MARY’S YES
(This is an excerpt from a short paper I wrote called “Relics, Creation, Appropriation, and The Church.” One of the things I explore in it is the relation between the Church, Creation, and Mary, particularly her “yes” to God.)
In other words, the world “finds its restoration and fulfillment in the Church.” 1 This order is vital. Because of this, the Church is not merely another sect, community, or movement.
The Church does not exist in order to fix a broken creation; rather, creation exists to realize the Church. To be sure, the Church’s coming into being does require the overcoming of sin, but that is quite different from saying that the problem of sin is the reason for the Church’s being. God made the world in order to make the Church, not vice versa. Scripture itself testifies to the logical priority of the Church over creation by referring to the Church as chosen in Christ before the creation of the world (Eph 1:4), or to Christ who was slain before the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8).6 The world, as Robert Jenson puts it, is the “raw material” from which God will bring the Church to perfection in Christ. The Church is not an entity within the larger culture but is a culture. 2
With Mary as our Mother, the Church is a transhistorical intercourse of flesh and Spirit, birthing Christ into the world. It is a womb: the generative gathering of loving consent, graced with newness of life, where creation can be transfigured. It is in Mary’s “yes” where the site of the Church’s origin within time can be found. If the Church is the mystical Body of Christ, and the ongoing work of the Total Christ (Christ and his Body) on earth, then Mary is the location of its historic beginnings. She mothers the Church in her womb by her response to God. In the new Eve’s consent, “the Church has its living and personal beginning.” 3 The Church is the collective “Yes and Amen,” born of a woman “in the fullness of time,” 4 within history, that births Christ in our midst, connecting us back to the world around us for our shared life and joy. In this way, “Mary represents the Church perfected by Christ: she already is what the Church as a whole will become at the end of history.” 5
The Church does not confess that Jesus was merely born, but born of a woman. This distinction informs everything.
Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press), Kindle Edition loc. 1206.
Simon Chan, Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshiping Community (InterVarsity Press) Kindle Edition p. 23.
Schmemann, loc. 1206.
Justo González, The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1 (HarperCollins), Everand Edition, p 27. References Gal 4.4 in its historical use, “when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman…”
Francesca Murphy, Mary: Mysteries of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Catholic Truth Society) Kindle Edition loc. 186.