. . .the Virgin has been caught up in an
extraordinary way in the life and being, work and missions of the Holy Trinity.
Even in her earthly existence she already participates in the mystery of the
divine perichoresis, the inner processions of the Son and the Holy
Spirit from the Father, the mutual indwelling of the three in one, their giving
and receiving of the divine substance, their accepting and reciprocating the
divine love. Drawn into the heart of that eternal communion, she beholds at
once God as he is in himself and her own self as she is in her knowing her.
Obedient daughter to the Father, beloved mother to
his Son, faithful spouse to their Spirit, she is all things to him who
is all in all to her. (Oliver Treanor, “Mary as the Sacramental Matrix of
Ecclesial Personhood in Christ,” in Brendan Leahy and Séamus O’Connell, eds., Having
Life in His Name: Living, Thinking and Communicating the Christian Life of
Faith [Dublin: Veritas, 2011], 91-120, here, p. 92)
Since Mary is completely free from sin there is no
obstacle to her to this many-personed process of the Trinity’s self-revelation.
Her humanity is perfectly poised for God’s work; her virginal emptiness a
vacant space for his fecundity; her capacity for communion with him
untrammelled by rival relationships; her personhood open and available for the reception
of his divine will. Dwelling within the mutual indwelling of him who is
three, she is overshadowed by the Spirit, impregnated with the Son, drawn to
the Father by the inclination and attraction of grace as she recognises truth
and beauty and goodness in their absolute form as God. In Mary, the eternal
takes concrete shape historically so that what has become for us doctrinal and
sacramental is for her existential and primordial, an original experience of
the deposit of faith. (Ibid., 97)
