Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Pope Benedict on Dei Genetrix

Yesterday, in an unscripted address to the synod of the Bishops of the Middle East Pope Benedict  spoke of Our Lady as Theotokos, Dei Genetrix in the most beautiful and profound words that I think I have ever read on her. Sandro Magister offers an immediate translation and Rorate highlights a few selected paragraphs but this is worth reading and re-reading again and again.

3 comments:

Delia said...

Wonderful! Am so looking forward to part II of 'Jesus of Nazareth', which will no doubt contain more such reflections.

Mark said...

I agree with you, Father - it's an astonishing reflection on the Incarnation, Our Lady, Redemption, the Church.

It's also a brilliant analysis of why St Cyril of Alexandria and the Council of Ephesus are so important.

wheat4paradise said...

I think that this impromptu meditation might be one of the seminal statements of the Holy Father's pontificate. Aside from being a profound theological reflection on Dei Genetrix, it is a salvo across the bow of militant secularism.

These ideologies that are so dominant that they impose themselves by force are divinities. And in the suffering of the saints, in the suffering of believers, of the Mother Church of which we are part, these divinities must fall, what is written in the letters to the Colossians and Ephesians must come true: the dominations and powers fall and become subjects of the one Lord Jesus Christ.

Powerful stuff.

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