Mary [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Of Mary, Mother of the Lord, the Church has said great things. The dogma defined in 1854 declares her to have been sinless from the first moment of her conception—never, that is, to have borne the human heritage known as original sin. The dogma defined in 1950 declares not only her soul but also her body to have been taken to heaven at the end of her earthly life, and it thus declares God to have freed her from all power of death. Those endowed with a sense of what is meaningful to Christians were deeply stirred by this latter proclamation of the Church. Some, with grateful heart, welcomed it as the final confirmation of what they had believed all along. Others, outraged, charged the Church with doctrine contrary to Scripture. Still others did not know what to think. All this serves only to stress how vital it is that of Mary right things be said. There is a way of speaking of Mary which presupposes that honour is proportionate to the abandon with which one encomium is piled upon another. The tendency to speak of Mary in unremitting superlatives is largely to be blamed for an aversion felt by some serious-minded people the moment her name is mentioned. Let us hear the voice of one who cannot be suspected of reducing the message of the Faith, that of none other than Teresa of the Child Jesus. Shortly before her death, the Saint of Lisieux made the following remark to a Sister: "Tf a sermon on the Most Blessed Virgin is to be fruitful, it must depict a real life, as it shines forth from the words of the Gospel, not a life such as someone might presume"—such as, that is, one might imagine. This is not to maintain that after Sacred Scripture has said the greatest thing about Mary that can be said—that she became the