Autor: Little, Joyce

Buch: The Church and the Culture War

Titel: The Church and the Culture War

Stichwort: Maria: hohe Bedeutung, Unauffälligkeit, Dürftigkeit d. Quellen; Relation: zweiter Adam (Christus) - zweite Eva : Mann - Frau;

Kurzinhalt: ... we ought to consider the possibility that the juxtaposition of value and inconspicuousness is itself part and parcel of what is revealed to us through Mary... The female side of creation reaches its highest expression in Mary not as the purely ...

Textausschnitt: THE UNOBTRUSIVENESS OF MARY

133c Many things could be said about Mary's discipleship and its meaning for us today. I am going to restrict myself to one facet of it, a facet which I think we find uncomfortable, even a little embarrassing, in this day and age. It has to do with the seeming inconsistency between the striking character of our dogmatic formulations about Mary, on the one hand, and the relative inconspicuousness of Mary in Scripture, on the other. If Mary is all we say she is—Mother of God, immaculately conceived, perpetually virginal, entirely sinless, mediatrix, co-redemptrix, Queen of Heaven—why do we see so little of her in the New Testament? Are we Catholics not distorting the Christian faith, building shrines to Mary when we ought to be praying to Christ? Is our Mariology not really Mariolatry?

134a If questions like that make us at all uncomfortable, it is because such questions make an assumption which most of us to one degree or another share—that the importance of something is somehow correlative to the publicity it is able to command. This is particularly true in our own day and age where attempts to command the attention of the various public media have become for some people almost a career in itself. "Who wouldn't want to be on the Phil Donahue Show?" as one guest of that show put it. (Fs)

I think it safe to say that Mary, were she walking the earth today, would walk miles out of her way to avoid the Donahue Show. We are told Mary stored up and pondered many things in her heart. But no one suggests she did so in order to write a bestseller or make the rounds of the talk shows. Mary's heart, we are told, was pierced by a sword. But no one suggests that she sought to capitalize on her own sufferings or turn them into a nifty little self-help book that would earn her fame and fortune. (Fs)

134b Instead of being uncomfortable about Mary's inconspicuousness in Scripture or apologetic about our faith regarding her enormous importance, we ought to consider the possibility that the juxtaposition of value and inconspicuousness is itself part and parcel of what is revealed to us through Mary. Perhaps discipleship requires us to embrace the silent, the hidden, the inconspicuousness, precisely because only there will we discover what is really important to us. (Fs)

134c Much of what Christ himself said certainly suggests this to be the case. Speaking of the Kingdom of God, which Catholicism has always identified in some fashion with the Church on earth, Christ characterized it in terms of a mustard seed, the salt of the earth, and the leaven in the bread. All of these images have one thing in common. They all suggest elements which go about their work silently in the hidden and inconspicuous recesses of life. If we reexamine Mary's life in her role as mother, particularly as it relates to specific events in her life, I think we shall recover there the enormous importance of the silent, the hidden, the inconspicuous achievement. (Fs)

135a Before addressing the significance of her motherhood, however, I would like to say a few words about her bridal character. I have already referred to the marital union which Ephesians 5 tells us applies in the first instance to Christ and the Church. Because Mary has always been closely identified with the Church, this bridal character of the Church has also been understood to apply to Mary in her relationship to Christ. As one systematic theologian today has pointed out, "The integral femininity of Mary is turned totally to her Son, as his integral masculinity is turned to her."1 Or, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, "she gave herself entirely to the person and to the work of her Son" (494). The relationship of Christ and Mary is therefore not the organic relationship of head and body, in which Mary, as body, could be reduced to pure passivity. Their relationship as the second Adam and second Eve is one of reciprocity and mutuality in which our creation in the image of God as male and female is not only once again set before us but irrevocably sealed in the actual relationship between Christ and Mary. The female side of creation reaches its highest expression in Mary not as the purely passive recipient of redemption but as the one who complements and completes the activity of Christ. Mary can therefore stand not only as the expression of what is most explicitly bound up with the feminine but also as the expression of what is most explicitly involved in being a disciple of Christ, a member of the Body of Christ, the Church, which is simultaneously his bride and entrusted with the responsibility of carrying to completion Christ's work of redemption. (Fs) (notabene)

135b From the relationship between Christ and Mary, we can gather that both male and female are active, though not in identically the same way. From the fact that Mary stands on the side of the female and also on the side of the Church in relationship to Christ, we can also gather that the activity of discipleship itself involves a distinctly feminine element for both male and female disciples of Christ. What is that distinctly female element and how does Mary help us to understand it? To answer these questions we must look to Mary's motherhood. (Fs)