[B.] St. IGNATIUS of LOYOLA Presentation: The ... - St. Gaspar Bertoni

INTEGRE;SJ-OFM
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- she is present in the three-fold colloquy of the First Week [SE # 63];
- she is present for the Incarnation [SE ## 103, 107-108] and the Birth of Jesus ;
- she is mentioned in the colloquy of the Two Standards [SE # 147];
- in the farewell to His Mother at the beginning of His Mission [SE # 273, 1];
- in the moment of the resurrection, Jesus chooses to make His first appearance to His
own Mother.
[2] In the unfolding of his Life, she is present at the moment
of his conversion [Autob., c. 1,n.10]. He experiences her mediation at LaStorta when he goes
there to be placed by the Father with His Son [c. 10, n. 96]. These are data that leave beyond
any doubt her primordial function in his life. She plays a role in her mediating access to the Trinity
as well as in the process of identification with Jesus with a view to sharing His Mission.
e.] She is present for the duration of Holy Saturday and in the
passing over from death to life of the Risen Lord, as noted in the text of the Exercises - hence,
she plays a role beyond compare. Her person is charged with a symbolic value, in her intimate
bond with the figure of the Church. The Church is also chosen to be blessed by the
appearances of the Risen Lord and Mary serves the Church with regard to all the appearances
that He has made.
f.] Ignatius presents Jesus’ descent into ‘Sheol’, where He sets free
the souls of the just -then comes to the sepulcher, and rising, appears in body and soul to His
Blessed Mother [cf. SE # 219].
[1] There is a note in St. Gregory the Great’s
Commentary in Job [Bk 29, c. 12, n. 23] to the effect that the Lord not only descended into this
world, but He also descended into the nether world for us. Christ, in descending, spontaneously
went to the depths of the sea when He placed himself into the abyss of the under-ground. He
went there to empty the souls of the elect from their confinement. Prior to the arrival of the
Redeemer, these depths under the sea were a prison, not a pathway. But, God converted the
abyss into a highway, because He granted to His chosen the possibility to pass over to heaven
from their imprisonment. This then, became the most new of the abysses, because in that our
sight cannot plummet the depths of the sea, in the same way, there is no human intelligence
which can penetrate the depths of the under-world.
[2] In much of the Eastern Church, the image of
Redemption is that Icon of the descent of Christ into the under-world. He springs open those
doors that had been perpetually closed. God died in the flesh, and was enveloped in the
underworld. God had slept for a little while and had summoned forth from their sleep those who
were living there. [Von Balthasar, “The Going to the Realm of the Dead”,in Mysterium
Paschale].
[3] The fact that Christ descended into Sheol signifies for
modern theology that he shared human death even to its ultimate consequences of dissolution,
anguish, distance from God and total emptiness. In similar manner to Him being really alone
among the living, He is now in solidarity in His tomb with the dead. The solidarity with the state of
the dead will then be the presupposition for the work of Redemption, whose efficacy is prolonged
even to the reign of the dead. Christ descended in to the land of forgetfulness to announce there
in a kerygmatic manner His salvation, transforming the deepest part of the abyss into a purifying
transition and pathway to salvation. In this manner God has illumined the death of those for
whom nothing had any more meaning - they were in the emptiness and the ignorance of ‘Sheol.’
[4] It is from these ‘depths’ that Jesus passes over into the
House of Mary, as the Risen One, in body and soul, to appear to His Blessed Mother. And this
encounter is the beginning of the understanding of Sacred Scripture. This is the beginning of the
Easter Consolation, in which there is most evident the Gift of the Holy Spirit.