Sunday, February 03, 2008

Mary, Bride Of The Logos


“…From the moment of her creation and in virtue of the intention of her Creator, which underlies her creation, Mary was specially intended for the union as bride with the Logos and, as it were, was created in this union; and also that, by virtue of this intention of God, the entire existence of her person has grown together with her relation to the divine person of her Son, in a manner analogous to the existence of the flesh of Christ with His hypostatic union.

The analogy between the relation of Mary and of the humanity of Christ to the Logos, expressed in the ‘marriage with the Logos,’ is particularly revealed in this, that Mary is characterized in a signal manner in the language of the Church as ‘house and seat of the godhead’ or of the eternal Wisdom. She is as a house and seat in which in the real meaning of the word, the fullness of the divinity, is so infused as to dwell bodily therein. The eternal Wisdom is so implanted and deeply rooted in her that she seems to have grown together with Him. This, too, is the deeper meaning of the representation of Mary in the Apocalypse: the woman clothed with the sun.

By virtue of this relation to the Logos, Mary is in a special manner the ‘mirror’ and ‘image of God,’ because she is in the Logos illuminated through the radiation of the light of the godhead and permeated with the essential dew of the strength of God. As she is compared with the sun in the bride of the Canticle of Canticles, she appears also under both these names as assimilated to the Logos in the quality proper to Him which is characterized by the same names. She is consequently His ‘likeness’ or His ‘glory,’ in the same way as, according to St. Paul, the woman is the likeness and the glory of the man.”

-Matthias Scheeben in Mariology vol. 1

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