A Theological Reflection
The Nativity, Sano di Pietro
Vactican Museum
Light on Our Blessed Lady:
Chapter Eight of Lumen Gentium
by Eamon R. Carroll, O. Carm.
Part One and Part Two are located in Archived Theological Reflections.
Short of access to a Greek/Latin thesaurus the ordinary reader is poorly served by the words joined to "mediatrix." "Advocate" conveys the Blesed Virgin's intercession, and is familiar from the "Hail Holy Queen," said at the end of Mass in bygone days. "Auxiliatrix" and "Adjutrix" are transliterations that suffer from the same over-indebtedness to Latin as "Mediatrix." Some translators suggest "helper' or simply "help" for Auxiliatrix" -- one thinks of "Help of Christians," the title John XIII used in opening the Council on October 11, 1962. For "Adjutrix" "Benefactress" has been proposed.
The Council commonly referred to Mary as "spiritual mother," sometimes with warmth, e.g., no. 62: "by her maternal charity she cares for the brethren of her Son, who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers and difficulties, until they are led into their blessed home." Also "mother to us in the order of grace" (no. 61), and at the end of no. 67 that we be "moved to a filial love towards our mother and to the imitation of her virtues."
The central section of chapter eight is "Mary and the Church," (nos. 60-65), rightly regarded as the peculiar focus of the Council with respect to our Lady. The liturgy constitution had already illuminated the Mary-Church bond: Mary is the faultless model of the Church's own aspirations. She is the one most excellently redeemed, now in the joyful fulfillment of union with the Risen Redeemer, her Son. Both the Incarnation and the Redemption concern her intimately. Mother of the Word-made-flesh, radically redeemed in anticipation of her Son's saving work, Mary of Nazareth is part of the public history of salvation.
In spite of high hopes that the Council's advocacy would promote extensive consideration of Mary's role in ecclesiology as well as Christology, the past few decades have left in the lurch conciliar as well as scriptural, patristic and liturgical leads in this important direction. Both before and after the Council, Cardinal deLubac (and a few others) described the parallelism between Mary and the Church as "one of the major characteristics of Catholic thought," holding the "mystical analogy" between Mary and the Church to be no less clearly perceived in our day than at the time of Ambrose and Augustine. Recall the concluding chapter of deLubac's great work, The Splendor of the Church, and his 1966 address at University of Notre Dame, "Lumen gentium and the Fathers."
Part Four of this article will be placed on this page in early December, 1999.
Fr. Eamon R. Carroll, O. Carm., is professor of theology at Loyola University Chicago.
This article first appeared in Catholic Dossier, Issues in the Round, vol 2 no.3, May-June 1996.
Archived Theological Reflections
