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The English poet
William Wordsworth referred to Mary as "our tainted nature's
solitary boast." Could he possibly have understood the truth
of what he said? To ask the question seems smug, and
so no doubt it is, suggesting that we think of Our Lady as
narrowly "ours," an object of devotion by Catholics, a devotion
we may, alas, regard -- though never say -- is a pardonable
Mediterranean excess, that little inner Italian in us all
asserting himself. Of course, many Protestants have said churlish
things of Her, as if to honor the Mother were somehow to deflect
attention from the Son. Converts have told me that devotion
to Mary was for them a harder saying than the Real Presence
of Jesus in the Eucharist. Smugness is best overcome by turning
the question I put to Wordsworth on ourselves. How deep is
our own devotion to the Mother of God? How well have we really
understood her privileges?
I am engaged
in translating Charles DeKoninck's La Pieté du Fils,
a study on the dogma of the Assumption, written at the time
of Ineffabilis Deus. Any claim I have to be a Thomist,
I owe to the influence of DeKoninck, who was my professor.
His range was wide, his thoughts were deep, but the things
he wrote on Mary and on the Eucharist are especially remarkable.
Reading him again, with the attention translation requires,
I am overwhelmed by the light he throws on the faith we all
profess. Phrases dulled by repetition regain their wonderful
pristine significance. Mary's role in the economy of salvation
is unique. Gratia plena. How often we murmur the words
in saying our rosary without truly attending to their profound
significance. The Immaculate Conception and the Assumption,
objects of faith from time immemorial, were defined as dogmas
in these latter times, and this has providential import. Mary's
role was part of the divine plan from all eternity, which
is why the liturgy applies to Her so many verses from the
sapiential books. No other mere creature - man or angel, the
universe itself - approaches the perfection that God lavished
on her in order that she might play her unique role. Grace
builds on nature, but here it seems to have stood nature on
its head. To take but one of her titles, Queen of Angels,
invites reflection on the way this human person was elevated
above angelic persons, the least of whom is unimaginably more
naturally perfect than the wisest of men. Mad Nietzsche spoke
of the transvaluation of values as a task. It has already
happened. In Christianity, the naturally less has become supernaturally
greatest. It is another mark of the divine mercy that God
has given us His Mother as the surest way to Him because She
was His way to us. We can never praise Mary enough, and always
when we do, She magnifies the Lord.
Ralph
McInerny |
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