It is rather odd, since the Holy Father in Rome marked the Assumption on its calendar day yesterday, but in England and Wales the Assumption of our blessed Lady is transferred to today, so that we lose a whole Sunday of readings. But it gives us a good opportunity to meditate upon the virtues of our blessed Lady, whom the Apostles and early Fathers identified with several extracts of the Old Testament, such as our Psalm 44(45) at Mass today, but also in the stories of the great women of the Israelite nation, such as Deborah, Judith and Esther. For example, there is the story of the triumph of the Hebrew lady Judith, who slayed a dangerous enemy of her people and so rescued them from ruin. Like Mary.
"When the victorious [Hebrew] army returned, with the spoils taken from their enemies, there was no counting the cattle and the pack-beasts and the plunder of all sorts; none, high or low, but was enriched with the booty. And now the high priest Joacim came to Bethulia, with all that were his fellow elders at Jerusalem, asking to see Judith; and when she answered his summons, all with one voice began to extol her; "Thou art the boast of Jerusalem, the joy of Israel, the pride of our people; thou hast played a man’s part, and kept thy courage high. Not unrewarded thy love of chastity, that wouldst never take a second husband in thy widowhood; the Lord gave thee firmness of resolve, and thy name shall be ever blessed. And to that all the people said Amen. Scarce did thirty days suffice for the men of Israel to gather the Assyrian spoils. Among these, all that proved to be Holofernes’ own went to Judith herself, gold and silver, clothes and jewels, and furniture of every sort; all these the people handed over to her, keeping high festival, while man and maid, wed and unwedded, played flute and harp together." - Judith, 15: 8-15
"Daughters of kings come out to meet thee; at thy right hand stands the queen, in Ophir gold arrayed. (Listen, my daughter, and consider my words attentively; thou art to forget, henceforward, thy own nation, and the house of thy father; thy beauty, now, is all for the king’s delight; he is thy Lord, and worship belongs to him.) The people of Tyre, too, will have its presents to bring; the noblest of its citizens will be courting thy favour. She comes, the princess, all fair to see, her robe of golden cloth, a robe of rich embroidery, to meet the King. The maidens of her court follow her into thy presence, all rejoicing, all triumphant, as they enter the king’s palace!" - Psalm 44: 10-16
These scriptural types of the Blessed Virgin are plainly in the mind of Saint John, exiled on the island of Patmos, when he composed the book of Apocalypse (Revelations), and painted the picture in our first reading today (Apocalypse, chapter 11) of the great sign in the heavens, of the Woman adorned with the sun, standing upon the moon and crowned with stars, and her battle against a dragon, who designs to revenge itself against her children - us. Soon enough, later this month, we shall honour her again in the feast of the Queenship of Mary (August the 22nd).
"And now, in heaven, a great portent appeared; a woman that wore the sun for her mantle, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars about her head. She had a child in her womb, and was crying out as she travailed, in great pain of her delivery. Then a second portent appeared in heaven; a great dragon was there, fiery-red, with seven heads and ten horns, and on each of the seven heads a royal diadem; his tail dragged down a third part of the stars in heaven, and flung them to earth. And he stood fronting the woman who was in childbirth, ready to swallow up the child as soon as she bore it. She bore a son, the son who is to herd the nations like sheep with a crook of iron; and this child of hers was caught up to God, right up to his throne... the dragon, finding himself cast down to earth, went in pursuit of the woman, the boy’s mother; but the woman was given two wings, such as the great eagle has, to speed her flight into the wilderness, to her place of refuge, where for a year, and two years, and half a year she will be kept hidden from the serpent’s view. Thereupon the serpent sent a flood of water out of his mouth in pursuit of the woman, to carry her away on its tide; but earth came to the woman’s rescue. The earth gaped wide, and swallowed up this flood which the dragon had sent out of his mouth. So, in his spite against the woman, the dragon went elsewhere to make war on the rest of her children, the men who keep God’s commandments, and hold fast to the truth concerning Jesus." - Apocalypse, 12: 1-5, 13-17
Where does Mary's glory come from? Certainly not from herself, she who is a mere mortal and a creature like ourselves, although the most perfect of our race. Her glory comes from her being elected from all eternity to having given Christ His humanity; He having had only one parent clothed Himself in flesh, so to speak, within her womb. For that she was from her first moment of existence Full of Grace, as the angel declared on that wonderful day when she agreed with the plan of God and became His Mother. As Saint Paul says in the second reading today, Christ has ended death.
"...we bore God witness that he had raised Christ up from the dead, and he has not raised him up, if it is true that the dead do not rise again. If the dead, I say, do not rise, then Christ has not risen either; and if Christ has not risen, all your faith is a delusion; you are back in your sins. It follows, too, that those who have gone to their rest in Christ have been lost. If the hope we have learned to repose in Christ belongs to this world only, then we are unhappy beyond all other men. But no, Christ has risen from the dead, the first-fruits of all those who have fallen asleep; a man had brought us death, and a man should bring us resurrection from the dead; just as all have died with Adam, so with Christ all will be brought to life. But each must rise in his own rank; Christ is the first-fruits, and after him follow those who belong to him, those who have put their trust in his return." - I Corinthians, 15: 15-23
In a particular way, the grace of Christ and His power over death is visible to us today in the bodies of many holy Saints, which seem to not decay normally after death, but slowly and sometimes not at all. And Mary our Mother was Full of Grace. Already in the Gospel story today, her very voice causes the tiny Saint John the Baptist to leap in his own mother's womb and we get those wonderful words which we say everyday, many of us: 'Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.' Indeed may you be blessed, o holy Mother, and may the names of Jesus and Mary be upon our lips constantly and at the hour of our deaths.
No comments:
Post a Comment