“”All of it glorifies Him. All of it points to Him””
...and so does the typology of Mary point to Him and you see the fullness of the Holy family,dear friend.In fact, everything about Our Blessed Mother glorifies her Son.
Ignorance of Mary is ignorance of Christ ,if you really think deeply enough you cannot separate them.
As GK Chesterton once said...
“When I was a boy a more Puritan generation objected to a statue upon my parish church representing the Virgin and Child. After much controversy, they compromised by taking away the Child. One would think that this was even more corrupted with Mariolatry, unless the mother was counted less dangerous when deprived of a sort of weapon. But the practical difficulty is also a parable. You cannot chip away the statue of a mother from all round that of a newborn child. You cannot suspend the new-born child in mid-air; indeed you cannot really have a statue of a newborn child at all. Similarly, you cannot suspend the idea of a newborn child in the void or think of him without thinking of his mother. You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother, you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows I as it is followed in history. We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross. -GK Chesterton
I wish you a Blessed evening!
stfassisi wrote:
“But the practical difficulty is also a parable. You cannot chip away the statue of a mother from all round that of a newborn child. You cannot suspend the new-born child in mid-air; indeed you cannot really have a statue of a newborn child at all. Similarly, you cannot suspend the idea of a newborn child in the void or think of him without thinking of his mother. You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother, you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows I as it is followed in history. We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross.”
I will take your word for it that this is to be attributed to G. K. Chesterton. In its own way it is a lovely picture. But GKC gets the parable a little wrong. His sentence, “you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows ...” Notice: “If ... the other idea follows ...”
The plain fact of the matter is that the mother/Child relationship of Mary and her Son is not “common human life.” And thus the analogy fails. Better to understand this way: The Byzantines (and others of the time) building on the foundation of the creeds routinely represented the mother and Child together in artistic representation. In this way they showed two very important facts: First, the true humanity of Him who is God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, something that the various Christological heresies tried to obscure, gainsay, or explain away. Second, they showed where salvation lay, that is, in the woman’s embrace of the Child. There is no doubt, if we would like to indulge in some OT/NT typology that Mary is the very personification of the faithful church, the church that believes and trusts her Lord in all things, but above all in the matter of salvation. She holds on to Him and will not let go.
This is the very sense of the Greek verb “tereo,” found so often in the NT (and so often lamentably translated by the execrable NIV as “obey”). For example, John quotes Jesus saying, “I anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.” (John 14:23-24) One cannot “cling” physically (or any other way) to Christ, as Mary Magdalene tried to do in the Garden on resurrection morning. (John 20:17) No, one can only cling to Him, hold Him, keep Him, through faith, the very “organon leptikon” God Himself gives each of us by grace alone, faith that clings to Him in the Gospel, given us in Word and sacrament, in St. John’s parlance “keeps My word.” Mary is such a wonderful and beautiful picture of the faith and trust and serenity of the Holy Christian Church as she clings in faith to her Savior.
It is contrary to the very picture Scripture itself paints, that the church would venerate her, for she is church. Ought man venerate himself? I think not.
I will agree with Chesterton in this, to tear the Child out of Mary’s arms is horrible, if not anti-Christian. Let Mary be Mary and Christ Christ, and all is well.