Mary, Mother of Faith

Josef Weiger is called, as are not many, to speak of Mary—to speak of her from the depths of his heart, knowing well her greatness to be unique. He is called to speak of her in that sober recollection of Christian Truth which, as St. Teresa demands, shall picture our Lady’s life only as it shines forth from the words of the Gospel.

Mary, Mother of Faith by Josef Weiger (279 pages, Cluny Media)

Of Mary, Mother of the Lord, the Church has said great things. The dogma defined in 1854 declares her to have been sinless from the first moment of her conception—never, that is, to have borne the human heritage known as original sin. The dogma defined in 1950 declares not only her soul but also her body to have been taken to heaven at the end of her earthly life, and it thus declares God to have freed her from all power of death.

Those endowed with a sense of what is meaningful to Christians were deeply stirred by this latter proclamation of the Church. Some, with grateful heart, welcomed it as the final confirmation of what they had believed all along. Others, outraged, charged the Church with doctrine contrary to Scripture. Still others did not know what to think.

All this seems only to stress how vital it is that of Mary right things be said.

There is a way of speaking of Mary which presupposes that honor is proportionate to the abandon with which one encomium is piled upon another. The tendency to speak of Mary in unremitting superlatives is largely to be blamed for an aversion felt by some serious-minded people the moment her name is mentioned. Let us hear the voice of one who cannot be suspected of reducing the message of the Faith, that of none other than Teresa of the Child Jesus. Shortly before her death, the Saint of Lisieux made the following remark to a Sister: “If a sermon on the Most Blessed Virgin is to be fruitful, it must depict a real life, as it shines forth from the words of the Gospel, not a life such as someone might presume”—such as, that is, one might imagine.

This is not to maintain that after Sacred Scripture has said the greatest thing about Mary that can be said—that she became the mother of the Son of God—what we say about her should be little. What is meant is rather that our utterances be genuine in origin, have their source above all in Sacred Scripture.

The book here at hand does just this. I have known its author, the Reverend Doctor Josef Weiger, for more than half a century. We met at the University of Tübingen in the year 1906, when we were both studying theology there. The precise place of our meeting was a class on the New Testament. We then became the best of friends, and our friendship embraces a constant interchange of ideas on theological questions—and for that matter on other questions too.

I am prepared, therefore, to testify that Josef Weiger satisfies the two conditions which must be met by anyone striving for accuracy in regard to our blessed Lady.

The first of these conditions is that whatever concerns our blessed Lady be a matter most deeply dear to his heart, and that it always has been so. There are, perhaps, not many who have been able to implant the holy personage of our blessed Lady so deeply in the life of a parish as Father Weiger has in his.

The second condition is a knowledge of Sacred Scripture. After this I must say that I know no one so profoundly and intimately familiar with the Old and New Testaments as he.

Such familiarity comprises a great deal, above all an incessant reading, for only such reading can enable any single passage to speak with the resonance of the whole Bible. Such familiarity comprises further a grasp of Scripture rooted not alone in the intellect but in the heart besides, arising not only from the thinking that goes on in study but from the meditation that goes on in prayer. Lastly, this familiarity relies upon the ever-renewing labour on the numerous and difficult problems posed by Scriptural scholarship.

My dear friend Josef Weiger meets all these requirements. He is called, as are not many, to speak of Mary—to speak of her from the depths of his heart, knowing well her greatness to be unique. He is called to speak of her in that sober recollection of Christian Truth which, as St. Teresa demands, shall picture our Lady’s life only as it shines forth from the words of the Gospel.

Thus I do not doubt that this book will prove of practical use to its readers, and a joy to them as well.

This essay serves as the Introduction to Josef Weiger’s Mary, Mother of Faith.

Republished with gracious permission from Cluny Media.

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The featured image is “Nativity” by Fra Angelico, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.