sense of the sacred: The Holy Name of Mary

Monday, September 12, 2011

The Holy Name of Mary

Ave Maria! This name was inserted (in the Angelic Salutation) not by the Angel, but by the devotion of the faithful. The blessed Evangelist Luke says significantly, "and the name of the Virgin was Mary" (Luke 1:27). This most holy, sweet, and worthy name was eminently fitting to so holy, sweet, and worthy a virgin. For Mary means bitter sea, star of the sea, the illuminated or illuminatrix. Mary is interpreted lady. Mary is a bitter sea to the demons; to men she is the star of the sea; to the angels she is illuminatrix, to all creatures she is lady...

Let us pray, let us pray most devoutly to Mary and say: O Mary, Bitter Sea, help us, that we may plunged into the bitter sea of penance! O Mary, Star of the Sea, help us that we may be guided rightly through the sea of this world! O Mary, Light-giver, help us, that we may be eternally illumined in glory! O Lady Mary, help us by your government and empire that we may be filially governed. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

St. Bonaventure, OFM

Bishop and Doctor of the Church

(+1274)

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We ought to get back the dimension of the sacred in the liturgy. The liturgy is not a festivity; it is not a meeting for the purpose of having a good time. It is of no importance that the parish priest has cudgeled his brains to come up with suggestive ideas or imaginative novelties. The liturgy is what makes the Thrice-Holy God present amongst us; it is the burning bush; it is the Alliance of God with man in Jesus Christ, who has died and risen again. The grandeur of the liturgy does not rest upon the fact that it offers an interesting entertainment, but in rendering tangible the Totally Other, whom we are not capable of summoning. He comes because He wills. In other words, the essential in the liturgy is the mystery, which is realized in the common ritual of the Church; all the rest diminishes it. Men experiment with it in lively fashion, and find themselves deceived, when the mystery is transformed into distraction, when the chief actor in the liturgy is not the Living God but the priest or the liturgical director. - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Chile, 1988)

Do we still need sacred space, sacred time, mediating symbols? Yes, we do need them, precisely so that, through the "image," through the sign, we learn to see the openness of heaven. We need them to give us the capacity to know the mystery of God in the pierced heart of the Crucified. - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Spirit of the Liturgy )