By Scott P. Richert, About.com GuideOctober 15, 2010
On Monday, October 11, 2010, at the opening session of the Seventh General Congregation of the Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a rare unscripted homily that may well be seen by future generations as one of the defining moments of his pontificate. In just under 2,200 words, the Holy Father demonstrated the depth of his theological understanding, explaining in simple terms the Church's Marian doctrine, Her understanding of the historical centrality of the Incarnation, the role of the Church throughout history, the false gods of the past and the present who stand in the way of the Church as She attempts to fulfill her mission, and the source of the Church's strength that will ultimately lead to Her triumph.
The homily is so rich that I intend to examine it in parts over the next few days. We'll begin, as Pope Benedict did, with his exposition of the Church's Marian doctrine.
October 11 was, in the traditional calendar, the feast of the Divine Maternity of Mary, and Pope Benedict noted that, when Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council on this day in 1962, he "wanted to entrust the entire council to the motherly hands, to the motherly heart of the Virgin Mary." The feast was introduced by Pope Pius XI to commemorate the declaration, at the Council of Ephesus (431), that the term Theotokos—Mother of God—was properly applied to the Virgin Mary. In this declaration, "the Council of Ephesus had summarized the entire doctrine on Christ, on Mary, the entire doctrine of the redemption."
God became man, through the humble and loving action of the Virgin Mary in accepting God's will. In allowing God to become incarnate in her, the Mother of God was "drawn by the Lord into himself, and so all of us with her."
But Mary's role in the divine plan of salvation did not end with the birth of Christ. As Pope Benedict notes, at the end of the Second Vatican Council, "Pope Paul VI acknowledged the Virgin Mary with the title 'Mater Ecclesiae'" (Mother of the Church):
In my next post, we'll examine Pope Benedict's similarly succinct yet profound examination of the centrality of the Incarnation. In the meantime, you can read an English translation of the transcription of the homily on the indispensable Chiesa News website.
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Last week, I examined Pope Benedict's discussion of the Church's Marian doctrine in an unscripted homily at the opening session of the Seventh General Congregation of the Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops. My post, however, barely scratched the surface of this remarkably deep homily. Among other things, Pope Benedict's words also remind us of the centrality of the Incarnation, not only to Catholic belief but to the history of the world.The homily is so rich that I intend to examine it in parts over the next few days. We'll begin, as Pope Benedict did, with his exposition of the Church's Marian doctrine.
October 11 was, in the traditional calendar, the feast of the Divine Maternity of Mary, and Pope Benedict noted that, when Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council on this day in 1962, he "wanted to entrust the entire council to the motherly hands, to the motherly heart of the Virgin Mary." The feast was introduced by Pope Pius XI to commemorate the declaration, at the Council of Ephesus (431), that the term Theotokos—Mother of God—was properly applied to the Virgin Mary. In this declaration, "the Council of Ephesus had summarized the entire doctrine on Christ, on Mary, the entire doctrine of the redemption."
God became man, through the humble and loving action of the Virgin Mary in accepting God's will. In allowing God to become incarnate in her, the Mother of God was "drawn by the Lord into himself, and so all of us with her."
But Mary's role in the divine plan of salvation did not end with the birth of Christ. As Pope Benedict notes, at the end of the Second Vatican Council, "Pope Paul VI acknowledged the Virgin Mary with the title 'Mater Ecclesiae'" (Mother of the Church):
Because Christ was not born as an individual among others. He was born to create a body for himself: he was born - as John says in chapter 12 of his Gospel - to draw all things to him and in him. He was born - as the letters to the Colossians and to the Ephesians say - to recapitulate all the world, he was born as the first-born of many brothers, he was born to reunite the cosmos in himself, such that he is the head of a great body. Where Christ is born, there begins the movement of recapitulation, the moment of the calling, of the construction of his body, of the holy Church. The Mother of "Theós," the Mother of God, is Mother of the Church, because she is Mother of the one who came to reunite all in his risen body.We can see how the two titles, Theotokos and Mater Ecclesiae, are really one and the same, the Holy Father says, by examining the "parallelism between the first chapter of [Saint Luke's] Gospel and the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, which repeat the same mystery on two levels." In Luke 1, Mary accepts the will of God at the Annunciation, and Christ is conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. In Acts 1, Mary is in the Upper Room with the disciples at Pentecost, "imploring the cloud of the Holy Spirit":
And so from the believing Church, with Mary at the center, is born the Church, the body of Christ. This twofold birth is the one birth of the Christus totus, of the Christ who embraces the world and us all.If there has been a better, more succinct statement of the Church's Marian doctrine, I'm unaware of it. And remember, this was an unscripted homily, delivered without notes of any kind.
In my next post, we'll examine Pope Benedict's similarly succinct yet profound examination of the centrality of the Incarnation. In the meantime, you can read an English translation of the transcription of the homily on the indispensable Chiesa News website.
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"A woman is Mother of God. One might say: how is this possible?" How, indeed? While Catholic theology owes much to Aristotle, as the Holy Father points out "Aristotelian philosophy tells us that between God and man there exists only a non-reciprocal relationship." That which is unchanging (God) cannot become one with that which changes (man).
And yet that is precisely what happened at the Incarnation. Christ "was not born only as a man who had something to do with God, but in him God was born on earth. God came out from himself."
But just as importantly, "God has drawn us into himself, so that we are no longer outside of God, but we are inside, inside God himself." Here Pope Benedict echoes the Athanasian Creed, which says that God became man "not by the conversion of the Divinity into a human body, but by the assumption of humanity in the Godhead." Through the Incarnation, God does not change, but He changes man by making us "participate in his interior relationship."
In the previous post, I mentioned that Pope Benedict showed how two titles of Mary, Theotokos (Mother of God) and Mater Ecclesiae (Mother of the Church), are really the same, because "Where Christ is born, there begins the movement of recapitulation, the moment of the calling, of the construction of his body, of the holy Church." The Church is the continuation of the Incarnation in time:
Birth in Bethlehem, birth in the cenacle [the Upper Room, where the Holy Spirit descended upon Mary and the disciples at Pentecost]. Birth of the Child Jesus, birth of the body of Christ, of the Church. They are two events, or one single event.But then the Holy Father reminds us of something that we too often forget:
But between the two really stand the cross and the resurrection. And only through the cross does the journey toward the totality of Christ take place, toward his risen body, toward the universalization of his being in the unity of the Church. And so, keeping in mind that it is only from the grain that falls to the ground that the great harvest comes, from the Lord pierced on the cross comes the universality of his disciples gathered into his body, put to death and risen.The joy of Bethlehem at Christmas is inseparable from the anguish of Golgotha on Good Friday. Only through His Death can Christ complete the construction of His Body, the Church. And only by uniting ourselves to Him in Baptism and through the daily sacrifices of our own crosses can we be resurrected in Him and become part of Christ's Body.
But in becoming part of the Church, we find that our journey is not at its end, but only beginning. In my next post, we'll examine Pope Benedict's explanation of the Church's role in history, and what our participation in the Church demands of us.
More on Pope Benedict's Unscripted Homily:
- Pope Benedict on the Church's Marian Doctrine
- English Translation of Pope Benedict's Unscripted Homily (at the Chiesa News website)
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Taken from: http://catholicism.about.com/b/2010/10/15/pope-benedict-on-the-churchs-marian-doctrine.htm
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