As Marian Advent celebrations

Marian Celebrations during Advent: Mary in the Liturgical Time

The faithful, who live the Advent spirit with the liturgy, considering the ineffable love with which the Virgin Mother awaited her Son, are invited to take her as a model and prepare to meet the coming Savior (cf. *Preface of Advent II*).*“We also wish to point out that Advent Liturgy, combining the messianic expectation and the expectation of the glorious second coming of Christ with the admirable memory of the Mother, presents a cultic balance that is very appropriate and can serve as a norm to prevent any tendency to separate, as has sometimes happened in certain popular devotions, the cult of the Virgin Mary from its necessary point of reference: Christ. Moreover, it makes this period, as liturgical scholars have observed, particularly suitable for the cult of the Mother of the Lord: a direction that we confirm and encourage to be followed everywhere.”* (Marialis Cultus 4).This veneration of Mary during Advent is an ancient and constant tradition, and is thus considered a *Marian Time*.While various Marian feasts throughout the year focus on the successive mysteries in which the Virgin participated, Advent presents the various events concerning her as a continuous fabric to be seen as a whole: a significant celebration.The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of MaryIt interests us here in this feast, due to its fortuitous or more precise connection with the season of Advent in which it falls, that popular devotion celebrates the Immaculate Conception as an homage to Mary’s purity, in connection with the apparitions of Lourdes and with the dogmatic definition, that is, as a celebration in its own right. To the contrary, this feast should be seen, in this time of expectation, as the mystery of the realization in the Church of that sanctification which, in Mary, a virgin without spot or wrinkle (cf. Eph 5:27), occurred before in us, so that a worthy dwelling place might be prepared for the Word (cf. Collect and Preface). It is not a liturgical imposition, but a necessary theological and pastoral effort to celebrate it as a mystery of Advent, that is, from the perspective of a memorial of salvation.In the Mother of God from the beginning, realization begins: the event of her conception announces the imminent hour of redemption, because her virginity, which includes the immaculate conception, is the beginning of the sign of God promised to the house of David (2 Sm 2:12; Is 7:14).This feast is sensitive to the perspectives of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the eschatological tension of the Church. Mary, the term of the people of God in the old covenant, is also at the beginning of the people of God in the economy of the new and eternal covenant. From this double perspective, she proclaims, prefigures, realizes in an incomparable way, all the sanctity that will be realized eschatologically by the Church when it has reached its perfection.The feasts of the greater series (December 17-24)The liturgical books do not contain any specific expression to designate the days of the Advent of Christmas. Besides the usual term *feria*, they can be secondarily called *the Marian days of Advent* due to the emphasis on references to the Mother of God, particularly in the Gospel pericopes. We speak of her continuously and increasingly because, logically, the mother has a preponderant role in the birth of her Son.These days are already illuminated, as a festive prelude, by the light of the Word *who comes into the world* (John 1:9). Due to their proximity and orientation towards the Christological solenities of the Incarnation, they constitute the oldest liturgical polarity of celebrations centered on the Virgin. Since the last decades of the 4th century, as the birth of the Savior became the object of worship, in the spontaneous organization of Christmas-Epiphany festivities, the figure of the Mother of God had its liturgical place within them, all referring to Christ.The 20th of December: The Announcement to MaryAs an heir of the 4th *feria* of the *Tempora* in December, and even before the disappearance of the *Solenes Dominicae Matris* on December 18th, it is more than a *feria*, though of a higher order. In the Middle Ages, the Mass for this day was called the *Missa aurea beatae Mariae*. In a 10th-century Tuscan missal, it is referred to as *salutatio Mariae* (the same manuscript also celebrates the Archangel Gabriel on December 11th). It is the commemoration of the *Annunciation* during Advent time, hence it preceded the feast of March 25th by two centuries. Although not designated as a memory or feast, due to its time of celebration and its history, it holds primordial importance.The biblical pericopes, excluding the reading from the New Testament, are the same as those used in the Mass of *Annunciation* (March 25th). The oracle of Isaiah to Ahaz (Isaiah 7:10-14) is mandatory because the Gospel pericope recalls it along with the promises and blessings given first to Abraham and then to David and his descendants (Luke 1:27-33).If the prophecy remains a mystery in itself, it receives its interpretation from the words of the Angel, that is, in the light of the full evangelical illumination. Acaz could not understand this either, because he had other concerns. The prophecy of Emmanuel clearly indicates, along with the Messiah, also the Virgin.At the center of the Word’s liturgy, of capital importance for Advent, we have the story of the announcement (Lk 1:26-38). Throughout this time, in fact, Mary appears primarily in the first chapter of Luke, where the passage about the Annunciation is the basic text. Through allusions to prophetic passages, from which the words of the Angel are so dense, the Virgin is seen in relation to the events of the Old Testament that prepared for the coming of the Word.The Mother is placed in relation to the Son, of whose mystery of incarnation she constitutes a living exegesis. Her response, according to the expression of Psalm 39, taken up in the Letter to the Hebrews (“”Entering into the world, Christ says: I did not desire sacrifice nor offering, but a body you have prepared for me… Then I said: Behold, I come, for it is written about me in the scroll of the book, to do, O God, your will”” Ps 39:7-9. Heb 10:5-9), must be in harmony with the foundation of obedience attitude that determined the life of Christ.The Fathers of the Church, in their spiritual commentaries, often compare the explanation of the Angel (Lk 1:35) with Is 45:8: “Pour out from the heights, O heavens, and let clouds pour down justice. Let the earth open and bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up with it. I, the Lord, have created them.” The earth is Mary, who, opening herself to the epiclesis of the Spirit, in the shadow of the Shekinah, glorious manifestation of divine presence, of the Most High, “without knowing a man” becomes fruitful mother of the Savior. This is the greatest blessing that any human being has ever received. The encounter between heaven and earth took place between the best that divine history achieved among men and the most extraordinary intervention that God made in a woman who represents us all.This text is already in English, so no translation is necessary. Here it is for your reference:

It is this blessing to which the responsorial psalm refers, taken from the characteristics of Advent, Psalm 23, which shows Mary in the primordial condition, as God designed man in Christ, for whom the renewed creation acts as a renewed earthly paradise whose foremost promise becomes hope for all humanity.

Two stunning images open the celebration (entrance antiphon). The sky drips the refreshing dew of Gideon’s veil (cf. Judges 7,36-40) and the earth causes the field flowers to sprout in the mystical shoot of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1, Luke 3:8). The oracle is Christological, but the liturgical celebration sensitivity also perceives the allusion to Mary. For the offering procession, the Graduale Romanum presents the famous antiphon of the Ave Maria, now on the Fourth Sunday of Advent. The communion antiphon occupies the central part of the announcement of Gabriel (Luke 1:31): ‘conception’, ‘birth’ and ‘name’ are proposed as a form of identification of the communicants in the eucharistic reality, imitating Mary. Here too Mary is seen with the Savior.

The collection, the most Marian of all Advent, proposes a remembrance that expresses synthetically the work of the three Persons in the mystery of the Incarnation. Moreover, it provides space for the themes of the announcement and the word, God’s will, and surrender to it. Also emerge those of the new covenant and the temple.

Prayer, Liturgy of the Hours

Mother of the Redeemer,
From heaven, O door,
To the fallen people, help and encourage.
For she seeks to rise, the pure Virgin,
Born of the Creator of creation.
Have mercy on us, and hear, gentle,
The angel’s greeting with his Ave!

V. The angel of the Lord announced to Mary.
R. And she conceived by the Holy Spirit.

Let us pray:

Infuse, Lord, into our souls thy grace, that knowing by the message of the angel the Incarnation of thy Son Jesus Christ, we may, through his passion and cross, attain to the glory of the resurrection. By the same Christ, our Lord.

R. Amen.

To deepen Marian celebrations during Advent, consult the Apostolic Exhortation Marialis Cultus by Paul VI, on Mary’s feasts in the liturgical calendar.

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