Vigils Reading – Memorial of BVM

A reading from

FR RENE LAURENTIN

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It is of the essence of the Christian message that we shall turn our gaze to

the future, to the completion and consummation of all things which the Lord’s

return will bring about.

At that time (already present in the eternity of God), the frontiers between

the earthly and the heavenly are abolished. The corporal world is transfigured,

God is all in all. Time, too, is abolished for the Church. This fragmentary

duration of time, linked up with humanity’s advance along the road to their

salvation, gives place to the infinitely simple rhythm of eternity: the rhythm of

God which gathers together every duration of time and heaps up every hope.

Here the task of Mary, as mother, comes to and end, but her love remains. For

her, at the heart of things, nothing changes. It is the Church which changes, and

only for the reason that its situation is modified.

From the outset Mary had preceded the Church at every stage of its life,

and here we see the Church joining her once more. Between them there is no

longer any difference in the realm of place and time. The tension of nature over

against heaven, of time over against eternity, has been abolished. At the end of

the journey, there they are, perfectly reunited in the place and at the time of

which God is the measure… Mary was the first personal realization of what

awaits the redeemed. She is that still, but the distances have been done away

with.

7 Court traité sur la Vierge Marie, Lethielleux, Paris, 1967, pp. 156-157; reprinted in ALectures chrétiennes pour notre

temps@ (M 82): 8 1971, Abbaye d’Orval, Belgium.15

The Church continues to look at Mary in Christ, but in a different way: no

longer as its future and as a token of its hope, but only as the summit of its

communion in Christ. The Church used to look at Mary [in the same way] as a

fleet in the storm looks at the first ship which has crossed the bar and reached

port. Now, the Church has re-joined her at the end of the voyage. There is no

longer either separation or distance, but common joy in reunion in Christ, and

this dialogue between them is nothing but the overflowing abundance of their

thanksgiving.

In this communion, of which Christ is the beginning and the completion,

we see again the situation of Pentecost: Mary in the Church, but beyond this

world… The hierarchy, which was the visible summit of the Church here below,

no longer has any purpose. The world of the signs and means of grace which it

administered in this lower world has passed away, and only the realities

remain… In the crowd of the redeemed, ranged henceforth according to their

union with Christ and no longer according to their function, the Mother of

Christ occupies the first place, without common measure with the others. She is

seen in the pure truth of the situation in which God has placed her, at a higher

level of grace and glory than that of the others: between the Redeemer who

reigns over her from the infinitude of his Godhead and the remainder of the

redeemed whom she enfolds in her maternal love, she exults in the joy of

reunion. Here her Magnificat achieves completion.