Scripture scholarship bears fruit for the whole Church when it calls forth serious studies and discoveries, deep reflection, "lectio divina," personal conversions, authentic piety and rich, biblical based devotions for the People of God. We are not a people of the book, but a people of the Living Word of God that introduces us to a person who is Christ.
Perhaps this is why the synod is calling for a new paradigm through which we approach the Word of God, and welcome that word into our own lives. In his opening address to the synod, which set the tone for all discussions and deliberations, the ""relatore generale,"" Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Quebec City, said: "A woman, Mary, perfectly accomplishes the divine vocation of humanity by her 'yes' to the Word of Covenant and her mission. Through her divine motherhood and her spiritual motherhood, Mary appears as the permanent model and form for the Church, like the first Church."
The event of the annunciation and Mary's life illustrate and recapitulate the structure of the Covenant of the Word of God and the responsorial attitude of faith. They emphasize the personal and Trinitarian nature of faith, which consists in a gift of the person to God who gives himself through revealing himself. "This attitude is the attitude of saints. It is the same as the Church's who never ceases converting to her Lord in response to the voice addressed to her". This is why attention to the figure of Mary as model and even archetype of the Church's faith appears to be capital to concretely operate a change of paradigm in the relationship with the Word of God.
When Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, he referred explicitly to the biblical story of the Annunciation in Luke''s Gospel. The angel Gabriel's salutation, "Hail, full of grace," is understood as recognizing that Mary must always have been free from sin. No other human being collaborated in the work of redemption as Mary did. The Early Church wanted to explain in a plausible manner how God''s Son could be "completely human, yet without sin." Their answer was that the mother of God must have been without sin.
The Church celebrates Mary's final journey into the fullness of God's Kingdom with the dogma of the Assumption promulgated by Pius XII in 1954. As with her beginnings, so too, with the end of her life, God fulfilled in her all of the promises that he has given to us. We, too, shall be raised up into heaven as she was. In Mary we have an image of humanity and divinity at home. God is indeed comfortable in our presence and we in God's. Through her Assumption, Mary was chosen to have a special place of honor in the Godhead.
