This is a compilation of 32 papers delivered at meetings of the Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The articles broadly split into the ‘academic’ and the ‘autobiographical.’ The academic side contains some very fine pieces, especially Ireneu Craciun's ‘Theotokos in a Trinitarian Perspective’, John McHugh's ‘The Wedding at Cana’, and the whole section devoted to ‘Mary and Councils,’ with articles by Cecily Boulding, Marie Farrell, and Norman Tanner. The systematic-theological and church-historical chapters are exceptionally clear and informative: if specific chapters find their way onto academic reading lists, Mary for Earth and Heaven should have a large undergraduate audience. It is worth ordering it for university and college libraries, and checking to see what can be used for courses on ecclesiology, the Holy Spirit and Christology. I most enjoyed the autobiographical detours, like where Keith Riglin expands his interesting discussion of the idea of invoking the saints in Calvin, Barth, and P.T. Forsyth into a description of how a ‘Reformed Pastor’ moved toward a sense of ‘unbroken fellowship with our dead in Christ’. The most moving academic/autobiographical crossover comes from Frances Young. Professor Young gives us both a learned description of Cyril of Alexandria on the ‘Theotokos’ and two of her own poems, inspired by the kinship between two couples – herself, as the mother of a severely disabled child, and Mary, likewise mother of a ‘broken’ child. The book is full of poetry, from the strange, mystical verses of Mother Teodosia Latcu, cited by Craciun, to Anselm's prayers to the Virgin, in Benedicta Ward's article on 12th-century Marian devotion, to John Macquarrie's concluding chapter on ‘Mary and the saints in early Scottish poetry’. Mary for Earth and Heaven would do just as well as a bedside book as in an academic library.
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