November 21

Devotion to Mary is primarily incarnational—that is, it is oriented toward the Lord who comes into the world. Its goal is to learn with Mary how to rest in Jesus’ presence. The feast of her assumption into heaven, which acquired new importance when the dogma was proclaimed in 1950, puts emphasis likewise on the transcendency of the Incarnation. To Mary’s way there belongs also that sense of being rejected (Mk 3:31–35; Jn 2:4) that, at the foot of the Cross when Jesus gave her to be the mother of John (Jn 19:26), became a sharing in the rejection Jesus himself experienced in the Garden of Olives (Mk 14:34) and on the Cross (Mk 15:34). Only from such a rejection can a new order arise; only by his going away can the real coming occur (Jn 16:7). Hence devotion to Mary is always also devotion to the Passion. In the aged Simeon’s prophecy that Mary’s heart will be pierced by a sword (Lk 2:35), Luke has already linked Incarnation and Passion, joyful and sorrowful mysteries. In the piety of the Church, Mary appears, as it were, as the living Veronica icon, as the icon of Christ that makes him present to the human heart, transfers his image into the purview of the heart, and so makes it comprehensible. In view of the mater assumpta, of the Virgin Mother taken up to heaven, Advent acquires an eschatological character; Incarnation becomes a way that, on the Cross, does not revoke the taking of flesh but gives it its final definition. In this sense, the medieval extension of devotion to Mary beyond Advent and to the whole range of salvation mysteries is in complete accord with the logic of biblical faith.

From: Ordinariatskorrespondenz, no. 19, 1978

 Ratzinger, J., Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year (ed. I. Grassl) (San Francisco 1992) 367-368.