The Marian celebrations of Advent

The Marian celebrations of Advent: Mary in the liturgical season

The faithful, who live the spirit of Advent with the liturgy, considering the ineffable love with which the Virgin Mother awaited her Son, are invited to take her as their model and to prepare themselves to go out to meet the Savior who comes, watchful in prayer, exultant in praise (cf. Preface II of Advent).

“We wish to observe, further, that the Liturgy of Advent, joining together the messianic expectation and the other expectation of the glorious second coming of Christ with the admirable commemoration of the Mother, presents a very apt devotional balance, which may well be taken as a norm in order to prevent any tendency to separate, as has sometimes happened in certain forms of popular piety, devotion to the Virgin Mary from its necessary point of reference: Christ. Moreover, it makes this period, as scholars of the Liturgy have been observing, one that must be considered a season particularly suited to devotion to the Mother of the Lord: an orientation that we confirm and that we hope to see accepted and followed everywhere” (Marialis Cultus 4). This veneration of Mary during Advent is an ancient and constant tradition, so much so that it is also considered a Marian season.

Whereas in the various Marian feasts throughout the year the mysteries in which the Virgin took part are seen in successive stages, in Advent the various events that concern her form a continuous fabric that must be seen as a whole: it is an important celebration.

THE SOLEMNITY OF THE Immaculate Conception OF MARY

This feast interests us here because of its more or less fortuitous relation to the season of Advent in which it falls. Popular devotion celebrates the Immaculate One as a tribute 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. Conversely, this feast must be seen, in this time of waiting, as the mystery of the accomplishment in the Church of that sanctification which in Mary, a virgin without stain or wrinkle (cf. Eph 5:27), came about ahead of us, so that a worthy dwelling 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, in the perspective of a memorial of salvation.

In the Mother of God, from the very beginning, the accomplishment starts: the event of her conception announces that the hour of redemption is near, because her virginity, of which the immaculate conception is a part, is the beginning of the sign of God promised to the house of David (2 Sam 2:12. Is 7:14).

This solemnity is attuned to the perspectives of the Old Testament, to those of the New Testament, and to the eschatological tension of the Church. Mary, the term of the people of God in the old covenant, stands also at the beginning of the people of God in the economy of the new and eternal covenant. Under this twofold aspect, she proclaims, prefigures, and accomplishes beforehand, in an incomparable being, all the holiness that will be realized eschatologically by the Church when it has attained its perfection.

The feasts of the greater series (December 17 to 24)

The liturgical books contain no particular expression to designate the days of the Advent of Christmas. Besides the usual term feria, they may secondarily be called the Marian days of Advent, because of the emphasis placed on the references to the Mother of God contained above all in the Gospel pericopes. We speak of her continuously and increasingly because, in the logic of things, the mother has a preponderant role in the birth of her son.

These days are already illumined, as a festive prelude, by the light of the Word who comes into this world (Jn 1:9). By their nearness and their orientation toward the christological solemnities of the Incarnation, they constitute the most ancient liturgical pole of the celebrations of the Virgin. From the last decades of the fourth century, ever since the birth of the Savior became an object of worship, in the spontaneous organization of the Christmas-Epiphany festivities, the figure of the Mother of God had its liturgical place within them, all of them referring to Christ.

The feria of December 20: the announcement to Mary

Heir to the feria IV of the December Ember Days, and even before the disappearance of the solenes dominicae Matris of December 18, it is more than a feria, even one of the greater series. In the Middle Ages, the Mass of this day was called the Missa aurea beatae Mariae. In a tenth-century missal from Tuscany it is called salutatio Mariae (the same codex celebrates the Archangel Gabriel on December 11). It is the commemoration of the Annunciation in the season of Advent, and so it preceded by two centuries the solemnity of March 25. Although it is not endowed with the rank of memorial or feast, by the season in which it is set and by its history it is of primary importance.

The biblical pericopes, excluding the New Testament reading, are the same as those of the Mass of the Annunciation (March 25). The oracle of Isaiah to Ahaz (Is 7:10-14) is obligatory, because the Gospel pericope recalls it together with the promises and blessings made first to Abraham and then to David and his descendants (Lk 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 illumination of the Gospel. Ahaz could not understand this, also because he had other concerns. The prophecy of Emmanuel clearly indicates, together with the Messiah, the Virgin as well.

At the center of the liturgy of the word, of capital importance for Advent, we have the account of the announcement (Lk 1:26-38). Throughout this whole season, in fact, Mary appears chiefly in the first chapter of Luke, in which the passage on the Annunciation is the basic text. Through the allusions to the prophetic passages, with which the words of the angel are so dense, the Virgin is seen in relation to the events of the Old Testament that prepared the coming of the Word.

The Mother is placed in relation to the Son, of whose mystery of the incarnation she constitutes a living exegesis. Her response, according to the expression of Ps 39, taken up in the letter to the Hebrews (“On coming into the world, Christ says: Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me… Then I said: Behold, I come, for it is written of me in the scroll of the book, to do your will, O God”, Ps 39:7-9. Heb 10:5-9), must be in harmony with the underlying attitude of obedience that determined the life of Christ.

The Fathers of the Church, in their spiritual commentaries, are accustomed to compare the angel’s explanation (Lk 1:35) with Is 45:8: “Rain down, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds pour down righteousness. Let the earth open and bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up at the same time. I, the Lord, have created them”. The earth is Mary who, opening herself to the epiclesis of the Spirit, under the shadow of the shekinah, the glorious manifestation of the divine presence, of the Most High, without knowing man, becomes the fruitful mother of the Savior. This is the greatest blessing a human person has ever received. The meeting between heaven and earth took place between the best that divine history has accomplished among men and the most extraordinary intervention that God has carried out in a woman who represents us all.

It is to this blessing that the Responsorial Psalm alludes, taken from among those characteristic of Advent, Psalm 23, which shows Mary in her primordial condition, as God designed man in Christ, for whom the renewed creation acts as a renewed earthly paradise whose premise becomes hope for all humanity.

Two dazzling images open the celebration (entrance antiphon). Heaven drips the refreshing dew upon the fleece of Gideon (cf. Judg 7:36-40) and the earth causes the flower of the fields to spring up in the mystical shoot of Jesse (Is 11:1, Lk 3:8). The oracle is christological, but liturgical-celebratory sensibility also perceives the allusion to Mary. For the procession of the offerings, the Graduale Romanum presents the famous antiphon of the Ave Maria, now on the Fourth Sunday of Advent. The communion antiphon takes up the central part of Gabriel’s announcement (Lk 1:31): ‘conception’, ‘birth’ and ‘name’ (Jesus = Savior) are proposed as a way for communicants to identify themselves with the eucharistic reality in imitation of Mary. Here too Mary is seen with the Savior.

The Collect, the most Marian of the whole of Advent, proposes an anamnesis that expresses in summary form the work of the three Persons in the mystery of the Incarnation. Moreover, within it there is room for the themes of the announcement and of the word, of the will of God and of surrender to it. Those of the new covenant and of the temple also emerge.

Prayer, Liturgy of the Hours

O Mother of the Redeemer,
O gate of heaven,
Help and exhort the people who have fallen.
For they seek to rise again, O pure Virgin,
The Creator being born of the creature.
Have mercy on us, and hear, in gentleness,
The angel greeting you with his Ave!

V. The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.
R. And she conceived by the Holy Spirit.

Let us pray:

Pour forth into our souls, O Lord, Your grace, so that we, knowing by the message of the angel the incarnation of Your Son Jesus Christ, may come, through His passion and cross, to the glory of the resurrection. Through the same Christ, our Lord.

R. Amen.

To go deeper into the Marian celebrations in Advent, consult the apostolic exhortation Marialis Cultus of Paul VI, on the feasts of Mary in the liturgical calendar.

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