Image:
Statue of Our Lady of the Marian Library.

At the University of Dayton there is a wood carving of Our Lady of the Marian Library. The pensive Virgin is seated in an arm chair, an open book on her lap. The carving was commissioned for the Marian Library when it was founded in 1943, and has served as the logo of the great collection on Our Lady that now attracts scholars and students from all over the world.

Image:
Rogier Van der Weyden (1399-1464)

Christian artists have often depicted the Blessed Virgin as reading, especially at the Annunciation. She is shown seated with a book; Gabriel is coming on the scene to deliver the message from heaven for which God's written word has prepared Mary. "The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary," as the familiar Angelus begins, "and she conceived of the Holy Spirit." Sometimes God's angelic messenger holds a scroll with the legend, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you." In medieval art the Blessed Virgin is often shown kneeling at a priedieu, totally taken up in reading and prayer.

Renaissance art sometimes shows the child Mary reading a book, with her parents Joachim and Anne. Murillo painted St. Anne and the child Mary reading. Rubens has Anne teaching Mary out of a book.

A striking modern example is John Angel's sculpture over the main entrance of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, D.C. Mary is kneeling at her priedieu, a book before her, as Gabriel approaches from behind her, surprising her in prayer. The scene is vibrant with energy: Gabriel's wings are still extended, and the pious maiden looks back over her shoulder to God's envoy. There is a photo of this sculpture on the cover of the United States Bishops' pastoral of November 21, 1973, Behold Your Mother, Woman of Faith (U.S.C.C., Washington, D.C., still in print, in English and Spanish). Other artistic representations continue the theme into our own day. Sometimes it is Our Lady teaching the Christ-child to read, even the boy Jesus explaining the holy book to his mother. After Pentecost Our Lady is still shown with an unrolled scroll, one of the apostles close by to learn from her.

Symbolism of the Images

What is behind the representation of Our Lady of the Book? We find three lessons in the scene:

• Mary herself reads;

• the perfect correspondence between what was foretold in the Bible and its fulfilment in the birth and life of Jesus;

• Mary is herself the 'book' in which the Church reads the ways of God.

Image:
Rogier Van der Weyden (1399-1464)

Books enshrine the past, both words and deeds. St. Luke twice assures us that the Mother of Jesus kept in her heart and memory everything that pertained to her Son. Pope John Paul II has described biblical ways Mary searched out God's ways: at the Annunciation - "deeply troubled ... she wondered," she asked, "How can this be?" in her reactions to the words of the shepherds and her twelve-year-old at Jerusalem in the temple.