“The season of Advent invites us to take seriously this language of God, the language of the flesh,” said Barringer. “(O)ver the centuries Christians have been tempted ... to shutter away from the things of the flesh. (But) we are not to be more fussy, more delicate, more prim and prissy than God; we are to be attentive to what is so central to His language.”
On Dec. 7 Barringer, the dean of studies at St. Augustine’s Seminary, held a one-day retreat addressing this concept of God’s language in the flesh by focusing on Mary. The lecture was part of the seminary’s lay formation program which seeks to empower and educate the average parishioner.
Barringer referred to Mary as “the new Eve, the mother of all creation,” because her immaculate conception represents the original message in the flesh from God to a human being. Unfortunately, too often she is pushed to the side as a human and held up as an icon, an idea rather than a being.
“All of us have been complicit in some ways of a sort of awkwardness about dealing with the role of Mary in our individual lives and in our common life.”
This has occurred post-Vatican II because a greater emphasis was placed on the human side, the flesh, of Jesus rather than His divine nature. The result has been a sidelining of Mary as the connection between the divine Word of God and the physical Word where it is projected, said Barringer.
“We’ve turned Mary ... into someone who is outside of our lives,” he said.
But that is the total opposite of what seeing the human side of Christ should do, he continued.
“The more we see the human in Christ the more, not the less, important is the personal experience and care of Mary in the formation of the humanity (of Christ),” he said. “The Virgin Mary is a sign that God has provided for us all. We are not at liberty to put her in the corner.”
When Barringer said that to roughly 20 lay people who attended the lecture, the brakes on Caterina Aguanno’s train of thought locked up for a moment.
“Father made a comment about how Mother Mary was an example of compassion and patient understanding for Jesus and it sort of stopped me in my tracks as I looked at Jesus recognizing His humanity but also His divinity,” she said.
“In His divinity He came to us in that way — compassionate, non-judgmental (and) ever loving. That is who He is and I never really stopped to think that His mother was the reflection for Him in that.”
With a new light shed on her understanding of Mary in the flesh, Aguanno will takd this thinking back to her students at Monsignor John Corrigan Catholic School.
That is in line with what Barringer thinks Catholics are supposed to do with the story of Mary, especially during Advent — reflect and proclaim.
“Mary is a gift to us,” he said. “She conceived in her womb He who the world cannot contain, who’s body contains us. We are talking about something utterly physical and utterly spiritual.
“This is one of those great deeds of God that we as a Church are called upon to proclaim to the world.”