us. “My Father gives you the true bread from heaven … I am the bread of life” John 6:32-35. Blessed John Paul II called the Christian life a pilgrimage in his encyclical letter on Mary, entitled Redemptoris Mater (Mother of the Redeemer). He writes, “the Church journeys through time towards the consummation of the ages and goes to meet the Lord who comes.” And then he immediately adds, “but on this journey – and I wish to make this point straightaway – she proceeds along the path already trodden by the Virgin Mary, who ‘advanced in her pilgrimage of faith, and loyally persevered in her union with her Son unto the cross’” (RM 2). If we understand our Christian life as a journey from this world into the new age, then imagine that in front 4
of every one of us stretches a parade of Christians across twenty-one centuries. At its head is Christ, leading us to his Father. And first behind Christ is Mary. Church tradition has not only called Mary the Mother of God (Mater Dei) but also Mother of the Church (Mater Ecclesia). She is already at the fullness where we hope to arrive at the end our pilgrimage. We follow a path she has already trodden. She can, therefore, assist us on our journey. Nothing that the Church teaches about Mary should have the effect of creating a distance. It does not place her so far above us, that we cannot feel her love; it does not place us so far below her, that she cannot feel our need. To the contrary, the Church teaches that the grace which operated in her life now also operates in ours. Or, to say it from the other side, the grace which operates in our life reached its maximum effect in her. The theologian Fr. Louis Bouyer says it succinctly: “Mary was not an unheard of exception, she is the masterpiece of grace” (The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism). We stare at this masterpiece in order to see what God has in mind for us. The fullness of time Scripture says there was a design for the whole human race, and that it was reached at a moment the Bible calls the fullness of time. Blessed John Paul II says this 5
fullness indicates the moment when the Father sent his Son to share eternal life with mankind. “This ‘fullness’ designates the hidden beginning of the Church’s journey. In the liturgy the Church salutes Mary of Nazareth as the Church’s own beginning (Redemptoris Mater 1). The fullness of time is the incarnation, the death, and the resurrection of Christ. It is the paschal mystery, and it is celebrated in every liturgy. In that liturgical celebration, the Holy Father says, Mary is saluted. So wouldn’t we expect to find Marian dimensions in our liturgical life, and dimensions of the liturgy imprinted on her person? But making this clear would require a deeper understanding of the liturgy. We don’t just mean the ceremony’s surface, but its depth. What is the liturgy? After we discover that in the next section, we can return to Mary’s role in it.
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What is Liturgy? atholics celebrate liturgy regularly, repeatedly, frequently, but what is it? We celebrate the Liturgy of the Mass, which is the source and summit of our lives; we celebrate the Liturgy of the Hours, by which the Church organizes her daily prayer; we celebrate the Liturgical Year, within which the Church unfolds the mystery of Christ. Catholics are surrounded by liturgy! But sometimes the thing we do most often is the hardest to explain. The liturgy might be called the Church herself in motion – like listening is friendship in motion, or bandaging a skinned knee is parenting in motion, or sitting down at dinner together is family in motion. Liturgy is the Church in motion, the activity that identifies Christians. The liturgy is the Church caught in the act of being herself. Pope Benedict XVI writes, “The Church is adoration. … The Church subsists as liturgy and in liturgy” (God is Near Us). The Second Vatican Council produced a Dogmatic Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, entitled Sacrosanctum Concilium. It calls the liturgy – especially the divine sacrifice and Eucharist – the
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“outstanding means whereby the faithful may express in their lives, and manifest to others, the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church.” The true nature of the Church is expressed and shown to others in liturgy. Now, if the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, then one would suppose that her liturgy is different from any other kind of ritual. Lots of organizations do rituals when they get their members together, but the Church’s beginning and end is supernatural. She is a divine artifact, not the Jesus club. And since the Church is more than just a social club, therefore her ritual is not an ordinary ceremony. Liturgy does not rise up out of our human activity; it would be more correct to say that liturgy descends from divine activity. It is the result of a grace that comes from heaven to earth. Liturgy is nested within some big doctrines. The liturgy is bound up with the Church, and the origin of the Church is found in Christ, and Christ entered history by being born of the Virgin Mary. We find Christ, the Church, the liturgy, and Mary interrelated, like the nesting dolls you sometimes see at Christmas. This is acknowledged by the Catechism of the Catholic Church (hereafter CCC). We might be surprised to learn where the Catechism says liturgy originates. 8
The Catechism The Catechism is divided into four sections, sometimes called “the four pillars.” I. The Profession of Faith II. Celebration of the Christian mystery III. Life in Christ IV. Christian prayer In other words, (a) belief, (b) worship, (c) the virtues, and (d) spiritual life. These four are the bins that will hold everything the Catechism has to say when it summarizes the Christian faith. Part I d iscusses revelation and Scripture, and explains the Apostles’ Creed. Part II discusses liturgy and sacrament. Part III discusses human beings as the image of God, and how to preserve human community through obedience to the 10 Commandments. Part IV discusses prayer, from biblical times to the age of the Church, concluding with the Lord’s Prayer. When the Catechism comes to liturgy and sacrament in part II there are many ways it could have begun. It could have begun with sacramental theory, or with rubrics, or with baptism as the first sacrament, or the Eucharist as the most important sacrament, or with Advent as the beginning of the Church year. Yet it does not begin with any of these. Instead, it begins with the Trinity. It puts this question to itself in an opening 9
heading: “Why the liturgy?” And in answering that question it turns to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Plan of Redemption Here are the first four paragraphs of section II, with some comments inserted within. Paragraph 1066 says: In the Symbol of the faith … That is, in the Apostles’ Creed just discussed in part one the Church confesses the mystery of the Holy Trinity and of the plan of God’s “good pleasure” for all creation: What is it? What is the good pleasure of God? This would be worth knowing! What is God’s will for all creation? Where will we find the answer? the Father accomplishes the “mystery of his will” by giving his beloved Son and his Holy Spirit for the salvation of the world and for the glory of his name. St. Irenaeus called the Son and the Holy Spirit the “two hands of the Father” by which he accomplishes his purposes. And apparently their mission is twofold: our salvation, and the Father’s glory. Such is the mystery of Christ, revealed and fulfilled in history according to the wisely ordered plan that St. Paul calls the “plan of the mystery” and the 10
patristic tradition will call the “economy of the Word incarnate” or the “economy of salvation.” The Greek word translated as “economy” is oikonomia, which means household management. The economy of salvation is how God manages the human household in order to accomplish its redemption. He manages to weave salvation into history, like a current running within the river. Apparently, this ordered plan of redemption has always been the will of the Father, ever since his beloved man and woman hid themselves from him in the Garden of Eden. Somehow he would find them again! He did not leave himself without witness among the Gentiles. (Paul tells the Romans in chapter 1 that God has revealed himself through nature and in their conscience). But then, by the election of Abraham, God began to cultivate a people into which his Son could be born. Salvation history The next paragraph, 1067, summarizes the entire salvation history of Israel in a brief reference, and then carries us directly into the storm centre of history, the Paschal mystery. The wonderful works of God among the people of the Old Testament were but a prelude to the work of 11
Christ the Lord in redeeming mankind and giving perfect glory to God. There are those two purposes again – our redemption and God’s glory. And to bring them about, God began a series of covenants: the Abrahamic covenant, which initiated the life of faith; the Mosaic covenant, which established the people of God and set the ten commandments as the conditions of covenantal life together; the Davidic covenant, wherein the king ruled in a justice twinned with the temple; and various prophets who were summoned by God to refresh these covenants when they were forgotten or distorted. He accomplished this work principally by the Paschal mystery of his blessed Passion, Resurrection from the dead, and glorious Ascension, whereby “dying he destroyed our death, rising he restored our life.” For it was from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death upon the cross that there came forth “the wondrous sacrament of the whole Church.” The Church herself is a sacrament because she comes from the side of Christ. Eve was taken from 12
the side of the first Adam as he slept, and the Church is taken from the side of Christ, the second Adam, on the cross. And since the Church is born of baptism and nourished by the Eucharist, sacred art has expressed this by depicting angels holding a shell and a chalice to catch the water and blood flowing from Jesus’ pierced side on the cross. For this reason, the Church celebrates in the liturgy above all the Paschal mystery by which Christ accomplished the work of our salvation – his death and resurrection. What do we celebrate in the liturgy? The death and resurrection of Christ. The “subject matter” of liturgy is the Paschal mystery. The Church celebrates the act which saved us. A summary Now, for clarity’s sake, all this is summarized again in paragraph 1068. It is this mystery of Christ that the Church proclaims and celebrates in her liturgy so that the faithful may live from it and bear witness to it in the world: Christians have two tasks, namely, to live from the mystery of Christ and to witness to the mystery of Christ. And we accomplish the latter by doing the 13
former – we witness to the mystery by living from it. This paragraph concludes by quoting the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy: For it is in the liturgy, especially in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist, that “the work of our redemption is accomplished,” and it is through the liturgy especially that the faithful are enabled to express in their lives and manifest to others the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church. The divine economy is accomplished, comes to a head, is actualized, when the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist is celebrated. Glance back over our shoulders. The second pillar of the Catechism concerns the celebration of the Christian mystery. What is that mystery? The Pasch of Christ brings it to fulfillment, yes, but the mystery is the ordered plan that God had in his mind from the beginning. The Father’s plan from the beginning was to redeem mankind by giving his beloved Son and Holy Spirit. They would accomplish (a) the salvation of the world, and (b) the glory of his name. These two goals have been identified as the two purposes of liturgy. Every liturgy celebrates the mystery being described. 14
Litany of Loreto This litany to the Blessed Virgin Mary was first used in the mid-16th century at the Italian shrine from which its name derives. Now considered a classic text of Marian devotion, the Litany of Loreto is an opportunity to draw closer to Jesus’ mother through seeing her as the greatest example of the Christian life. This booklet, as well as containing the full text of the actual litany, also looks closely at the many titles used to describe Our Blessed Lady and how their meaning can help us to live as she did, ever open to God’s plan.
ISBN: 978 1 86082 796 9 CTS Code: D 751
Gift CTS Marian Prayer Book All the classic prayers to Mary including: The Hail Mary The Angelus The Hail Holy Queen And many more, all put together in one gorgeously bound volume. The blue imitation leather cover adds beauty and durability to the book, which is a treasury of prayer to the Mother of God that will surely be a much cherished present.
ISBN: 978 1 86082 797 6 CTS Code: D 752
Mary Mysteries of the Blessed Virgin Mary Devotion to Mary has always been one of the defining characteristics of being a Catholic. Marian feasts, prayers, hymns, places of pilgrimage make up the very fabric of a lived Catholic Faith. Dr Francesca Murphy explores Mary’s unique role in the incarnation and how it has always assisted the Church in avoiding theological error. She also explains the art of saying the rosary and how it has helped both the learned and the simple throughout its history to know Christ better. The Deeper Christianity Series delves into the mysteries of Christianity, opening up the spiritual treasures of the Church.
ISBN: 978 1 86082 422 7 CTS Code: SP 17