MARY FOR TODAY Original title: Maria fur haute

HansUrs von Balthasar

MARY FOR TODAY

Original title: Maria fur haute 1987

Translator  by Robert Nowell

St. Paul Publications1988

3. The teacher of the Church

What Mary wants throughout the ages of the Church is not that we should venerate her as an individual but that we should recognise the depth of God's love in the work of his incarnation and redemption. Since she lived in the house of the beloved disciple, it would be astonishing if the gospel of the love of the triune God made manifest in Christ had not been inspired also by her presence and what she had to say. Certainly it is characteristic that the first apparition of Our Lady about' which we learn from trustworthy sources is the vision of Origen's pupil Gregory the Wonder-worker, recounted by Gregory of Nyssa, which he had when preparing to be ordained as a bishop. While one night he was pondering on the words of faith, a form appeared to him, an old man in the attitude and dress of a priest, who told him he would show him the divine wisdom in order to remove his uncertainty. Then he gestured sideways with his hand and showed him another form of more than human dignity and almost unbearable splendour. This said to John the Evangelist that he should expound the mystery of faith to the young man, whereupon John said he would gladly comply with the wishes of the mother of the Lord, and explained the mystery of the Trinity to Gregory in clear words. Gregory wrote what was said down at once and later preached on this to the people (Patrologia graeca vol. 10 cols 984-988, vol. 46 cols 909-913). It is one of the finest and clearest credal formulae that we have.

Mary's concern is also made clear in the words that Ephraem the Syrian put into her mouth as an address to her son:

"While I gaze on your outward form which can be seen with physical eyes, my spirit comprehends your hidden form. With my eyes I see the form of Adam, in your hidden form I see the Father dwelling in you. It is only to me that you have shown your glory in both forms. May the Church too, like your mother, see you both in your visible and in your mysterious form!"

It is only in heaven that we shall appreciate how much the Church owes to Mary in understanding the faith, and indeed the "simple" much more than the "clever and wise". It would thus be impossible to write a history of Mary's teaching through the centuries. But we can venture to say something about the sense and meaning of the apparitions of Our Lady that have been so many in recent times. Because Mary was so con­templative on earth, says Adrienne von Speyr, she can be so active in heaven, namely by letting the Church share in the superabundance of her memory. Simply by the fact that she shows herself she already leads us into the mystery of what the Church is in its essential nature: a pure work of God's grace. Mary is able, precisely in a spirit of complete humility, to point to herself because she is thereby pointing to nothing other than what God's almighty grace is capable of and at the same time what we should strive after in order to become proper vessels for this grace, in order to play the real role of the Church (as the body and bride of Christ) correctly in its mission of salvation for the world.

Again and again in recent Marian apparitions the rosary has played a part: it has happened that Mary has fingered the beads along with those praying the rosary. Why should this be? So that we should prefer to pray to her and not to Christ or to the Father? On the contrary, so that it is from her point of view, from her memory that we should look at the mysteries of Jesus's life, and thereby at those of the trinitarian embodiment of salvation. Our eyes are bleary and dull: if you will forgive the metaphor, we must put on Mary's spectacles in order to see exactly. "He who was scourged for our sake": what this means only becomes to some extent clear to us if we are aware of the effect this scourging had on Mary's mind and heart. It is not a question of a little bit of sympathy: the weeping daughters of Jerusalem were turned back on the way to the cross. But his mother walked alongside unrecognised and veiled, in complete strength and at the same time weakness: her heart is the true napkin of the legendary Veronica. What Christ is for her, what God is for her, becomes the primal and primary image of what he should be for us, and this takes place when in simplicity we try to look through her at the mysteries of our redemption.

We are forgetful. Things we have already heard of too often fade in our memory. But Mary's memory is throughout all these thousands of years as fresh as on the first day. Let us let her appear daily before our eyes, as she may appear visibly to children she has chosen. There is no abyss between them and us. Rather it is as John the Evangelist says, that for living Christians faith and knowledge are one. "We have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God" (In 6:69). "Now we know that you know all things ... ; by this we believe that you came from God" (In 16:30). Faith is the surrender of the entire person: because Mary from the start surrendered everything, her memory was the unsullied tablet on which the Father, through the Spirit, could write his entire Word.

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