L'Assunzione di Maria

This is Giorgio La Pira’s deepest meditation on Marian doctrine and on the responsibilities of Christian witnessing face to the world: “there is not a single Christian mystery nor a fact that is not linked to man’s earthly life: the life flowing from beyond and arriving here is like a river irrigating man’s earth, like a yeast that transforms the “mass” of human values”. The text, written by La Pira in 1950, is here published for the first time, with parallel reproduction of the original manuscript and with an introduction by the Archbishop of Florence, Cardinal Giuseppe Betori, who defines this “vibrating” meditation on the Assumption of Mary “a teaching still fully valid for today”. In their three penetrating essays Stefano De Fiores reflects on Giorgio La Pira’s mariology, Giulio Conticelli examines the contribution of La Pira to Giuseppe Dossetti’s journal “Cronache Sociali”, and Maria Lidova presents the Byzantine Marian iconography of San Marco Church in Florence, where La Pira is buried.