The “Marian” Dimension of Liturgical Prayer

At the crossroads of communion between God and man, we find Mary. Therefore, to celebrate in the holy signs the God who came down from heaven for us men and for our salvation raises the following question: does Christ continue to make Himself sacramentally present for our sanctification by virtue of His conception by the Virgin?

Welcoming God into her womb, Mary gave birth to Him throughout all of history, cooperating in His transfiguration in the history of salvation, celebrated in the liturgy. Therefore, the Marian dimension of worship is an integral part of the celebration of the mystery of Christ.

To celebrate Mary means to celebrate the mysteries of the Lord. It is not a matter of two orientations of worship (toward God and toward Mary), but of one and the same: for the Church celebrates first and foremost the work of God in the paschal mystery of Christ, and in it she finds the Mother intimately united with the Son.

The indissoluble bond that unites Mary to Christ is, therefore, the first and fundamental criterion within which the liturgical veneration of the Mother of the Savior is expressed. In the light of the mysteries of Christ professed in the Creed (incarnate for us men and for our salvation, crucified and risen, awaiting the last day), the Church believes in Mary and celebrates her.

Mary in the one worship of the Church means, on the one hand, the contemplation of the economy of salvation wrought by the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit, and, on the other, the understanding of Mary’s human history as a paradigm for the faithful.

A second point that inevitably raises questions is her relationship with the Church. From the standpoint of the Gospels, the relationship between Christ and Mary is evident, but what about the ecclesiological horizon? Mother and daughter of the Church, her figure and model, Mary is the firstfruits and the perfect icon of the community of the redeemed. This typological link applies both to the Church as a whole and to each of the faithful. The categories that, at the level of celebration, illustrate the relationship between Mary and the Church can be summed up as communion and exemplarity: in the prayer of the Church, the prayer of Mary is lived anew.

Indispensable for the encounter between God and man, Mary has always belonged to the proclamation of the mystery of Christ and also to its liturgical enactment. In fact, veneration of the Mother of the Lord permeates the millennia-old tradition of the Church: over time, the various Churches have expressed praise, supplication, and love for Mary with characteristics proper to the different rites.

Without going into detail, let us recall a few coordinates that illustrate the singular place she occupies in the celebration of the mysteries of Christ.

In the fourth and fifth centuries, the memory of the Virgin gained prominence in the Christmas liturgy and in the season that precedes and accompanies it, leading in various churches to the rise of an explicit feast of the Virgin Mother. It would thus be the Eastern feasts of the Presentation, the Annunciation, the Assumption, and the Nativity that would mark out Mary’s place in worship: having reached Rome in the seventh century, they would spread throughout Europe with the diffusion of the Roman liturgy.

But even before the Christmas cycle and the feasts in honor of the Virgin, one must consider the Marian dimension of liturgical prayer itself: with Mary and like Mary, the Church celebrates the divine mysteries (she listens to the Word, assents in faith, becomes one single body in Christ). Indeed, by ancient and universal tradition, the prayerful remembrance of the Virgin belongs to the very celebration of the Eucharist, the highest expression of the Church at prayer.

It should not be thought that her mention in the Eucharistic Prayer is devotional in nature: it is the sign that we cannot pass over Mary in silence when we make memorial of the Pasch of Christ. Historically, it was from her that the body and blood of the Lord came to us: this is why the Church remembers her, experiencing communion with her and imitating her interior attitudes. 

In the exercise of worship, the Church sees herself reflected in Mary, the Virgin who listens, the Virgin at prayer, the Virgin Mother, the Virgin who offers.

The substance of liturgical-Marian piety can therefore be summed up as the remembrance (praise, invocation, imitation, communion) of Mary in the memorial of the mysteries of Christ, celebrated for the life of the Church. By virtue of Mary’s living presence in the historical mysteries of Christ, she is recognized as present also in the liturgical enactment of those same mysteries, which saw her as their protagonist and companion, she who is perennially celebrated by the faithful who live in, with, for Christ. By re-presenting the saving work in the holy signs, the liturgy awakens and nourishes the Christ-Church communion. And within it Mary’s place shines forth. In fact, in the liturgical sphere, Marian piety does not run the risk of an undue emphasis to the detriment of the centrality of Christ, since it does not propose a Mariology detached from the mystery of God, nor a Marian cult detached from Christian worship: the Church-Mary relationship is set within the liturgical Trinity-Church relationship.

Let us keep asking questions

What kind of presence does Mary have in the liturgy? 

How does it differ from the presence of Christ and from the presence of the saints? 

Her presence in the celebration ranges across remembrance, maternal mediation, exemplarity, and communion. It differs from the presence of Christ in that it is not autonomous but relative, and dependent on the presence of the paschal mystery of Christ as it is accomplished in the memorial. Compared with that of the Saints, it is distinguished by Mary’s truly unique place in the history of salvation.