Vigils Reading – Mary , Mother of God

THE PERFECT CHRISTIAN

From the book “Mary, Mother of the Lord” by Fr Karl Rahner

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What is perfect Christianity? Perfect Christianity must consist in

receiving this gift of the eternal God, God himself, in grace-given freedom, with

body and soul and all the powers of the whole being, with all one is and has, all

one does and suffers, so that this receiving of God takes up our entire nature and

our whole life-history into the eternal life of God. Perfect Christianity must

mean that our public and our private acts, what appears publicly before the

world in its history, and what takes place in the inner depths of conscience,

perfectly coincide and correspond.

What occurs there in the depths of Christian life becomes visible, and

conversely, what is visible and manifest, truly mirrors what is taking place in the

depths of the soul, in God’s presence. Christianity in its perfection must also

mean that this Christian’s perfect Christianity unconditionally serves the

salvation of others, and is only really perfect if it is actually devoted to all, from

the beginning to the end of time.

If that is what perfect Christianity is, then we can and must say that Mary

is the actual realization of it, the perfect Christian. If Christianity in its perfect

form is the pure acceptance of the salvation of the eternal triune God that has

appeared in Jesus Christ, Mary is the perfect Christian, the Christian human

being exemplified as such, because in the faith of her spirit and in her blessed

womb, with body and soul, then, and all the powers of her being, she received

the eternal Word of the Father. If perfect Christianity is the perfect

correspondence between outward mission in the history of salvation and

personal life, it is perfectly realized in Mary. She received visibly and tangibly

the Incarnate Word of the eternal Father, and so she is the most significant and

representative figure among the merely human beings in the externally visible

history of redemption. And at the same time she accepted fully and realized in

her personal life her unique office in the economy of redemption, with an

absolutely unconditional total consent in faith.

If Christianity is the radiating influence of one’s own grace in unselfish

service for the salvation of others, Mary is the most perfect instance of what it

means to be a Christian, for it was the salvation of us all, Jesus Christ our Lord,

whom she conceived by the consent of her faith and in the physical reality of her

divine motherhood.