J.M.J. "In another famous Sermon on the Sunday in
the Octave of the Assumption the Holy Abbot described
with passionate words Mary's intimate participation in the redeeming sacrifice
of her Son. 'O Blessed Mother', he exclaimed, 'a sword has truly
pierced your soul!... So deeply has the violence of pain pierced your soul,
that we may rightly call you more than a martyr for in you participation in the
passion of the Son by far surpasses in intensity the physical sufferings of
martyrdom' (14: PL 183, 437-438). Bernard
had no doubts: 'per Mariam ad
Iesum', through
Mary we are led to Jesus. He testifies clearly to Mary's subordination to
Jesus, in accordance with the foundation of traditional Mariology. Yet the text
of the Sermone also documents the
Virgin's privileged place in the economy of salvation, subsequent to the
Mother's most particular participation (compassio) in the
sacrifice of the Son. It is not for nothing that a century and a half after
Bernard's death, Dante Alighieri, in the last canticle of the Divine
Comedy, was to put on the lips of the Doctor Mellifluus the sublime prayer to
Mary: 'Virgin Mother, daughter of your own Son, / humble and exalted more
than any creature, / fixed term of the eternal counsel' (Paradise XXXIII, vv. 1 ff.)."
--Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, October 21, 2009
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