We turn our thoughts to Mary today, prefigured in Jerusalem and its holy temple.
Gates, raise your heads. Stand up, eternal doors, and let the king of glory enter.
Who is the king of glory?
The Lord of might and power. The Lord, strong in battle.
Gates, raise your heads. Stand up, eternal doors, and let the king of glory enter.
Who is the king of glory?
The Lord of hosts – he is the king of glory (Psalm 23).
The presence of the Bridegroom is what allows the Bride to be a mother:
Its foundations are set on the sacred mountains –
the Lord loves the gates of Sion
more than all the tents of Jacob.
Glorious things are said of you, city of God!
I shall count Rahab and Babylon among those who acknowledge me.
The Philistines, Tyrians, Ethiopians –
all have their birthplace here.
Of Sion it will be said “Here is the birthplace of all people:
the Most High himself has set it firm”.
The Lord shall write in the book of the nations:
“Here is their birthplace”.
They will sing as in joyful processions:
“All my being springs from you”.
Two meditations -- first Saint Athanasius:
The Word took to himself the sons of Abraham, says the Apostle, and so had to be like his brothers in all things. He had then to take a body like ours. This explains the fact of Mary’s presence: she is to provide him with a body of his own, to be offered for our sake. Scripture records her giving birth, and says: She wrapped him in swaddling clothes. Her breasts, which fed him, were called blessed. Sacrifice was offered because the child was her firstborn. Gabriel used careful and prudent language when he announced his birth. He did not speak of “what will be born in you” to avoid the impression that a body would be introduced into her womb from outside; he spoke of “what will be born from you”, so that we might know by faith that her child originated within her and from her.
By taking our nature and offering it in sacrifice, the Word was to destroy it completely and then invest it with his own nature, and so prompt the Apostle to say: This corruptible body must put on incorruption; this mortal body must put on immortality.
This was not done in outward show only, as some have imagined. This is not so. Our Saviour truly became man, and from this has followed the salvation of man as a whole. Our salvation is in no way fictitious, nor does it apply only to the body. The salvation of the whole man, that is, of soul and body, has really been achieved in the Word himself.
What was born of Mary was therefore human by nature, in accordance with the inspired Scriptures, and the body of the Lord was a true body: It was a true body because it was the same as ours. Mary, you see, is our sister, for we are all born from Adam.
The words of St John, the Word was made flesh, bear the same meaning, as we may see from a similar turn of phrase in St Paul: Christ was made a curse for our sake. Man’s body has acquired something great through its communion and union with the Word. From being mortal it has been made immortal; though it was a living body it has become a spiritual one; though it was made from the earth it has passed through the gates of heaven.
Even when the Word takes a body from Mary, the Trinity remains a Trinity, with neither increase nor decrease. It is for ever perfect. In the Trinity we acknowledge one Godhead, and thus one God, the Father of the Word, is proclaimed in the Church.
And secondly -- Paul Claudel:
The promise was not given to man but to woman. It is to her that petition must be made; it is in her womb that the seed of redemption germinates. As she was the instrument of the fall–felixculpa!–she is the proprietress of salvation. It is her duty to justify to God that creation which, through her, was severed from him. Generation follows generation, and at last on our disinherited soil there springs forth amid the thorns the precious lily of the Immaculate Conception. When man falls, it is to her (and she was not absent when he was pulled from the mire) that God turns to remake man in his image. It is to her that he chooses to surrender himself as spiritual prisoner of his own clay (Accompagnements, 140).
What a privilege for women. Let us embrace motherhood with an awareness of its spiritual significance -- for us, for our charges, for the souls who depend on our fidelity and sacrifice. Happy New Year!
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