John realizes she is not just a tool, a means for God to become human. She is herself a feminine force in the cosmos of his visions, a complementarity whose presence will reveal itself more and more once Mary lies down with her forefathers and foremothers in death. She, like her son, will not die to die; she will die to live forever in the Trinity of Persons who chose her to bear Christ in time. She will merge with the Word and its eternal speaking. She will be God’s eternal choosing of male and female together, willed by the Father, embraced by God’s Spirit, birthing mother of the Son throughout eternity, revealing the humanity of God to humanity. She herself will appear again and again in time. In and out of eternity. She will be the new ark of the covenant, the eternal enfleshing of the Son of God.
—from the book Nourishing Love: A Franciscan Celebration of Mary
by Murray Bodo, OFM
