1. Pius IX,Ineffabilis Deus(1854), DS 2803; as quoted by John Paul II in his Wednesday Catechesis on the Immaculate Conception, ‘Immaculate Conception Defined by Pius IX’ (16 June 1996), inL’Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English (19 June 1996), p. 11.
2. Cf. John Paul II,Redemptoris mater, para.18:Mary is perfectly united with Christ in his self-emptying [kenosis]. For ‘Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men’: precisely on Golgotha ‘humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross’ (cf. Phil 2.5-8). At the foot of the Cross Mary shares through faith in the shocking mystery of this self-emptying. This is perhaps the deepest ‘kenosis’ of faith in human history.
3. John Paul II, ‘Immaculate Conception Defined by Pius IX’, p. 11.