Six reasons not to forget Mary, according to Joseph Ratzinger

Six reasons not to forget Mary according to RatzingerThe reasons not to forget Mary, as proposed by Joseph Ratzinger, continue to shape contemporary mariology. These reasons for remembering Mary demonstrate that Marian devotion is a sign of fully Catholic and ecclesial faith.Mary and ChristianityOn the occasion of the International Mariological Congress held in Loreto (March 22-25, 1995), then-Cardinal Ratzinger agreed to deliver the lecture on the article of the Creed: “*Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine*.” In this magistral conference, he states:> “The Incarnation, which we just celebrated at Christmas, is the central event of human history. It is the moment when God became man, when the Word of God, the Son of God, took flesh from the Virgin Mary. This event is not just a historical fact; it is the foundation of our faith, the source of our salvation.”«Without Mary, God’s entry into history would not reach its end. What matters in the confession of faith, that God is a God with us and not only a God in himself and for himself, would not be achieved. Thus, the woman who qualified herself as humble, that is, as an anonymous woman (Lk 1:48), is placed at the center of the confession in the living God, who cannot be thought without her».

In unambiguous terms, Mary is placed at the core of faith and history as the woman who introduces God into the unprecedented situation of the Incarnation. Through her, God reveals himself not as a God confined to heaven, but truly as Emmanuel, God with us. A necessary theological consequence: Mary enters into the concept of the living and active God in history, to such an extent that one cannot think of Mary without referring to her active maternal collaboration.

After interpreting the phrase from the Apostolic Symbol “as a synthesis of the three great biblical testimonies of the Incarnation of the Son: Mt 1:18-25. Lk 1:26-38. Jn 1:13ff“, the cardinal focused on God’s dwelling place as a consequence and purpose of the Incarnation and affirmed that Jesus is the true Shekinah, through whom God is among us, when we are gathered in his first name. Although holy places are the permanent guarantee of God’s entry into the world, the most important reality is Mary’s “yes,” which opens the space where the Word can set up its tent, because God is not confined to stones, but is connected to living people.

A revealing icon of God involved in the dynamics of the Incarnation, Mary remains anchored in the history of her people. This is what the cardinal emphasized once more in Loreto on March 7, 1988, during a conference titled “Tu es plena gratia. Elements for a biblical Marian devotion” held during a regional pastoral update congress. He presents Mary as paradigmatic for the Christian and for humanity according to true anthropology, as she is not isolated from her people and at the same time open to the salvation of all humanity:

“Mary is Sion in person, and this means: she lives everything that is understood by ‘Sion’. She does not constitute a closed individuality that depends on the originality of the ego. She does not want to be just this human being who defends and protects her ego […] She lives in such a way to be ‘habitable’ for God, to live in such a way to be a place for God.”

For Ratzinger, Mary is a person “in vital relation with God,” and it is precisely from this sense of grace that she is filled: “Tu es plena gratia,” which also means that Mary is a totally open human being, who fully revealed herself, courageously and without limits, without fear of her destiny, in the hands of God.

Since this opening is described in Scripture with the word “faith,” follows that, as in the old Alliance we find Abraham, the father of believers, so in the beginning of the new people we find Mary, the mother of believers.

The “pure and sublime figure” of Mary is specific to Ratzinger in an inner work of which Luke testifies when he says that Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart (Lk 2:19). Despite the transcendence of the mystery, it is a matter of “unifying” the particular with the whole, and at the same time preserving and faithfully keeping it “through” the stages of life, even when the sword strikes her in the moment of passion.

Therefore, after internalizing the word, “she can give it back to the world: Mary is a prophet.” The Magnificat is a “prophetic prayer woven with threads from the Old Testament” that invites us to magnify the Lord, that is, to “give him space, so that he may be more present in the world.”

Six Reasons Not to Forget MaryIn a synthetic perspective, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, interviewed by journalist Vittorio Messori in 1985, lists six reasons not to forget Mary, which in turn presuppose a fundamentally unifying and communal role of the Virgin in relation to the mysteries of faith, the Bible, and Tradition, from the Old and New Testaments, reason and heart, man and woman.First Point: *Recognizing the place that the dogma and Tradition attribute to Mary means being firmly rooted in authentic Christology.*The Second Vatican Council states: «The Church, meditating piously on the Virgin, and contemplating her in the light of the Word made man, penetrates more deeply, filled with reverence, into the inexpressible mystery of the Incarnation, and more and more conforms herself to her Spouse» (Lumen Gentium n. 65).Moreover, it is in direct service to the faith in Christ, therefore not primarily through devotion to the Mother, that the Church proclaimed its Marian dogmas: first, perpetual virginity and divine motherhood, and then, after a long period of maturation and reflection, the conception without the stain of original sin and the Assumption into heaven.These dogmas protect the authentic faith in Christ as true God and true man: two natures in one Person. They also contain the indispensable eschatological tension, pointing to the immortal destiny that awaits us all in the Assumption of Mary. And they protect faith, today threatened, in the Creator God who (among other things, one of the most misunderstood truths about perpetual virginity) can also intervene freely in matter. In short, as the Council also reminds us: «Mary, by her intimate participation in the history of salvation, gathers and makes resound, so to speak, the greatest data of faith» (Lumen Gentium).

65. Ratzinger addresses this first point essentially from a Christological perspective, placing Mary in relation to authentic faith in Christ, true Man and true God, such that she becomes the touchstone of orthodoxy, with a second point. This involves merging God’s Word and Church tradition, as the figure of the Virgin Mother, in her deepening over the centuries, consolidates biblical data and the progress in the knowledge of the mystery within the Church.

Second Point. Mariology of the Church presupposes the just relationship, the necessary integration, between Scripture and Tradition.

The four Marian dogmas rest on an indispensable scriptural foundation. Yet, there exists a seed that grows and bears fruit in the warm life of Tradition, as expressed in liturgy, the intuition of the faithful people, and the reflection of theology guided by the Magisterium.

The third point concerns the mediating and unifying role of the Virgin of Nazareth, historically situated at the peak where converges the upward movement of the people of Israel and from where the Christian movement spreads throughout the world through the evangelizing work of the Church.

Third Point. In her person as a young Jewish woman who became the Mother of the Messiah, Mary unites in a vital and inextricable way the old and the new people of God, Israel and Christianity, the synagogue and the Church.

Mary is the point of junction without which faith (as it does today) risks losing balance, be it in the Old Testament or solely in the New. In the Virgin, we can experience the synthesis of the whole Scripture. Her unifying function is manifested in the devotion of the people of God towards her: she unites reason and feeling, rationality and affect, preserving or liberating Christianity from the traps of intellectualism and sentimentalism, both sterile.

Fourth Point. Due Marian devotion ensures faith the coexistence of indispensable ‘reason’ with equally indispensable ‘reasons of the heart’, as Blaise Pascal would say.

For the Church, man is neither only reason nor only feeling; he is the union of these two dimensions. The head must reflect with lucidity, but the heart must be warmed: Marian devotion («free of any false excess, but also of a meanness that does not consider the singular dignity of the Mother of God»)

According to Ratzinger, as recommended by the Council, faith ensures its full human dimension. He adds a fifth, particularly timely reason, almost an echo of a similar thought from his colleague Hans Urs von Balthasar. Mary effectively contributes with her femininity and motherhood to humanize the face of the Church, preventing it from falling into bureaucracy, abstract formalism, and legalism that kills the Spirit.Fifth point. Using the Vatican II’s own expressions, “Mary is the ‘figure,’ the ‘image,’ and the ‘model’ of the Church.” Thus, by looking at her, the Church is protected from the machist model that views the Church as a tool of a socio-political program. In Mary, her figure and model, the Church finds its face as Mother, and cannot degenerate into a regressive involution that transforms it into a party, an organization, a pressure group serving human interests, however noble. If Mary no longer finds a place in certain theologies and ecclesiologies, the reason is simple: they have reduced faith to an abstraction. And an abstraction does not need a Mother.The sixth and final reason not to forget Mary in our time is her example for all, especially for women. She illuminates her path by referring to the vocation and mystery coming from God, offering at the same time the example of synthesis between interiority and evangelical announcement, consecration and mission, courage and availability.Sixth point. “Mary, with her vocation as Virgin and Mother, continues to illuminate what the Creator willed for women of all times, including our time.”In truth, perhaps especially in our time, where, as we know, the essence of femininity is threatened. Mary’s virginity and motherhood root the mystery of women in a highest destiny from which she cannot be detached. Mary is the intrepid herald of the Magnificat. But she is also he who makes fruitful silence and hiding. She is the one who does not fear to be under the cross, who is present at the birth of the Church. But she is also, as the Evangelist emphasizes several times, “who keeps and meditates in her heart what is happening around her.” A creature of courage and obedience, she is (once again and always) an example to which every Christian, man and woman, can and must look.To condemn to oblivion a person so significant in human history as Mary is not to enrich oneself, but to spiritually impoverish oneself, to deprive oneself of a woman who gave a positive direction and a sure path to human life, and thus became an irreplaceable paradigm for the revelation of God and for the maturity of Christ’s disciples.To deepen the theological reasons for not forgetting Mary, consult the encyclical Redemptoris Mater by John Paul II, on Mary’s maternal presence in the life of the Church.For a deeper study: explore mariology, Marian theology, Marian apparitions, and the Postgraduate Studies in Mariology.In summary, the reasons not to forget Mary, as collected by Ratzinger, help the believer to rediscover the Virgin as mother and model. Learn more about Mary in the faith of the Church in the document Redemptoris Mater.

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