Lumen Fidei - page 80

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was fulfilled and new life flowered. In the full-
ness of time, God’s word was spoken to Mary
and she received that word into her heart, her en-
tire being, so that in her womb it could take flesh
and be born as light for humanity. Saint Justin
Martyr, in his dialogue with Trypho, uses a strik-
ing expression; he tells us that Mary, receiving
the message of the angel, conceived “faith and
joy”.49 In the Mother of Jesus, faith demonstrat-
ed its fruitfulness; when our own spiritual lives
bear fruit we become filled with joy, which is the
clearest sign of faith’s grandeur. In her own life
Mary completed the pilgrimage of faith, follow-
ing in the footsteps of her Son.50 In her the faith
journey of the Old Testament was thus taken up
into the following of Christ, transformed by him
and entering into the gaze of the incarnate Son
of God.
59. We can say that in the Blessed Virgin Mary
we find something I mentioned earlier, name-
ly that the believer is completely taken up into
his or her confession of faith. Because of her
close bond with Jesus, Mary is strictly connected
to what we believe. As Virgin and Mother, Mary
offers us a clear sign of Christ’s divine sonship.
The eternal origin of Christ is in the Father. He
is the Son in a total and unique sense, and so
he is born in time without the intervention of
49 Cf. Dialogus cum Tryphone Iudaeo, 100, 5: PG 6, 710.
50 Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical C ouncil, Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 58.