Vigils: Memorial of the BVM

MARY AND THE RETURN OF THE LORD
From a book by René Laurentin 6
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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 an 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.

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. In the city that is all light, the grandeur of Mary is no longer veiled by
any kind of shadow. 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. The grandeurs of hierarchy are effaced, and the grandeurs of
holiness, at last unveiled, shine forth in all their glory. 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.

6 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.