There is a wonderful reflection on the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary today in the Office of Readings. It is written by St. Anselm, and I provide here an English excerpt translated from the Italian text I use.
“God gave Mary his only Son, whom he had generated from his own bosom as equal to himself and whom he loved as himself, and from Mary he molded (plasmare, in Italian) the Son, not as someone other but the same as him in such a way that according to his nature he was the only and same Son of God and Son of Mary. God created every creature and Mary gave birth to God: God that had created everything makes himself the baby (creature) of Mary, and has recreated thus all that he had created. While he had power to create everything from nothing, after the ruin of everything he willed to restore it with Mary….. God therefore is the father of all created things and Mary the mother of all recreated things. God is father of the world’s foundation, Mary the mother of its reparation since God had generated him through whom everything was made and Mary had given birth to him by whose work all things have been saved. God had generated him by whom all things absolutely exist, and Mary has given birth to him without whom nothing is well.”
I think this is a beautiful theology of Mary’s place in the salvation not only of we human’s, but all of creation. We sometimes forget that Jesus Christ redeemed not only mankind, but all of the created world.
Mary’s Immaculate Conception is such a marvel to celebrate today. Mary was conceived without sin, and remained sinless throughout her life by singular favor of God’s will who redeemed her even prior to her conception by the merits of the passion, death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus, who was her son too in the flesh.
