Mary in Scripture, Liturgy, and the Catholic Tradition

As I write this, I think Fr. Laurentin is still alive, and closing in on 100 years old. He is the living voice of the transition from Christotypical to Ecclesiotypical Mariology, and one of the most active and influential of the reformers among the theological experts at Vatican II (reformers that included Joseph Ratzinger, Henri de Lubac, Louis Bouyer, Karl Rahner and his brother Hugo Rahner, Yves Congar, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla --- many of the theologians who after the council would become the voices of orthodox and traditional Catholicism).Fr. Rene Laurentin has authored a library of books over his long and distinguished career as one of the Catholic Church's leading Mariologist, including several volumes investigating the Marian apparitions at Medjugorie (sp?) as contributions to the decision of the magisterium on their validity. His systematic work on Mariology, "A Short Treatise on the Blessed Virgin Mary" is a recognized classic. His extensive biblical interpretation of Mary in Scripture and especially the Nativity narratives are still authoritative (see his, "The True Meaning of Christmas," written in part against Raymond Brown's, "The Birth of the Messiah").This brief book, written when Fr. Laurentin was 93 years old, and still as sharp as he was fifty years before, is two things at once. Laurentin's expressed purpose was to provide an easily accessible but complete introduction and orientation to Mariology for Catholic laity, and it serves this purpose ideally. I recommend this book on that alone. But, maybe subliminally, it is the summation and distillation of some seventy years of study of Mariology by one of the few truly great Mariologist of the 20th century. It is something like Fr. Laurentin's "last will and testament" for what absorbed his whole life --- the endless depths of the place and significance of the poor village girl from Nazareth at the very center and turning point of God's eternal plan of salvation.If you are new to, or beginning to get interested in, the study of the role and holy life of Mary of Nazareth, the Mother of God, I could not pick a better book as a place to start. If you are a seasoned Mariologist, Fr. Laurentin still has lessons to teach us and guidance to give us in this little coda to his life's work.

I found the book very similar to the writings of Emile Neubert on union with Mary. Perhaps the volume will be helpful to shedding light on a meaning of union that could escapes contemporary meanings of union. Spiritual intimacy enlarges the heart (dilatar). Physical intimacy tends to be limited to the rate of heart beat.

Excellent