Much of mary's role in and among the monotheisms is determined by theological understandings and devotional practices centering on her relationship to patriarchal sacrifice: first, her relationship to what Christians took to be the sacrificial traditions of the people of Israel; then, her relationship to her son's sacrifice on the cross; and finally, her relationship to its anamnesis or remembrance in the Eucharist or “sacrifice of the mass.” The precise relationship between Mary and sacrifice in these contexts is neither fixed nor unvarying, and the association has a variety of theological, liturgical, social, and devotional manifestations. Underlying them all, however, are important general functions of the discourse of sacrifice, a discourse widespread in human cultures, and one with a particular bearing on constructions of gender, motherhood, and fatherhood in religious and social life.

DEFINITIONS AND DISTINCTIONS

Even when limited to the context of religion, sacrifice is not an easy phenomenon to define.