21/05/2026
Ave maris stella,
Dei Mater alma,
Atque semper virgo,
Felix caeli porta.
Solve vincla reis,
Profer lumen caecis,
Mala nostra pelle,
Bona cuncta posce.
Monstra te esse matrem,
Sumat per te precem,
Qui pro nobis natus,
Tulit esse tuus.
English:
Hail, star of the sea,
nurturing Mother of God,
and ever Virgin,
happy gate of Heaven.
Loosen the chains of the guilty,
give light to the blind,
drive away our ills,
obtain for us all good things.
Show thyself to be a mother,
may He accept prayers through thee,
who, born for us,
chose to be thine….
The hauntingly beautiful hymn, Ave Maris Stella, was sung recently during a procession by the sea on the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima in Manly – a fitting gesture as Our Lady Star of the Sea is the patroness of the Diocese of Broken Bay. The first four stanzas provide a summary of sorts for Mary in May, as Marian devotion and doctrine are placed within the context of the birth of the Church at Whitsunday/Pentecost.
As the Marian movement grew out of Lourdes and Fatima, a liturgical movement developed out of a renewal of Benedictine monasticism, which emphasised the role of Mary as an icon or type of the Church. The Marian movement focused on the subjective and personal, whilst the liturgical movement tended to characterize Marian piety as objective and sacramental. Although there was a certain degree of tension between these two movements, the Church ultimately regarded them as being complementary. Rather than presenting Mariology in a separate text, the Council Fathers at Vatican II sought to integrate Mariology into ecclesiology. Simply put, Mary is closely connected to the Church which is why Lumen Gentium has as its final chapter, “The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God in the Mystery of Christ and the Church.”.
Luke in his Gospel depicts Mary as twice heralding the Advent of Christ – at the Annunciation, when she awaits the birth of her Son, and at the beginning of Acts, when she awaits the birth of the Church. Godfrey of St Victor described the church as “reborn” from Christ’s opened side on the cross, since the church’s original birth was in Mary, whom Godfre calls prima Ecclesiae persona, the “first person of the Church”. Mary is present at the foot of the Cross, and at Pentecost. Cardinal Ratzinger summarized the connection between the subjective and objective aspects of Marian piety thusly:
At the moment when she pronounces her Yes, Mary is Israel in person; she is the Church in person and as a person. She is the personal concretization of the Church because her Fiat makes her the bodily Mother of the Lord. But this biological fact is a theological reality, because it realizes the deepest spiritual content of the covenant that God intended to make with Israel.
Ratzinger would go on to state that Marian piety involves the heart, affectivity, and thus fixes faith solidly in the deepest roots of man’s being. In the Church’s piety, Mary appears, so to speak, as the living Veronica’s veil, as an icon of Christ that brings him into the present of man’s heart, translates Christ’s image into the heart’s vision, and thus makes it intelligible. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” – Matthew 5:8 The organ for seeing God is the purified heart. It may be the task of Marian piety to awaken the heart and purify it in faith. Marian piety can help man to rediscover unity in the centre, that is, from the heart.
O Most merciful God, who for the salvation of sinners and the refuge of the wretched, hast made the Immaculate Heart of Mary most like in tenderness and pity to the Heart of Jesus, grant that we, who now commemorate her most sweet and loving heart, may by her merits and intercession, ever live in the fellowship of the Hearts of both Mother and Son, through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.
St John Henry Newman
Lumen Gentium can be found at: https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html
Ave Maris Stella: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z0O8X26UIU
