Ambrose of Milan: Mary is the type of the Church

As we already know, the holiest thing in the old covenant was the Ark of the Covenant. And for John, as for Luke, the ark of the New Covenant is Mary, who was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, and who is the cosmic woman of the Book of Revelation, and who therefore is the icon both of the virgin daughter of Zion and of the Church. And that, in turn, leads us to the reality summarized in the words of Ambrose of Milan: “Mary is the type of the Church.”

John sees Mary as a sign and icon of the Church, just as the early Fathers did. All of them thought her virginity, like Christ’s, was significant. For Mary is the model disciple whose sacrificial offering of virginity responds to Christ’s sacrificial offering, just as the disciple’s offering of the body as a “living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” is the fitting response of worship to the Lord (Rom 12:1). More than anybody, Mary models the self-donating love of the disciple in imitation of Christ. For her face is, as Dante said, “the face that is most like the face of Christ’s.”

[...] In every other case, the overture of grace is received imperfectly. But in one case – Mary’s – it received a perfect welcome on behalf of the whole Church, enabled (like all sacrificial gifts) by the power of God’s grace. Mary was the disciple who loved Jesus more deeply and lived with Him more closely than anyone, and the living sacrificial offering she made of her body was like nobody else’s. For Jesus Himself was the living sacrifice of her body and the very fruit of her womb. When the lance pierced His heart, it pierced hers, too (cf. Lk 2:34-35). No other disciple of Jesus has ever offered more to God than she offered.

Mark P. Shea

www.catholicculture.org