Our friend Karl Gervin, an Oslo pastor, gave us a reproduction of the Blessed Virgin Mary in November. The original is a statue that the Oslo Cathedral received from the Norwegian Parliament. This speaks to us of the absence of a separation between Church and State in Norway. We love this “Lutheran Virgin” in our Munkeby chapel, especially during this Advent season as we prepare for the coming of Christmas. It is this icon that inspired my homily for December 8th:
The salvation plan eternally willed by God, as given by St Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, makes the mystery of the Immaculate Conception more accessible. Rather than speaking of Mary’s “privilege” making her “exceptional,” he speaks of her anticipating in her being that which God wills that we become in our humanity. Both the virginity of Mary in her maternity and her bodily Assumption can be seen in the same sense. Mary enters the new creation, passing over the border from where John the Baptist or Precursor partakes of the old. Mary is the new Eve, named such by St Irenaeus together with Christ as the new Adam.
Why this emphasis on Mary when everything is already given us through Christ in his humanity? It seems to me the answer lies in the closeness of Mary’s humanity with our own. The humanity that is hers anticipates a new humanity that becomes something close and accessible. It is this that I love to contemplate in this reproduction behind me in the chapel. We first see a woman holding a child on her knees. Unlike the child, she has no halo; she is an ordinary woman. And yet this ordinary woman is indeed the Immaculate, the Blessed as our Orthodox brothers like to say, the icon of our fulfilled humanity. Mary is the Christ-bearer, the One who carries Christ.
