Friday 10 December 2021
Friday of the 2nd week of Advent
or Our Lady of Loreto
Spiritual Reading
Your Second Reading from the Office of Readings:
Friday of the 2nd week of Advent
From the treatise "Against the Heresies" by St Irenaeus
Eve and Mary
The Lord, coming into his own creation in visible form, was sustained by his own creation which he himself sustains in being. His obedience on the tree of the cross reversed the disobedience at the tree in Eden; the good news of the truth announced by an angel to Mary, a virgin subject to a husband, undid the evil lie that seduced Eve, a virgin espoused to a husband.
As Eve was seduced by the word of an angel and so fled from God after disobeying his word, Mary in her turn was given the good news by the word of an angel, and bore God in obedience to his word. As Eve was seduced into disobedience to God, so Mary was persuaded into obedience to God; thus the Virgin Mary became the advocate of the virgin Eve.
Christ gathered all things into one, by gathering them into himself. He declared war against our enemy, crushed him who at the beginning had taken us captive in Adam, and trampled on his head, in accordance with God’s words to the serpent in Genesis: I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall lie in wait for your head, and you shall lie in wait for his heel.
The one lying in wait for the serpent’s head is the one who was born in the likeness of Adam from the woman, the Virgin. This is the seed spoken of by Paul in the letter to the Galatians: The law of works was in force until the seed should come to whom the promise was made.
He shows this even more clearly in the same letter when he says: When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman. The enemy would not have been defeated fairly if his vanquisher had not been born of a woman, because it was through a woman that he had gained mastery over man in the beginning, and set himself up as man’s adversary.
That is why the Lord proclaims himself the Son of Man, the one who renews in himself that first man from whom the race born of woman was formed; as by a man’s defeat our race fell into the bondage of death, so by a man’s victory we were to rise again to life.
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Other choices for today:
Our Lady of Loreto
The statue of Our Lady in the Basilica della Santa Casa at Loreto.
A letter of Pope John Paul II
Mary, bodily and spiritual space of the Incarnation
The Holy House of Loreto is not only a “relic”, but also a precious and true “icon”. It is an “icon” not of abstract truths, but of an event and a mystery: the Incarnation of the Word.
The Incarnation, which is remembered within these sacred walls, at once regains its genuine biblical meaning. It is not just a doctrine concerning the union between the divine and the human, but rather an event that happened at a precise point in time and space, as the words of the Apostle marvellously bring to light: “When the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, born of woman”. Mary is that Woman. She is, so to speak, the “space” both physical and spiritual in which the Incarnation took place. But even the House in which she lived is a tangible reminder of the reality of this mystery.
The memory of the hidden life of Nazareth brings to mind specific questions touching the life of each man and each woman. It reawakens the sense of holiness of the family, immediately presenting a whole universe of values, today so threatened, such as faithfulness, respect for life, the education of children, and prayer. Christian families can rediscover all this within the walls of the Holy House, the first and most exemplary “Domestic Church” in history.
The Holy House recalls at the same time the greatness of the vocation to the consecrated life and virginity for the Kingdom, which had its glorious beginnings in the person of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
Then, to the young, who in countless numbers come as pilgrims to the Mother’s House, I would like to repeat the words I addressed to them on another occasion: “Walk towards Mary, walk with Mary – Let her fiat echo in your heart”. May the young renew, in light of the lessons of the House of Nazareth, their commitment within the Catholic laity to restoring Christ in hearts, families, culture and society.
There is also here the opportunity for a more in-depth study of the proper efforts in our times to recognise the place of women in the Church and in society. Due to the fact that God “sent his Son born of woman”, every woman was elevated, in Mary, to such a dignity greater than which no other can be conceived.
In addition, no theoretical consideration can ever exalt the dignity of human work more than the simple fact that the Son of God worked in Nazareth and wanted to be called “son of the carpenter”.
Finally, how can we fail to mention the “choice for the poor” that the Church made in the Council and reaffirmed ever more clearly afterwards? The austere and humble walls of the Holy House visually remind us that God himself had inaugurated this choice in Mary, who, as a conciliar text says, “stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently hope for and receive salvation from him”.
Still on this theme of poverty and suffering, the sick have had a privileged place in the history of the Shrine. They were among the first to hasten as pilgrims to the Auspicious House and to make it known to others. Where could they, moreover, be better welcomed, than in the House of Her whom precisely we invoke in the “Litany of Loreto” as “Health of the sick” and “Comforter of the afflicted”?
“May this Shrine of Loreto – as John XXIII said – be always a window opening onto the whole world, re-echoing those hidden voices which make known the sanctification of souls, families and peoples”.
Copyright © 1996-2021 Universalis Publishing Limited: see www.universalis.com. Scripture readings from the Jerusalem Bible are published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. Text of the Psalms: Copyright © 1963, The Grail (England). Used with permission of A.P. Watt Ltd. All rights reserved.