Our Lady & the Church

I picked up a little book from Ignatius Press this week, because it had an inviting blurb: "This marvelous work is one of the most important theological rediscoveries of the twentieth century"--Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Well, the book is Hugo Rahner's Our Lady and the Church. Its beautiful theme explores how we must see the Church in Our Lady and Our Lady in the Church. Fr Rahner goes through the mysteries of Our Lady--her Immaculate Conception through her Glorious Assumption--and in the words of St Isaac of Stella: "Thus it is that in the inspired Scriptures, what is said in the widest sense of the Virgin Mother the Church is said in a special sense of the Virgin Mary. And what is spoken of the Virgin Mother Mary in a personal way can rightly be applied in a general way to the Virgin Mother the Church. But every faithful soul is in a sense the bride of the Word of God, the Mother of Christ, His daughter and His sister, virgin yet a mother. And moreover whatever is said of God's eternal wisdom itself can be applied in a wide sense to the Church in a narrower sense to Mary and in a particular way to every faithful soul."