Advent and Mary: the Virgin in the time of waiting
Advent and Mary, the Virgin in the time of waiting
Advent is the liturgical season in which the presence of Mary stands out with special prominence. The liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council confirmed that this period must be considered a privileged “Marian season” (MC 4): the biblical readings, the prayers, and the celebrations proper to Advent systematically place Mary at the center of the mystery of the Incarnation that the Church is preparing to celebrate. As Marialis Cultus stresses, the veneration of Mary in Advent is an “ancient and constant tradition”.
Advent: the time of the coming and of waiting
Christian Advent has a threefold temporal dimension: it is the memory of the preparation of Israel over the course of centuries. It is the present celebration of the mystery of the Incarnation. It is the anticipation of the glorious coming of Christ at the end of time. This threefold dimension, past, present, and eschatological, prevents Advent from being reduced to a merely sentimental preparation for Christmas. The liturgical reform distinguishes an “eschatological Advent” (the first to the third week, with the oracles of Isaiah and the preaching of John the Baptist) and a “Christmas Advent” (December 17-24), in which the Marian elements are more pronounced.
The Marian celebrations of Advent
The liturgical calendar of Advent includes several Marian celebrations of great importance. The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception (December 8) is the feast on which Mary, the Virgin without stain, is celebrated as the “beginning of the fulfillments”, the realization, anticipated in the Church, of the sanctification that God wills for all humanity. The Feria of December 20, a legacy of the ancient “Golden Mass”, celebrates the Angel’s announcement to Mary (Lk 1:26-38), with the reading of Isaiah 7:10-14 (“Behold, the Virgin shall conceive”). The Feria of December 21 celebrates the Visitation and the canticle of the Magnificat. The Fourth Sunday of Advent is the “Marian Sunday preceding Christmas”: Mary, in her total consecration to God, is the sign of full openness to the God who comes.
The Virgin of listening
The Marian synthesis of Advent has at its center Mary’s attitude of listening. Her fiat is not only an act of obedience, but the most perfect expression of biblical faith: Mary accepts the word of God with humility, availability, and readiness, conceiving the Word in her heart before conceiving Him in her womb (Saint Augustine, Sermo 215,4). This faith of Mary is compared, in the liturgical tradition, to the faith of Abraham: just as Abraham believed in the impossible promise, Mary believes that “nothing is impossible for God” (Lk 1:37). Advent invites the whole Church to learn from Mary this fundamental attitude of faith as listening, welcoming, and abandonment to the plan of God.
Mary, synthesis of the messianic preparation
Mary is the “woman of the fullness of time” (cf. Gal 4:4): she closes an age and opens the future. In Mary all the hope of Israel converges, the oracles of Isaiah, the messianic psalms, the “daughter of Zion” who awaits the Messiah, and in her they are fulfilled in a unique and definitive way. The genealogy of Jesus (Mt 1) ends in Mary: she is the last link of a long chain of faith, the point of arrival of all God’s preparation. For this reason Advent, in recalling this preparation, places Mary at its center as the most beautiful face of that fruitful waiting.
The Virgin-Mother, type of the Church
Advent reveals Mary as type and model of the Church. The Spirit who descended upon Mary at the Annunciation (Lk 1:35) is the same who descended upon the apostles at Pentecost (Acts 1:8). Mary’s haste in visiting Elizabeth responds to the impulse of mission: Mary is the model of availability to the mission of the Spirit. The Church that celebrates Advent recognizes herself in this image: a community of the faithful that waits, listens, welcomes, and carries Christ to the world, after the example and with the intercession of the Virgin of Nazareth.
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Magisterium of the Church
In praeparatione ad Nativitatem Domini, Ecclesia proponitur imago Virginis Mariae quae, in Adventu, ipsa est signum spei et gaudii.
Paulus VI, Exh. Ap. Marialis Cultus, n. 4 (2 februarii 1974)
📚 Literal translation: In the preparation for the Nativity of the Lord, the Church proposes the image of the Virgin Mary who, in Advent, is herself a sign of hope and of joy.
Ecce virgo concipiet et pariet filium, et vocabetur nomen eius Emmanuel.
Isaiah 7:14 (Clementine Vulgate)
📚 Literal translation: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and shall bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.
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