The Embrace of Joachim and Anna
The Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger at Loreto, September 8, 1991
The day of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary is not a birthday like any other. Celebrating the birthday of any great personage in history, we think of a past life, we think of things past, of deeds that have been achieved by such a person and of the legacy he or she has left. In short, we think about things of this world.
With the Mother of God, that is not so. Mary does not speak of and for herself. From the first moment of her life she was totally transparent for God, like a radiant icon of divine goodness. Mary, with the totality of her person, is a living message of God to us. That is why Mary does not belong to the past, she is contemporary to us all, to all generations.
With her openness to the will of God, she virtually turned over the human time of her own life into the hands of God, and thus united human time with divine time. With her permanent presence, therefore, Mary transcends history and is always present in history, present among us.
Mary represents in person the living message of God. But what does the life of Mary tell us exactly today, on the day of her nativity? It seems to me that this Sanctuary of Loreto, built around Mary’s terrestrial home, built around the house of Nazareth, can help us understand better the Madonna’s message of life.
These walls preserve for us the moment in which the angel came to Mary with the great news of the Incarnation, the memory of her answer: “Here I am, the handmaid of the Lord.” This humble home is a concrete and palpable witness of the greatest event in our history - the Incarnation of the Son of God.
The Word was made flesh. Mary, the servant of God, became the door through which God could enter our world. But not only the door. She became the “dwelling” of the Lord, a ”living home,” where the Creator of the world resided. Mary offered her body so that the Son of God could become one of us. And here we are reminded of the words with which, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, Christ began his human life, saying to the Father: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me… Then I said, 'As is written of me in the scroll, Behold, I come to do your will, O God.'" (Heb 10, 5-7). The handmaiden of the Lord says the same thing: you have prepared a body for me, here I am.
In this coincidence of the words of the Son with those of the Mother, heaven and earth not only touch each other but they unite, God the creator with his creature: God became man, Mary became the living house of the Lord, a temple where the Highest dwells.
To this we add another consideration: where God lives, we are all “at home”. Where Christ is, his brothers and sisters cannot be strangers. So it is also with the house of Mary and her life itself – it is open to all of us. The mother of Christ is also our Mother, of all those who have become the Body of Christ, the Church, who constitute the family of Christ Jesus. Those who are with Christ and his Mother - they are the family of God.
Mary has opened her life and her house to us because, opening herself to God, she opened herself for all of us, and offers us her house as the common house of the one family of God. We can say- home is where Mary is; where God is, we are all “at home.” Our faith gives us a home in this world and unites us all in one family.
But this raises a serious question: our faith tells us that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, one family – but we must ask ourselves, is this true? If it is not true, why not? Why do we have among us so much conflct, wars, cutting egoism?
The House of Nazareth is not a relic of the past; it speaks in the present and provokes an examination of conscience - to ask ourselves if we too are truly open to the Lord, if we wish to offer our lvies to him so he may dwell in us. Or do we fear the presence of the Lord? Do we fear that his presence could limit our human dignity? Do we perhaps want to reserve a part of our life to belong to us alone, not to be known to God, to be kept away from Him?
It seems to me that this House of Nazareth has, even from this point of view, a very precious symbolism. As you know, this House only has three walls – it is therefore an invitation, like an open embrace. It tells us: open up your homes, your your families, your lives, to the presence of the Lord.
This house is open to the family of God, to all the children of God, to the brothers and sisters of Christ. Let us be challenged, let us accept the word of the Mother of God who tells us: Come in, come into my house, so that even you may become, every day of your life, a dwelling for the Lord.
This House of Nazareth hides yet another message. We have said that God is not an abstract God, someone who is purely spiritual, far from us. Because God chose to be bound to the earth, to have a common history with us, a palpable, visible story, which we can see in the signs of his earthly existence like this house, but most of all, in the Church and its sacraments.
Our faith makes us “dwell” but also makes us “walk.” Here, too, the house of Nazareth keeps an important teaching. When the Crusaders transferred the stones of the house of Nazareth from the Holy Land to here, on Italian soil, they chose to place the Holy House on a road. I think it is very strange, because “house” and “road” seem to be mutually exclusive. Is it a house or is it a road? But that is the true message of this House, which is not the private house of any one person, or one family, or one clan, but is along the way for all of us, an open house for all. A house that both makes us dwell and walk.
Life itself is home for the family of God, which is on a pilgrimage with God, towards God, towards our final home, towards the “new city.” Here, we can be even more concrete. All the sanctuaries, the great sanctuaries of the world, have always offered to diverse nations, races, religions, this precious experience of being in the house of the family of all the children of God. But the experience of coming home presupposes the experience of a trip, of a pilgrimage. And pilgrimage is a fundamental dimension of Christian life.
Only through being on the way, on a pilgrimage, are we able to overcome the frontiers of nations, of religions, of races. We can become united only by walking together towards God. The significance of this “twinning” netween Loreto and Altoetting lies in this fact: It tells us that we must walk together, we must become pilgrims of the eternal, we should raise ourselves anew towards God, towards unity with him in the one family of God.
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Delivered by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, in the Marian Sanctuary of Loreto, on September 8, 1991, Feast of the Nativity of Mary, at a Mass that also marked the "twinning" of Loreto and the Marian pilgrimage site of Altoëtting in the Cardinal's native Bavaria as "twin cities."
Tradition has it that angels carried the House of Nazareth from the Holy Land to Illyria and then finally, in the early 13th century to Loreto in Italy. For more about the Holy House of Loreto, go to www.newadvent.org/cathen/13454b.htm
Icon: This contemporary icon, painted in the Novgorodian style, shows the gift of love between the parents of the Virgin Mary. It is the traditional marriage icon for Orthodox Christian. Painted by the Canadian iconographer Heiko C. Schlieper.
Collection: Private
Photograph: Harry Korol, 1995
