Mary daughter of Israel: a dogmatic-liturgical analysis

Mary daughter of Israel: a dogmatic-liturgical analysis

Today our novena begins; we will go through the truth of the history of the Immaculate Conception, that is, of Our Lady of the Conception Aparecida. Many stories we have heard about how she was found, the miracles, the Shrine, the Mariological art that grows day by day. But in the midst of all this, today, over the course of the novena, we are going to recover the history of salvation that we celebrate in today’s liturgy. Mary, chosen Daughter of the stock of Israel.

  Mary belongs to a people to whom Salvation had been announced; she is daughter of Adam by birth, daughter of Abraham by faith, daughter of the Church through the jubilation of the exalted Daughter of Zion. In the fullness of time, the divine promise of salvation in history came to pass, and the Son of God in Mary’s womb became man like us! This is the mystery of our first day of the Novena.

In the first reading the Lord takes the initiative of going to Abraham in order to write with him a sacred history of the Covenant between YHWH and the Patriarch’s descendants. Who are these descendants? Those who preserve the divine blessing, those who journey through this world guided by the Word of God toward a promise: keep the faith all the days of your life, even when you do not understand, and I will give you the Promised Land.

In the Gospel we see where Mary comes from: from Abraham by faith, from David by the messianic promise, and the Messiah is the one who sets free from the idolatrous slavery of Babylon; and throughout the genealogy we find husbands, fathers, and four mothers. 

• Tamar who receives life from her father-in-law but secures descendants.
• Rahab who despite her work as a harlot saves the Hebrews by faith and works. 
• Ruth a widow who in her new marriage will conceive in Bethlehem.  
• Bathsheba, David’s adulteress but mother of Solomon, who succeeded his father on the throne.

At the end of this whole history, contorted in the encounters and missed encounters of the meaning of the history of the Covenant, the last woman appears, Mary; the definitive times were fulfilled. She is the Spouse of Joseph of the House of David, and from her and from her alone is born Jesus called the Anointed. After Mary we no longer have a genealogy of those who were born in the promise of the flesh and in the blood, as happened from Abraham onward, but only of those who are born of God, of the Spirit through Baptism; and this is how the Church, Mother through her Children and Virgin through election, learns from Mary to live the new and Eternal Covenant.

In the prayers we will pray next, it will be said about the offerings:

• Receive, O Lord, these gifts and transform them, by Your power, into the sacrament of salvation, in which, the sacrifices of the first covenant having ceased, the true Lamb is offered, Jesus Christ, born in a wondrous manner of the Immaculate Virgin.

And in the preface:

• You constituted the Holy Virgin Mary as the fullness of Israel and the beginning of the Church, 
• to manifest to all peoples that salvation comes from Israel and that the new family springs from the chosen stock. 
• By nature a daughter of Adam, Mary repaired with her innocence the guilt of Eve, the first mother. 
• By faith a descendant of Abraham, she conceived in her womb, because she believed. By generation she is the rod of Jesse, which flowered in Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Here we find the beginning of the novena of Our Lady of the Conception Aparecida.

To deepen the reflection on Mary as daughter of Israel and her place in the history of salvation, consult the encyclical Redemptoris Mater of John Paul II, which analyzes the faith of Mary in the context of the chosen people of Israel.

Deepen your studies: explore Mariology, Marian Theology, Marian apparitions, and the Postgraduate Program in Mariology.