Rediscovering The Sense of Mystery
By Cajetan Cuddy, O.P.
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As a young student . . . I was so engrossed in the many and varied questions of critica and metaphysics that I was in danger of losing my simplicity and elevation of mind and balanced judgment. It was then I realized that I needed a spiritual mother with unlimited kindness and wisdom.Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange consecrated himself and his work to the Holy Mother of God. Theologians, Thomists, and contemplatives alike require Mary’s spiritual maternity. For only in Mary does one really learn what it means to live in obedience to the truth: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Mary’s consecration to the truth was such that she conceived the Eternal Word in her womb. All those who seek the grace of the word must seek the assistance of the Blessed Virgin. She remains for all generations the Holy Mother of God: “the Virgin Mary is called ‘the Mother of God’ because she is the mother of Jesus, who is God.” Her being and identity are only understood in light of her predestination to the divine maternity. “By one and the same decree the Father predestined Jesus to natural divine sonship and Mary for the divine maternity.” The metaphysics of Mary’s maternity causes angelic intellects to bow in reverence before the wisdom of God. Garrigou-Lagrange was no different.
Since the value or worth of a relation depends on the term which it regards and which specifies it . . . the dignity of the divine maternity is measured by considering the term to which it is immediately referred. Now this term is of the hypostatic order, and therefore surpasses the whole order of grace and glory. By her divine maternity Mary is related really to the Word made flesh. The relation so set up has the uncreated Person of the Incarnate Word as its term, for Mary is the Mother of Jesus, Who is God. . . . It is He and not His humanity that is the Son of Mary. Hence Mary, reaching, as Cajetan says, even to the frontiers of the Divinity, belongs terminally to the hypostatic order, to the order of the personal union of the Humanity of Jesus to the Uncreated Word.Mary conceived the Eternal Word himself in her sacred womb. She was shaped by the wisdom of God who ordained that she should be a holy dwelling place for the Son (see Revelation 21:3). Finally, the reality of her identity reaches “even to the frontiers of the Divinity.” Our Lady makes a summary statement easy to formulate. The legacy of Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., retains a lasting value. It reminds the world that the theologian, the Thomist, and the contemplative each receive their identity through a real relation to the Eternal Word—in Mary. Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877-1964) was a French theologian and leading Thomist of the twentieth century who taught at the Dominican Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelicum, in Rome from 1909 to 1960. He was both a teacher of Jacques Maritain and the director of Pope John Paul II's first doctoral thesis. His book The Sense of Mystery: Clarity and Obscurity in the Intellectual Life has been translated into English by Matthew K. Minerd and is available from Emmaus Academic.