MARY IN VATICAN II

Mary in Vatican II

Thanks to the Council Fathers, Mariology and Ecclesiology were both renewed and more deeply expounded. They showed in a magnificent way from the sources that Mariology in its entirety was first thought of and established by the Fathers as Ecclesiology: the Church is virgin and mother, she was conceived without sin and bears the burden of history, she suffers and yet is taken up into heaven. Very slowly there developed later the notion that the Church is anticipated in Mary. She is personified in Mary and that, vice versa, Mary is not an isolated individual closed in on herself, but carries within her the whole mystery of the Church. The person is not closed individualistically nor is the community understood as a collectivity in an impersonal way: both inseparably overlap. This already applies to the woman in the Book of Revelation, as she appears in chapter 12: it is not right to limit this figure exclusively and individualistically to Mary, because in her we contemplate together the whole People of God, the old and new Israel, which suffers and is fruitful in suffering; nor is it right to exclude from this image Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer. The virgin of Nazareth symbolizes Israel bereft of human sustenance and dependent entirely on God. Thus the overlapping of individual and community, as we find it in the New Testament, anticipates the identification of Mary and the Church that was gradually developed in the theology of the Fathers and finally taken up by the Council. The fact that the two were later separated, that Mary was seen as an individual filled with privileges and therefore infinitely beyond our reach where the Church in turn [was seen] in an impersonal and purely institutional manner, has caused equal damage to both Mariology and Ecclesiology. But if we want to understand the Church and Mary properly, we must go back to the time before this fracture, in order to understand the supra-individual nature of the person and the supra-institutional nature of the community, precisely where person and community are taken back to their origins, grounded in the power of the Lord, the new Adam. The Marian vision of the Church and the ecclesial, salvation-historical vision of Mary take us back ultimately to Christ and to the Triune God, because it is here that we find revealed what holiness means, what is God's dwelling in man and in the world, what we should understand by the "eschatological" tension of the Church. Thus it is only the chapter on Mary that leads Conciliar Ecclesiology to its fulfilment and brings us back to its Christological and Trinitarian starting point. Read “Lumen Gentium”, Chapter VIII: The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God in the Mystery of Christ and the Church  Bishop Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) very aptly chose a text from St. Ambrose: "So stand on the firm ground of your heart! What standing means, the Apostle taught us, Moses wrote it: 'The place on which you stand is holy ground'. No one stands except the one who stands firm in the faith ... and yet another word is written: 'But you, stand firm with me'. You stand firm with me, if you stand in the Church. The Church is holy ground on which we must stand.... So stand firm, stand in the Church, stand there, where I want to appear to you. There I will stay beside you. Where the Church is, there is the stronghold of your heart. On the Church are laid the foundations of your soul. Indeed I appeared to you in the Church as once in the burning bush. You are the bush, I am the fire. Like the fire in the bush I am in your flesh. I am fire to enlighten you; to burn away the thorns of your sins, to give you the favour of my grace".