ESBVM

On Thursday 27 November 2008 at the Oratory, Woodstock Road, Oxford, Dr David Fagerberg, Assistant Professor of Theology at Notre Dame University, Indiana, USA, spoke to the Oxford branch on Mary as Liturgical Person.

He said that liturgy reveals Mary’s place in the history of salvation: she is for us the model of liturgical life, and as such is the icon of humanity in its fulness. Whereas Mary is the Church as it dawns in a single person, understanding Mary as liturgical person will reveal not only her identity but ours too, for she is archetype of what we are called to become. Mary’s liturgical personhood is sacrificial (in her virginity) and sacramental (in her motherhood), just as sacrifice and sacrament are united in our liturgy, for liturgy is the trysting point where heaven, bending down, kisses earth, and earth, yearning upwards, kisses heaven. Mary is God’s way down to man, and man’s way up to God. As mother of Jesus Mary is the source of all the sacraments. In iconography, Mary is in the midst of the apostles both at the Ascension and the Dormition. As Mother of the Church, she is the vine that bears apostolic fruit. ‘The Theotokos is the icon of the Church. Mary is the personification of the Church’s sacrificial orans. She is the personal image of response, adoration, encounter, presence, glory, and ultimately, a mystical marriage … Mary is sacrificial person, the purest offering by the human race.’

On Thursday 26 February , at Blackfriars. the Revd Dr Mark Chapman, Vice-Principal of Ripon College Cuddesdon and Reader in Modern Theology in the University of Oxford, spoke on Mary, Pusey, Newman and Reunion. We hope to publish this shortly as one of our occasional papers.

Our meeting at 7.30 for 8 pm on Tuesday 19 May at the Ursell Room, Pusey House with Ian Boxall, Senior Tutor at St Stephen’s House, Oxford, and author of Revelation: Vision and Insight (SPCK 2002) who was to speak on .’A Great Sign in Heaven’: Mary in the Reception History of the Book of Revelation.