Reading: Memorial B. V. M.

A Reading about Mary and Waiting for Christ, from a book by Fr Jean Daniélou.[i]

             The Blessed Virgin had a most crucial role in the first coming of Christ.  In her culminated all the expectation of the Jewish people, insofar as all the prepara­tions, aspirations, inspirations, graces, which had filled the Old Testament, all came together and were summed up in her; it is true to say that at the eve of Christ’s coming she was the epitome and incarnation of the long waiting of twenty centuries.  The whole of the Old Testament seems to come together in her with a more ardent longing and a more complete spiritual preparation for Our Lord’s coming.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low.  The work of the Old Testament was one of education: the human race, rugged, coarse, as yet unformed, still utterly carnal-minded, must be made able, bit by bit, to take God’s gifts, to receive the Holy Spirit.  It was a long, progressive work of training.  And the training culminated in the soul of the Blessed Virgin; and if we can say that in some sense her soul is outside time, and that in her eternity is present, then we may also say that she was prepared by the education of the whole of her people: she is the marvelous flower sprung out of Israel, the final point in the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit in the souls of all the prophets and all the holy women of Israel.  It is in fact, ab­solutely true to say that in her every valley was filled, every mountain and hill brought low.  That is to say, in her our Lord’s path was smooth before Him.

            All this, which was simply the preparation and foreshadowing of Christ in Our Lady’s soul, is a reality still present to us, for the mystery we are now living in the world is the mystery of Christ’s gradual coming into all souls, into all nations.  Christ had appeared in the flesh, the culmination of Israel’s hopes; Mary had seen him for whom she had waited, she had held in her arms the child born in Bethlehem, and with Simeon had been able to salute Him as a Light to enlighten the Gentiles.  Christ, then, had certainly come.  He has come, but He is always He that is to come.  He has come, but not yet wholly come; and though the waiting of Israel had been crowned, Israel is nonetheless still waiting.  We live always during Advent, we are always waiting for the Messiah to come.  He has come, but is not yet fully manifest.  He is not fully manifest in each of our souls; He is not fully manifest in the world as a whole: that is to say, that just as Christ was born according to the flesh in Bethlehem of Juda so must He be born according to the spirit in each of our souls.

    [i].”Advent”, New York 1951, 102-103, 109-110.