Preview: John Keble's "Ave Maria"

Since August is traditionally a month of special devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I thought it appropriate to highlight a Marian poem from John Keble's The Christian Year on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, August 17 (especially after celebrating the Solemnity of the Assumption). He included a poem on "The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary" in his survey of the feasts of the Anglican liturgical year. 

He takes, of course, a verse from Saint Luke's Gospel as his inspiration, "And the Angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women." (1:28), but Keble also goes on at the end of the poem to reference Luke chapter 11 ("And it happened that, when he was saying these things, a certain woman from the crowd, lifting up her voice, said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you.” Then he said, “Yes, but moreover: blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” 27-28):

Oh! Thou who deign’st to sympathise
With all our frail and fleshly ties,
   Maker yet Brother dear,
Forgive the too presumptuous thought,
If, calming wayward grief, I sought
   To gaze on Thee too near.

Yet sure ’twas not presumption, Lord,
’Twas Thine own comfortable word
   That made the lesson known:
Of all the dearest bonds we prove,
Thou countest sons and mothers’ love
   Most sacred, most Thine own.

When wandering here a little span,
Thou took’st on Thee to rescue man,
   Thou had’st no earthly sire:
That wedded love we prize so dear,
As if our heaven and home were here,
   It lit in Thee no fire.

On no sweet sister’s faithful breast
Wouldst Thou Thine aching forehead rest,
   On no kind brother lean:
But who, O perfect filial heart,
E’er did like Thee a true son’s part,
   Endearing, firm, serene?

Thou wept’st, meek maiden, mother mild,
Thou wept’st upon thy sinless Child,
   Thy very heart was riven:
And yet, what mourning matron here
Would deem thy sorrows bought too dear
   By all on this side Heaven?

A Son that never did amiss,
That never shamed His Mother’s kiss,
   Nor crossed her fondest prayer:
E’en from the tree He deigned to bow,
For her His agonised brow,
   Her, His sole earthly care.

Ave Maria! blessèd Maid!
Lily of Eden’s fragrant shade,
   Who can express the love
That nurtured thee so pure and sweet,
Making thy heart a shelter meet
   For Jesus’ holy dove?

Ave Maria!  Mother blest,
To whom, caressing and caressed,
   Clings the eternal Child;
Favoured beyond Archangels’ dream,
When first on Thee with tenderest gleam
   Thy new-born Saviour smiled:—

Ave Maria! thou whose name
All but adoring love may claim,
   Yet may we reach thy shrine;
For He, thy Son and Saviour, vows
To crown all lowly lofty brows
   With love and joy like thine.

Blessed is the womb that bare Him—blessed
The bosom where His lips were pressed,
   But rather blessed are they
Who hear His word and keep it well,
The living homes where Christ shall dwell,
   And never pass away.

He begins with meditation upon Our Lord, but turns soon to the relationship between Jesus and His Mother Mary. The use of "Ave Maria", a very Roman Catholic phrase, is balanced by Keble's reticence about devotion to the Mother of God ("All but adoring love may claim"), even though he hints at a coronation ("To crown all lowly lofty brows/With love and joy like thine.") I'd also call attention to the lovely reference to Mary at the foot of the Cross in the Gospel of John ("E’en from the tree He deigned to bow,/For her His agonised brow,/Her, His sole earthly care.") as a special aspect of Our Lord's love for His Mother, the Mother of God.

Nevertheless, his poem demonstrates the delicacy of the Oxford Movement leaders when they touched on matters that would seem "too Catholic" to some Anglicans. But when Newman prepared a sermon for the Annunciation in one of his Anglican Plain and Parochial Sermons, "The Reverence Due to the Virgin Mary" (Sermon 12 in Volume 2, with the verse from Luke 1:43 "From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed."), he seems to have to hinted at her sinlessness and virtue-- in contrast to our condition--although not according to our Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception:

Observe the lesson which we gain for ourselves from the history of the Blessed Virgin; that the highest graces of the soul may be matured in private, and without those fierce trials to which the many are exposed in order to their sanctification. So hard are our hearts, that affliction, pain, and anxiety are sent to humble us, and dispose us towards a true faith in the heavenly word, when preached to us. Yet it is only our extreme obstinacy of unbelief which renders this chastisement necessary. The aids which God gives under the Gospel Covenant, have power to renew and purify our hearts, without uncommon providences to discipline us into receiving them. God gives His Holy Spirit to us silently; and the silent duties of every day (it may be humbly hoped) are blest to the sufficient sanctification of thousands, whom the world knows not of. The Blessed Virgin is a memorial of this; and it is consoling as well as instructive to know it. When we quench the grace of Baptism, then it is that we need severe trials to restore us. This is the case of the multitude, whose best estate is that of chastisement, repentance, supplication, and absolution, again and again. But there are those who go on in a calm and unswerving course, learning day by day to love Him who has redeemed {137} them, and overcoming the sin of their nature by His heavenly grace, as the various temptations to evil successively present themselves. And, of these undefiled followers of the Lamb, the Blessed Mary is the chief. Strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might, she "staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief;" she believed when Zacharias doubted,—with a faith like Abraham's she believed and was blessed for her belief, and had the performance of those things which were told her by the Lord. And when sorrow came upon her afterwards, it was but the blessed participation of her Son's sacred sorrows, not the sorrow of those who suffer for their sins.

Of course, as a Catholic priest, Newman would not only accept but defend the definition of the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, engaging in a written debate with another old Oxford Movement friend, E. B. Pusey!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us! 

For Lady Day Today: Purcell's "The Blessed Virgin's Expostulation"

Henry Purcell set Nahum Tate's poem, "The Blessed Virgin's Expostulation" as an ode for soprano and continuo published in his Harmonia Sacra. It depicts Mary's questions about what has happened to Jesus in Jerusalem when she and Joseph realize He is missing. (Luke 2: 41-52)

The inspiration for the text could come from the last verses of that passage: "Then He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them, but His mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men."

Here's a performance of Frederica von Stade and Martin Katz on piano in a 1978/79 recital album.

And here's a performance in the continuo and organ setting.

The Blessed Virgin Mary fears that something terrible has happened--as terrible as the Slaughter of the Innocents in Bethlehem 12 years before and the dangers even of the Flight into Egypt. They went through all that to lose Him in Jerusalem? She calls on the Archangel of the Annunciation, Saint Gabriel, to comfort her.

Tell me, some pitying angel tell, quickly say,
Where does my soul's sweet darling stay?
In tiger's, or more cruel Herod's way?
O! rather let his little footsteps press
Unregarded through the wilderness,
Where milder savages resort:
The desert's safer than a tyrant's court.
Why, fairest object of my love,
Why dost thou from my longing eyes remove?
Was it a waking dream that did foretell
Thy wondrous birth? no vision from above?
Where's Gabriel now that visited my cell?
I call Gabriel, he comes not; flatt'ring hopes, farewell.

Me Judah's daughters once caress'd,
Call'd me of mothers the most bless'd;
Now fatal change of mothers most distress'd.
How shall my soul its motions guide,
How shall I stem various tide,
Whilst faith and doubt* my lab'ring thoughts divide?
For whilst of thy dear sight beguil'd,
I trust the God, but oh!
I fear the child.

*Saint John Henry Newman would prefer the term "difficulty" as Mary wonders why this has happened (as in "Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. There of course may be difficulties in the evidence; but I am speaking of difficulties intrinsic to the doctrines themselves, or to their relations with each other. A man may be annoyed that he cannot work out a mathematical problem, of which the answer is or is not given to him, without doubting that it admits of an answer, or that a certain particular answer is the true one. Of all points of faith, the being of a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon our minds with most power.")

I wonder if Gerard Manley Hopkins ever heard a performance of this piece? He certainly admired ("the divine genius") Purcell!

It's a great source of meditation to remember: the Loss of Jesus in Jerusalem is one of the Seven Sorrows of Mary (the third) and the Finding of Jesus in the Temple is one of the Five Joyful Mysteries (the fifth)!

Image Source (Public Domain): Jesus Found in the Temple (Jesus retrouvé dans le temple) by James Tissot, 19th ct. (Brooklyn Museum, New York)

From the NINS "Newman Review": An Article comparing Newman's Anglican Sermons about Mary

Since on Friday, March 21, I'll be posting on another of Newman's Meditations and Devotions for our Son Rise Morning Show Lenten series, one particularly focused on the sympathy between Jesus and His Mother and how He "refused" that sympathy as He entered public ministry and His Passion, this article from the Newman Review is timely:

Robert M. Andrews is Senior Lecturer in Church History at the Catholic Institute of Sydney, Australia, a member institute of the University of Notre Dame Australia. He is the author of Apologia Pro Beata Maria Virgine: John Henry Newman’s Defence of the Virgin Mary in Catholic Doctrine and Piety (London & Washington, DC: Academica Press, 2017; revised, 2025), writes about "Hidden Development: Mary’s Evolution in John Henry Newman’s Anglican Sermons":

Andrews examines how the text of “The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary: The Reverence Due to Her” changed as Newman's study of Marian doctrine developed, looking at the same passage in the 1835 text and in the 1840:

Whatever the edition, there is a reason why Newman’s Anglican sermons continue to be amongst the most enduring of his writings. For though they are Anglican sermons, they contain a theology that is not only insightful, but, with a handful of notable exceptions, mostly Catholic in terms of doctrine (indeed, Catholics probably comprise the largest group of readers of these sermons). Part of a broader pulpit ministry that arguably ranks as one of the most religiously affective of the nineteenth century, Newman’s Anglican Marian sermons—though few in number—are nonetheless striking. Take, for example, Newman’s remarkable statement regarding the holiness of Mary in the sermon under discussion. From the 1835 edition:

Who can estimate the holiness and perfection of her, who was chosen to be the Mother of Christ? If to him that hath, more is given, and holiness and divine favour go together, (and this we are expressly told,) what must have been the angelic purity of her, whom the Creator Spirit condescended to overshadow with His miraculous presence? What must have been her gifts, who was chosen to be the only near earthly relative of the Son of God, the only one whom He was bound by nature to revere and look up to; the one appointed to train and educate Him, to instruct Him day by day, as He grew in wisdom and in stature? This contemplation runs to a higher subject, did we dare follow it; for what, think you, was the sanctity and grace of that human nature, of which God formed His sinless Son; knowing, as we do, “that what is born of the flesh, is flesh;” and that “none can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?”12

Then Andrews provides the same paragraph in the 1840 version:

Who can estimate the holiness and perfection of her, who was chosen to be the Mother of Christ? If to him that hath, more is given, and holiness and divine favour go together, (and this we are expressly told,) what must have been the transcendent purity of her, whom the Creator Spirit condescended to overshadow with His miraculous presence? What must have been her gifts, who was chosen to be the only near earthly relative of the Son of God, the only one whom He was bound by nature to revere and look up to; the one appointed to train and educate Him, to instruct Him day by day, as He grew in wisdom and in stature? This contemplation runs to a higher subject, did we dare follow it; for what, think you, was the sanctified state of that human nature, of which God formed his sinless Son; knowing, as we do, “that what is born of the flesh, is flesh;” and that “none can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?”13

Not only are both editions expressive of a high view of Mary’s holiness, the differences, though subtle, seem to signify development on Newman’s part in an increasingly Catholic direction—which we know was happening to Newman and the Oxford Movement during the period from around 1835 onward.14 They are as follows: (1) Newman changed “the angelic purity” of Mary (1835) to “the transcendent purity” (1840), and (2) he changed “the sanctity and grace of that human nature” (1835) to “the sanctified state of that human nature” (1840).

Please read the rest there.

To me this is interesting because the passage that I'll cite on Friday concerns how the Marriage Feast of Cana was the crucial event of the beginning of Jesus's public ministry on the way to His Passion, according to the Gospel of Saint John, and its effect on Mary after their separation--and if one compares Newman's Anglican commentary on this event in "The Lord's Last Supper and His First" from the Sermons on Subjects of the Day to his Catholic meditation one sees even greater development. Newman is freer in his contemplation of the mysteries of Mary's relationship to her Son, the Incarnate Son of God. Before, there was "an increasingly Catholic direction" in Newman's thought; then Newman may more sympathetically explore Mary's sorrows and her sacrifice in relationship to Our Lord's Life and Passion, the proper hierarchy of course.

More on our next Lenten meditation on Friday and next Monday, March 24, the day before the great Solemnity of the Annunciation.

And here's a link to Andrew's book, Apologia Pro Beata Maria Virgine: John Henry Newman’s Defence of the Virgin Mary in Catholic Doctrine and Piety.

Image Source (Public Domain): Leonardo's Annunciation, thought to be his earliest completed work (c. 1472–1475)!

Alma Mater Redemptoris

I added this CD from The Sixteen and Harry Christophers to my Advent playlist earlier this week (joining Puer Natus Est from Stile Antico, Veni Domine from the Sistine Chapel, and Come, Thou Dayspring from on High from Wyoming Catholic College):

The long-established tradition of devotion to the Virgin Mary resulted in some superb settings from Spanish composers. Tomás Luis de Victoria was, quite possibly, the most outstanding composer of the Renaissance and this recording features a tantalizing selection of the sumptuous music he wrote in honour of the Virgin Mary, including some of his exquisite Marian motets and the glorious Missa Alma Redemptoris Mater:

1. Salve Regina a 5
2. Alma Redemptoris Mater a 5
3. Congratulamini mihi a 6
4. Sancta Maria
5. Gaude Maria

MISSA ALMA REDEMPTORIS MATER a 8
6. Kyrie
7. Gloria
8. Credo
9. Sanctus and Benedictus
10. Agnus Dei

11. Hymn: Ave maris stella
12. Magnificat octavi toni
13. Regina caeli a 5
14. Ne timeas Maria
15. Litaniae Beatae Mariae a 8

TOTAL PLAYING TIME: 72.23

The cover of the CD features a detail from one of El Greco's paintings of the Annunciation. This version is held by the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid:

In the course of his life, El Greco painted numerous versions of the Annunciation, thus allowing his stylistic development to be traced through his changing treatment of this Biblical episode. This painting, dated around 1576, is thought to be one of the last versions executed in Italy, and is clearly influenced by the Venetian style. From her prayer-stool at the left of the painting, the Virgin listens attentively to the message of the Archangel, a figure rendered very much in the style of Veronese. The light and the colouring owe much to Titian, a painter EI Greco admired, while the arrangement of the figures and the treatment of the drapery strongly recall the work of Tintoretto. Here, EI Greco places the figures within a simple architectural setting, loosely framing them to make the scene more realistic.

Compare this version, another Venetian inspired painting. As the Prado website explains the influences of Titian and Tintoretto:

In keeping with iconographic tradition, the Virgin turns in surprise at the arrival of the Archangel Gabriel and the Holy Ghost. This work is very close, compositionally and stylistically, to the Annunciation of the Modena Triptych, but it is not known whether it is a sketch for that work, or an autograph reduction. Probably painted in Venice just before 1570, this piece seems to be inspired by the work of Titian, although the architecture in the background and the tile flooring in the room hearken to Tintoretto. These were the two painters who most influenced El Greco.

To see  a more "El Greco" El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos), see this version, held by the Museum of Fine Art in Budapest:

In the picture of the Prado treating the same subject and painted in Venice, El Greco placed the Annunciation scene in a dynamic architectural setting and enlivened it with a group of cherubs. In this version, dating from the last years of the 16th century, the interior of the room is filled with clouds and flashing lights, in a way that the objects surrounding the Virgin – the simple prie-dieu, the book opening like a fan, the sewing-basket and the vase – are removed from real space and saturated with mystic significance. The wide, emphatic arc of the drapery covering the Virgin’s knees seems only to make her small head and narrow, transfigured face appear as distant from us and as close to the heavenly messenger as possible.

Mother of Christ, hear thou thy people's cry
Star of the deep and Portal of the sky!
Mother of Him who thee made from nothing made.
Sinking we strive and call to thee for aid:
Oh, by what joy which Gabriel brought to thee,
Thou Virgin first and last, let us thy mercy see.

V. The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.
R. And she conceived by the Holy Spirit.

Let us pray. Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts, that we, to whom the incarnation of Christ, Thy Son, was made known by the message of an angel, may by His passion and cross be brought to the glory of His resurrection, through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

One light-hearted note about this recording: my dogs, Joey and Brandy, seem to enjoy this music. They slumber peacefully whenever I play the CD!

In Case You're Asked: "Calculating Christmas"

Touchstone Magazine shared this post from its archives, an article by William J. Tighe, Professor of History at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, exploring the efforts of the Early Church to establish the date of the birth of Christ. He confronts the usual explanation that early Christians "baptized" the pagan celebration of the birth of Sol Invictus, noting that view has it backwards: the Emperor Aurelian established that feast to compete with the birth of Christ in 274 A.D.

Instead, Tighe examines the common belief that the great prophets of God were conceived or born and died on the same date. Thus the date of the Annunciation, March 25 in the West, April 6 in the East, became the determining factor:

It is to this day, commemorated almost universally among Christians as the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel brought the good tidings of a savior to the Virgin Mary, upon whose acquiescence the Eternal Word of God (“Light of Light, True God of True God, begotten of the Father before all ages”) forthwith became incarnate in her womb. What is the length of pregnancy? Nine months. Add nine months to March 25th and you get December 25th; add it to April 6th and you get January 6th. December 25th is Christmas, and January 6th is Epiphany.

Christmas (December 25th) is a feast of Western Christian origin. In Constantinople it appears to have been introduced in 379 or 380. From a sermon of St. John Chrysostom, at the time a renowned ascetic and preacher in his native Antioch, it appears that the feast was first celebrated there on 25 December 386. From these centers it spread throughout the Christian East, being adopted in Alexandria around 432 and in Jerusalem a century or more later. The Armenians, alone among ancient Christian churches, have never adopted it, and to this day celebrate Christ’s birth, manifestation to the magi, and baptism on January 6th.

Western churches, in turn, gradually adopted the January 6th Epiphany feast from the East, Rome doing so sometime between 366 and 394. But in the West, the feast was generally presented as the commemoration of the visit of the magi to the infant Christ, and as such, it was an important feast, but not one of the most important ones—a striking contrast to its position in the East, where it remains the second most important festival of the church year, second only to Pascha (Easter).

In the East, Epiphany far outstrips Christmas. The reason is that the feast celebrates Christ’s baptism in the Jordan and the occasion on which the Voice of the Father and the Descent of the Spirit both manifested for the first time to mortal men the divinity of the Incarnate Christ and the Trinity of the Persons in the One Godhead.

Please read the rest there.

Image credit: Diptych with Scenes of the Annunciation, Nativity, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, 1300–1325 (German) Public Domain from THE MET. The image at the top is the interior of the diptych; the bottom image is the exterior.

Newman's Defense of Marian Doctrine and Devotion

Matt Swaim--or perhaps Anna Mitchell as it should be her turn--and I will talk about Newman and Mary, the Mother of God this morning on the Son Rise Morning Show in our continuing series on soon-to-canonized Cardinal Newman. (About 7:50 a.m. Eastern DST;6:50 a.m. Central DST.)

As promised, here's more insight into the Marian devotion Blessed John Henry Newman developed as a Catholic, starting with his defense of the doctrine of her Immaculate Conception:

Two years after the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, Reverend Doctor E.B. Pusey wrote a public letter to the other great survivor of Newman's "defection" from the Oxford Movement and the Church of England, John Keble: An Eirenicon, responding to then Archdeacon Henry Manning's public letter to Pusey, The Workings of the Holy Spirit in the Church of England", in which Manning denied that the Church of England was protected from error the way the Catholic Church is. Pusey mentions the recently proclaimed doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (declared by Pope Pius IX in 1854: "We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the first instant of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was preserved immaculate from all stain of original sin, has been revealed by God, and therefore should firmly and constantly be believed by all the faithful.") and examines it in a historical context.

Father John Henry Newman then answered Pusey with A Letter Addressed to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D. on Occasion of his Eirenicon, in which he defended the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, starting with the commonly held doctrine that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were without Original Sin, filled with supernatural grace. Mary, the Mother of God is the Second Eve: her obedience and cooperation with God undoes Eve's disobedience:

She holds, as the Fathers teach us, that office in our restoration which Eve held in our fall:—now, in the first place, what were Eve's endowments to enable her to enter upon her trial? She could not have stood against the wiles of the devil, though she was innocent and sinless, without the grant of a large grace. And this she had;—a heavenly gift, which was over and above and additional to that nature of hers, which she received from Adam, a gift which had been given to Adam also before her, at the very time (as it is commonly held) of his original formation. This is Anglican doctrine, as well as Catholic; it is the doctrine of Bishop Bull. He has written a dissertation on the point. He speaks of the doctrine which "many of the Schoolmen affirm, that Adam was created in grace, that is, received a principle of grace and divine life from his very creation, or in the moment of the infusion of his soul; of which," he says, "for my own part I have little doubt." Again, he says, "It is abundantly manifest from the many testimonies alleged, that the ancient doctors of the Church did, with a general consent, acknowledge, that our first parents in the state of integrity, had in them something more than nature, that is, were endowed with the divine principle of the Spirit, in order to a supernatural felicity."

Now, taking this for granted, because I know that you and those who agree with you maintain it as well as we do, I ask you, have you any intention to deny that Mary was as fully endowed as Eve? is it any violent inference, that she, who was to co-operate in the redemption of the world, at least was not less endowed with power from on high, than she who, given as a help-mate to her husband, did in the event but cooperate with him for its ruin? If Eve was raised above human nature by that indwelling moral gift which we call grace, is it rash to say that Mary had even a greater grace? And this consideration gives significance to the Angel's salutation of her as "full of grace,"—an interpretation of the original word which is undoubtedly the right one, as soon as we resist the common Protestant assumption that grace is a mere external approbation or acceptance, answering to the word "favour," whereas it is, as the Fathers teach, a real inward condition or superadded quality of soul. And if Eve had this supernatural inward gift given her from the first moment of her personal existence, is it possible to deny that Mary too had this gift from the very first moment of her personal existence? I do not know how to resist this inference:—well, this is simply and literally the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. I say the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is in its substance this, and nothing more or less than this (putting aside the question of degrees of grace); and it really does seem to me bound up in the doctrine of the Fathers, that Mary is the second Eve.

It is indeed to me a most strange phenomenon that so many learned and devout men stumble at this doctrine; and I can only account for it by supposing that in matter of fact they do not know what we mean by the Immaculate Conception; and your Volume (may I say it?) bears out my suspicion. It is a great consolation to have reason for thinking so,—reason for believing that in some sort the persons in question are in the position of those great Saints in former times, who are said to have hesitated about the doctrine, when they would not have hesitated at all, if the word "Conception" had been clearly explained in that sense in which now it is universally received. I do not see how any one who holds with Bull the Catholic doctrine of the supernatural endowments of our first parents, has fair reason for doubting our doctrine about the Blessed Virgin. It has no reference whatever to her parents, but simply to her own person; it does but affirm that, together with the nature which she inherited from her parents, that is, her own nature, she had a superadded fulness of grace, and that from the first moment of her existence. Suppose Eve had stood the trial, and not lost her first grace; and suppose she had eventually had children, those children from the first moment of their existence would, through divine bounty, have received the same privilege that she had ever had; that is, as she was taken from Adam's side, in a garment, so to say, of grace, so they in turn would have received what may be called an immaculate conception. They would have then been conceived in grace, as in fact they are conceived in sin. What is there difficult in this doctrine? What is there unnatural? Mary may be called, as it were, a daughter of Eve unfallen. You believe with us that St. John Baptist had grace given to him three months before his birth, at the time that the Blessed Virgin visited his mother. He accordingly was not immaculately conceived, because he was alive before grace came to him; but our Lady's case only differs from his in this respect, that to her the grace of God came, not three months merely before her birth, but from the first moment of her being, as it had been given to Eve.

But it may be said, How does this enable us to say that she was conceived without original sin? If Anglicans knew what we mean by original sin, they would not ask the question. Our doctrine of original sin is not the same as the Protestant doctrine. "Original sin," with us, cannot be called sin, in the mere ordinary sense of the word "sin;" it is a term denoting Adam's sin as transferred to us, or the state to which Adam's sin reduces his children; but by Protestants it seems to be understood as sin, in much the same sense as actual sin. We, with the Fathers, think of it as something negative, Protestants as something positive. Protestants hold that it is a disease, a radical change of nature, an active poison internally corrupting the soul, infecting its primary elements, and disorganizing it; and they fancy that we ascribe a different nature from ours to the Blessed Virgin, different from that of her parents, and from that of fallen Adam. We hold nothing of the kind; we consider that in Adam she died, as others; that she was included, together with the whole race, in Adam's sentence; that she incurred his debt, as we do; but that, for the sake of Him who was to redeem her and us upon the Cross, to her the debt was remitted by anticipation, on her the sentence was not carried out, except indeed as regards her natural death, for she died when her time came, as others [Note 5]. All this we teach, but we deny that she had original sin; for by original sin we mean, as I have already said, something negative, viz., this only, the deprivation of that supernatural unmerited grace which Adam and Eve had on their first formation,—deprivation and the consequences of deprivation. Mary could not merit, any more than they, the restoration of that grace; but it was restored to her by God's free bounty, from the very first moment of her existence, and thereby, in fact, she never came under the original curse, which consisted in the loss of it. And she had this special privilege, in order to fit her to become the Mother of her and our Redeemer, to fit her mentally, spiritually for it; so that, by the aid of the first grace, she might so grow in grace, that, when the Angel came and her Lord was at hand, she might be "full of grace," prepared as far as a creature could be prepared, to receive Him into her bosom.

Regarding Newman's devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, remember that he included praying the Rosary everyday in his short guide to perfection:

If you ask me what you are to do in order to be perfect, I say, first—Do not lie in bed beyond the due time of rising; give your first thoughts to God; make a good visit to the Blessed Sacrament; say the Angelus devoutly; eat and drink to God’s glory; say the Rosary well; be recollected; keep out bad thoughts; make your evening meditation well; examine yourself daily; go to bed in good time, and you are already perfect.

He also wrote a series of "Meditations on the Litany of Loreto" for the month of May, dividing the titles of Mary in that litany according to her Immaculate Conception, the Annunciation, her Dolours or Sorrows, and her Assumption. In a "Short Service for Rosary Sunday" Newman demonstrated his love for the Blessed Virgin Mary:

IN Jesus Christ is the fullness of the Godhead with all its infinite sanctity. In Mary is reflected the sanctity of Jesus, as by His grace it could be found in a creature.

Mary, as the pattern both of maidenhood and maternity, has exalted woman’s state and nature, and made the Christian virgin and the Christian mother understand the sacredness of their duties in the sight of God.

Her very image is as a book in which we may read at a glance the mystery of the Incarnation, and the mercy of the Redemption; and withal her own gracious perfections also, who was made by her Divine Son the very type of humility, gentleness, fortitude, purity, patience, love.

What Christian mother can look upon her image and not be moved to pray for gentleness, watchfulness, and obedience like Mary’s? What Christian maiden can look upon her without praying for the gifts of simplicity, modesty, purity, recollection, gentleness such as hers?

Who can repeat her very name without finding in it a music which goes to the heart, and brings before him thoughts of God and Jesus Christ, and heaven above, and fills him with the desire of those graces by which heaven is gained?

Hail then, great Mother of God, Queen of Saints, Royal Lady clothed with the sun and crowned with the stars of heaven, whom all generations have called and shall call blessed. We will take our part in praising thee in our own time and place with all the redeemed of our Lord, and will exalt thee in the full assembly of the saints and glorify thee in the Heavenly Jerusalem.

Amen.

Preview: Newman and the Blessed Virgin Mary

Since Monday, March 25 is the Feast of the Annunciation, I thought it appropriate that we discuss Newman and the Blessed Virgin Mary on the Son Rise Morning Show in our continuing series. Matt Swaim or Anna Mitchell and I will talk, as usual, about 7:50 am. Eastern DST / 6:50 a.m. Central DST. The segment will be repeated sometime during the nationwide EWTN hour on another day.

Before he became a Catholic, being raised in a traditionally anti-Catholic Anglican milieu, Newman was at first influenced by the usual Protestant belief that Catholics "worshipped" Mary which distracted us from worshipping God. As this article from the University of Dayton by Brother John Samaha, S.M. explains, however, Newman explored Marian doctrines in his Development of Christian Doctrine:

Before embracing Catholicism, John Henry Newman, probably the most famous convert in the last two centuries, formulated an explanation of the development of doctrines in the Catholic Church, especially the Marian doctrines. He explained that the saving truths of revelation were not given by God in timeless and static expression, but dynamic and life-giving truths which continue to unfold and develop. In An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine Newman wrote, "Growth is the only evidence of Life." Ideas live in our minds and continually enlarge into fuller development. "In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often." . . .

Following his conversion in 1845, John Henry Newman (1801-1890) journeyed to Rome. Upon his return as a Catholic priest he wrote that he "went round by Loreto." As a pilgrim to the Holy House he wanted "to get the Blessed Virgin's blessing." Then he commented about Mary's presence in his life. "I have ever been in her shadow, if I may say it. My college was St. Mary's, and my church, and when I went to Littlemore, there, by my own previous disposition, our Blessed Lady was waiting for me. Nor did she do nothing for me in that low habitation, of which I always think with pleasure."

As an Anglican, Newman thought that the Catholic Church's Marian doctrine and devotion was exaggerated. But in his study of the development of doctrine, he discovered that it was consistent with the early Church. "I was convinced by the Fathers," he explained. The early Fathers and ancient Christian writers viewed Mary as the New Eve. Newman came to understand Mary in patristic terms. He understood the Immaculate Conception was based on Mary's holiness, a concept present in the Fathers, and the Assumption was rooted in her dignity as Mother of God, another concept from the early Christian writers.

Although Newman had reservations about some teachings of the Catholic Church while an Anglican, he nevertheless was devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In his Apologia pro Vita Sua he proclaimed, "In spite of my ingrained fears of Rome, and the decision of my reason and conscience against her usages, in spite of my affection for Oxford and Oriel, yet I had a secret longing love of Rome, the Mother of Christianity, and I had a true devotion to the Blessed Virgin, in whose college I lived, whose altar I served, and whose immaculate purity I had in one of my earliest printed sermons made much of."

Before his crisis with Anglicanism, which occasioned his writing of the Development of Doctrine, however, Newman had been influenced by Richard Hurrell Froude, who persuaded Newman of Mary's place in salvation history and the honor due her. In 1832, for  example, on the Feast of the Annunciation, Newman gave this Parochial and Plain Sermon, referring to the promises of the Magnificat from St. Luke's Gospel:

TODAY we celebrate the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary; when the Angel Gabriel was sent to tell her that she was to be the Mother of our Lord, and when the Holy Ghost came upon her, and overshadowed her with the power of the Highest. In that great event was fulfilled her anticipation as expressed in the text. All generations have called her blessed [Note 2]. The Angel began the salutation; he said, "Hail, thou that art highly favoured; the Lord is with thee; blessed [Note 3] art thou among women." Again he said, "Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favour with God; and, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a Son, and shalt call His name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest." Her cousin Elizabeth was the next to greet her with her appropriate title. Though she was filled with the Holy Ghost at the time she spake, yet, far from thinking herself by such a gift equalled to Mary, she was thereby moved to use the lowlier and more reverent language. "She spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" ... Then she repeated, "Blessed is she that believed; for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord." Then it was that Mary gave utterance to her feelings in the Hymn which we read in the Evening Service. How many and complicated must they have been! In her was now to be fulfilled that promise which the world had been looking out for during thousands of years. The Seed of the woman, announced to guilty Eve, after long delay, was at length appearing upon earth, and was to be born of her. In her the destinies of the world were to be reversed, and the serpent's head bruised. On her was bestowed the greatest honour ever put upon any individual of our fallen race. God was taking upon Him her flesh, and humbling Himself to be called her offspring;—such is the deep mystery! She of course would feel her own inexpressible unworthiness; and again, her humble lot, her ignorance, her weakness in the eyes of the world. And she had moreover, we may well suppose, that purity and innocence of heart, that bright vision of faith, that confiding trust in her God, which raised all these feelings to an intensity which we, ordinary mortals, cannot understand. We cannot understand them; we repeat her hymn day after day,—yet consider for an instant in how different a mode we say it from that in which she at first uttered it. We even hurry it over, and do not think of the meaning of those words which came from the most highly favoured, awfully gifted of the children of men. "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For He hath regarded the low estate of His hand-maiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For He that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is His name. And His mercy is on them that fear Him from generation to generation."

Ten years later on the Feast of the Purification (Candlemas), Newman would go further toward a Catholic understanding of Marian Doctrine in a Parochial and Plain Sermon on the topic of the development of religious doctrine:

LITTLE is told us in Scripture concerning the Blessed Virgin, but there is one grace of which the Evangelists make her the pattern, in a few simple sentences—of Faith. Zacharias questioned the Angel's message, but "Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word." Accordingly Elisabeth, speaking with an apparent allusion to the contrast thus exhibited between her own highly-favoured husband, righteous Zacharias, and the still more highly-favoured Mary, said, on receiving her salutation, "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb; Blessed is she that believed, for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord."

2. But Mary's faith did not end in a mere acquiescence in Divine providences and revelations: as the text informs us, she "pondered" them. When the shepherds came, and told of the vision of Angels which they had seen at the time of the Nativity, and how one of them announced that the Infant in her arms was "the Saviour, which is Christ the Lord," while others did but wonder, "Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart." Again, when her Son and Saviour had come to the age of twelve years, and had left her for awhile for His Father's service, and had been found, to her surprise, in the Temple, amid the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions, and had, on her addressing Him, vouchsafed to justify His conduct, we are told, "His mother kept all these sayings in her heart." And accordingly, at the marriage-feast in Cana, her faith anticipated His first miracle, and she said to the servants, "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it."

3. Thus St. Mary is our pattern of Faith, both in the reception and in the study of Divine Truth. She does not think it enough to accept, she dwells upon it; not enough to possess, she uses it; not enough to assent, she developes it; not enough to submit the Reason, she reasons upon it; not indeed reasoning first, and believing afterwards, with Zacharias, yet first believing without reasoning, next from love and reverence, reasoning after believing. And thus she symbolizes to us, not only the faith of the unlearned, but of the doctors of the Church also, who have to investigate, and weigh, and define, as well as to profess the Gospel; to draw the line between truth and heresy; to anticipate or remedy the various aberrations of wrong reason; to combat pride and recklessness with their own arms; and thus to triumph over the sophist and the innovator.

On Monday, I'll provide some notes from Newman's Catholic devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Palm Sunday Notes

In 2012, 2013, 2016, and again this year, the Solemnity of the Annunciation has been moved from March 25 (to April 9, the Monday after Divine Mercy Sunday). Since today is Palm Sunday, Holy Week has begun.

The Catholic Church in England before the Reformation used some adaptations of the Latin or Roman Rite called the Sarum Use. These adaptations had developed at Salisbury Cathedral and took their name from the Latin for Salisbury. This blog, with delightfully illustrative typescript for its title, Modern Medievalism, describes how the full Sarum Use ritual for Palm Sunday took place at Salisbury Cathedral, but it was adapted to parishes throughout During Holy Week, these Sarum Use adaptations of the ritual demonstrated the great devotion of the English people to the Eucharist and the Passion of Our Lord. Eamon Duffy’s great work, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580 offers us many details of these rituals. The website for the now Anglican Cathedral of Salisbury notes that the Sarum Use was at its height of popularity in parish churches throughout England just before the English Reformation. During the reign of Edward VI, the Book of Common Prayer was imposed on the people and the church, so the service books were destroyed.

At the beginning of Holy Week, Palm Sunday was celebrated with a procession from the parish church. As Duffy notes, these processions were one of the most elaborate rituals of the Sarum Use, focused on the Blessed Sacrament and the incarnational celebration of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. Instead of a figure representing Jesus riding on a donkey, the Blessed Sacrament was carried in procession to the parish church. The Christians celebrating that day knew that Jesus was present in the Holy Eucharist, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity--that He was really there with them as they walked in procession with palms (willow branches) and kissed the ground before Him.

The choirs sang "Gloria, Laus et Honor" (All Glory, Laud and Honor) by Theodulph of Orleans and after the procession entered the church, the dramatic reading of the St. Matthew's Passion captured the congregation's attention. Duffy notes it was sometimes read from the Rood Loft next to the Crucifixion scene in front and above the Altar, with alternating voices of the Narrator, Jesus, and the other Speakers. The holiest week of the year had begun and the parishioners were prepared to celebrate the Holy Triduum and receive Holy Communion on Easter Sunday.

During the celebration of Palm Sunday, I always think of G.K. Chesterton's poem, "The Donkey":

When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

Please see my post this morning on the National Catholic Register blogroll on the Seven Dolors or Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

The Seven Dolors are three mysteries from Jesus’s infancy and childhood and four from His Passion, highlighting Mary’s sorrows:

1. The Prophecy of Simon

2. The Flight into Egypt

3. The Loss of the Child Jesus for Three Days

4. Mary Meets Jesus as He Carries His Cross

5. Mary Stands at the Foot of the Cross

6. Mary Receives the Dead Body of Jesus

7. Mary Witnesses the Burial of Her Son

The first dolor corresponds to the fourth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary, the Presentation in the Temple; the third to the fifth Joyful Mystery, the Finding in the Temple. I remember from Catholic grade school being taught that those two Joyful Mysteries were mixed with sorrow: Mary and Joseph were joyful that Simeon and Anna rejoiced that Jesus was the Savior but Simeon’s warning that a sword would pierce Mary’s heart troubled them; Mary and Joseph were relieved and happy to find Jesus in the Temple but they were stunned by His statement that He had to be in His Father’s house, emphasizing that God was His Father, not Joseph and His home was the Temple not with them in Nazareth.

The Flight into Egypt was sorrowful for Mary—and for Joseph too—not only because of the dangers of travel and exile but because the Holy Innocents had suffered and died.

The last four Dolors focus on Mary’s sorrows during the Passion of Jesus as he carries the Cross to Golgotha and meets her, as the traditional Fourth Station of Cross denotes; as she stands the foot of the Cross as described in the Gospel of St. John; and as she receives His Body from the Cross and hastily buries it before the Sabbath. After seeing Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, the image of Mary holding Jesus’s body—inspired by the art of Caravaggio— immediately came to my mind when I prayed that mystery.

Mary and the Passion

Attentive daily Mass attendants might have noticed the alternative Collect for the Friday in the Fifth Week of Lent in their Magnificat prayer book or missalette, even if the priest did not use it:

O God, who in this season
give your Church the grace
to imitate devoutly the Blessed Virgin Mary
in contemplating the Passion of Christ,
grant, we pray, through her intercession,
that we may cling more firmly each day
to your Only Begotten Son
and come at last to the fullness of his grace.

This alternative collect in the Ordinary Form was added in the 2002 revision of the Roman Missal.

On the Roman Calendar before the 1970 revision, the Friday before Palm Sunday was the Commemoration of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Passion Week. Parishes where the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite is celebrated—and in Anglican Ordinariate parishes and communities—observe this special remembrance of what Our Lady endured in seeing her Son so cruelly tortured and executed.

Best wishes for a wonderful Holy Week to everyone!

Good Friday on March 25

One thing I did not explain in my post for March 25 in the National Catholic Register blog roll was the tradition that the Annunciation of Our Lord and Good Friday occurred on the same date, March 25. A Clerk of Oxford explained the tradition last year:

This year Good Friday falls on Lady Day, the feast of the Annunciation. This is a rare occurrence and a special one, because it means that for once the day falls on its 'true' date: in patristic and medieval tradition, March 25 was considered to be the historical date of the Crucifixion. It happens only a handful of times in a century, and won't occur again until 2157.

These days the church deals with such occasions by transferring the feast of the Annunciation to another day, but traditionally the conjunction of the two dates was considered to be both deliberate and profoundly meaningful. The date of the feast of the Annunciation was chosen to match the supposed historical date of the Crucifixion, as deduced from the Gospels, in order to underline the idea that Christ came into the world on the same day that he left it: his life formed a perfect circle. March 25 was both the first and the last day of his earthly life, the beginning and the completion of his work on earth. The idea goes back at least to the third century, and Augustine explained it in this way:

He is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since.

This day was not only a conjunction of man-made calendars but also a meeting-place of solar, lunar, and natural cycles: both events were understood to have happened in the spring, when life returns to the earth, and at the vernal equinox, once the days begin to grow longer than the nights and light triumphs over the power of darkness. . . . 

As John Donne wrote when Good Friday did occur on March 25 in 1608, it brings the great theological mysteries of the Incarnation and the Passion together:

The abridgement of Christ’s story, which makes one
(As in plain maps, the furthest west is east)
Of the Angels’ Ave and Consummatum est.

That's why the feast of St. Dismas is on March 25; his feast is on the date he entered into eternal life in Heaven, the traditional date of the Crucifixion. 

Image Credit: Saint John the Baptist, Annunciation, Crucifixion, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Francesc Comes, circa 1400, provenance unknown.

Preparing for March 25

As a public service to all Catholics interested in liturgical, sanctoral, historical, and literary events, the National Catholic Register will publish a blog post today about the significance of tomorrow, Saturday, March 25, and how to properly celebrate such a tremendous day. The post will appear here sometime during the day. I asked them to post it a day early to give readers some time to prepare!

What's so special about Saturday, March 25? We are celebrating, and should reflect on, these events:

I.   The Solemnity of the Annunciation of Our Lord

II.  The feasts of St. Dismas, the Good Thief, and of St. Margaret Clitherow, English martyr

III. The landing of the Ark and the Dove in Maryland, establishing an English colony that promoted religious tolerance and freedom

IV. Tolkien Reading Day

V.  The birth of Flannery O'Connor

My post offers background on each event and some suggestions for appropriate celebration: attending Mass, praying for religious freedom, reading The Lord of the Rings aloud, etc.

Regarding V., our Eighth Day Institute Sisters of Sophia met on Tuesday evening and enjoyed a great presentation on the life and work of Flannery O'Connor. In April, our heroine will be St. Mary Magdalen, my confirmation patron saint. 

Holy Week: Good Friday and The Annunciation Postponed

Because today is Good Friday, the Feast of the Annunciation of Our Lord, which is usually celebrated on March 25, has been moved this year to the Monday after the Easter Octave/Divine Mercy Sunday: April 4. Nevertheless, what was announced by the Angel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin Mary--with her cooperation/fiat--was the Incarnation. The Incarnation is essential to what happened on Good Friday, as Blessed John Henry Newman explains in his Parochial and Plain Sermon, "The Incarnate Son, a Sufferer and Sacrifice":

Here then, as you see, we are at once introduced into a very mysterious subject, though one which concerns us most nearly. There was a virtue in His death, which there could be in no other, for He was God. We, indeed, could not have told beforehand what would follow from so high an event as God becoming incarnate and dying on the Cross; but that something extraordinary and high would issue from it, we might have been quite sure, though nothing had been told us. He would not have so humbled Himself for nought; He could not so humble Himself (if I may use the expression) without momentous consequences.

It would be well if we opened our minds to what is meant by the doctrine of the Son of God dying on the Cross for us. I do not say we shall ever be able to solve the mystery of it, but we may understand in what the Mystery consists; and that is what many men are deficient in. They have no clear views what the truth of the matter is; if they had, it would make them more serious than they are. Let it be understood, then, that the Almighty Son of God, who had been in the bosom of the Father from everlasting, became man; became man as truly as He was always God. He was God from God, as the Creed says; that is, as being the Son of the Father, He had all those infinite perfections from the Father which the Father had. He was of one substance with the Father, and was God, because the Father was God. He was truly God, but He became as truly man. He became man, yet so as not to cease in any respect being what He was before. He added a new nature to Himself, yet so intimately, that it was as if He had actually left His former self, which He did not. "The Word became flesh:" even this would seem mystery and marvel enough, but even this was not all; not only was He "made man," but, as the Creed goes on to state, He "was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, He suffered and was buried."

Now here, I say, is a fresh mystery in the history of His humiliation, and the thought of it will cast a new and solemn light on the chapters we shall read during the week. I have said that, after His incarnation, man's nature was as much and as truly Christ's as His Divine attributes; St. Paul even speaks of God "purchasing us with His own blood," and of the "Lord of glory" being "killed," expressions which, more than any other, show how absolutely and simply He had put on Him the nature of man. As the soul acts through the body as its instrument,—in a more perfect way, but as intimately, did the Eternal Word of God act through the manhood which He had taken. When He spoke, it was literally God speaking; when He suffered, it was God suffering. Not that the Divine Nature itself could suffer, any more than our soul can see or hear; but, as the soul sees and hears through the organs of the body, so God the Son suffered in that human nature which He had taken to Himself and made His own. And in that nature He did truly suffer; as truly as He framed the worlds through His Almighty power, so through His human nature did He suffer; for when He came on earth, His manhood became as truly and personally His, as His Almighty power had been from everlasting. . . .

This is why He "humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." "Christ hath redeemed us," says the Apostle elsewhere, "from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us." Again, he says that Christ has "made peace by the blood of His cross." He has "reconciled" us "in the body of His flesh through death, to present us holy and unblameable, and unreproveable in His sight." Or, as St. John says, the saints "have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." And no one speaks more explicitly on this great mystery than the prophet Isaiah, many hundred years before it was accomplished. "Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." [Gal. iii. 13. Col. i. 20-22. Rev. vii. 14. Isa. liii. 4-6.]

We believe, then, that when Christ suffered on the cross, our nature suffered in Him. Human nature, fallen and corrupt, was under the wrath of God, and it was impossible that it should be restored to His favour till it had expiated its sin by suffering. Why this was necessary, we know not; but we are told expressly, that we are "all by nature children of wrath," that "by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified," and that "the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the people that forget God." The Son of God then took our nature on Him, that in Him it might do and suffer what in itself was impossible to it. What it could not effect of itself, it could effect in Him. He carried it about Him through a life of penance. He carried it forward to agony and death. In Him our sinful nature died and rose again. When it died in Him on the cross, that death was its new creation. In Him it satisfied its old and heavy debt; for the presence of His Divinity gave it transcendent merit. His presence had kept it pure from sin from the first. His Hand had carefully selected the choicest specimen of our nature from the Virgin's substance; and, separating from it all defilement, His personal indwelling hallowed it and gave it power. And thus, when it had been offered up upon the Cross, and was made perfect by suffering, it became the first-fruits of a new man; it became a Divine leaven of holiness for the new birth and spiritual life of as many as should receive it. And thus, as the Apostle says, "If one died for all, then did all die;" "our old man is crucified in Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed;" and "together" with Christ "when we were dead in sins, hath He quickened us, and raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Thus "we are members of His body, from His flesh, and from His bones: for whosoever eateth His flesh and drinketh His blood, hath eternal life," for His flesh is meat indeed, and His blood is drink indeed; and "he that eateth His flesh and drinketh His blood dwelleth in Him, and He in him." [2 Cor. v. 14. Rom. vi. 6. Eph. ii. 5, 6; v. 30. John vi. 54.]

No wonder then that artists and mystics have so often meditated upon the presence of Mary, the Mother of God--not just of Jesus, not just of His human nature--the Mother of the Incarnate Second Person of the Trinity, on the Way of the Cross (the Stabat Mater), at the foot of the Cross, and at the Descent from the Cross, as in this detail from Pietro Lorenzetti's frescoes in the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi in Assisi, Italy. She conceived and gave birth to, after all, a Person, not just a nature. At the foot of the Cross, the prophecy of Simeon in the Temple at the Presentation was fulfilled: “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

March 25: An Extraordinary Day

On March 25, 1586, St. Margaret Clitherow was pressed to death in the Toll Booth on the Ouse Bridge in the city of York--it was Good Friday that year. More about the Pearl of York here. She is one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

Today is also the Solemnity of the Annunciation of Our Lord, which was once a Holyday of Obligation (and should be again, I think). Only nine months until Christmas! John Mason Neale translated a hymn by Venantius Fortunatus, Quem terra, pontus, aethera thus:

The God whom earth, and sea, and sky,
Adore, and laud, and magnify,
Who o’er their threefold fabric reigns,
The virgin’s spotless womb contains.

The God whose will by moon and sun
And all things in due course is done,
Is borne upon a maiden’s breast,
By fullest heavenly grace possessed.

How blest the mother, in whose shrine
The great Artificer Divine,
Whose hand contains the earth and sky,
Vouchsafed, as in His ark, to lie!

Blest, in the message Gabriel brought;
Blest, by the work the Spirit wrought:
From whom the Great Desire of earth
Took human flesh and human birth.

All honor, laud, and glory be,
O Jesu, virgin-born, to Thee!
All glory, as is ever meet,
To Father and to Paraclete.

Here is a performance of the original Latin hymn in a composition by William Byrd.

Today is also Maryland Day, commemorating March 25, 1634 when the Ark and Dove (pictured left on a three cent stamp) landed in what is now St. Mary's County, Maryland. George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, a revert to the Catholic faith, founded a colony where Catholics could practice their faith as Protestants. More about Maryland Day here.

Finally, this is Tolkien Reading Day, celebrated every March 25 since 2003 by the Tolkien Society--March 25 is the date of the destruction of the Ring, and thus the Fall of Sauron. This Dominican blog unpacks more of the symbolism and significance of this day:

In a seemingly insignificant detail in one of the appendices of his masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien notes that the destruction of the One Ring and the defeat of Sauron took place on March 25. What might have led Tolkien to date the destruction of the ring with such precision? Being a devout Catholic, Tolkien most likely was subtly weaving into his work an ancient Christian tradition regarding the Solemnity of the Annunciation, the feast the Church celebrates today.

According to this tradition, the date of the Annunciation coincided with a number of significant events in salvation history. March 25 was not only the day on which Christ was conceived in Our Lady’s womb; it was also the day of the creation of the world, the day Adam and Eve fell, the day Abraham (nearly) sacrificed his son Isaac, the day the Israelites were set free from Egypt, and the day of the crucifixion. . . .

While Tolkien probably set the destruction of the ring on March 25th more for its association with the crucifixion than with the Annunciation, the two are intimately linked – the incarnation is ordered to the crucifixion (and, with it, the resurrection).

Tolkien’s use of this tradition illustrates an important aspect of the incarnation and the cross. While the destruction of the ring meant the defeat of Sauron, this did not put to an end all of Middle Earth’s troubles. The members of the fellowship still had work to do. Similarly, though the incarnation and the cross spell the defeat of Satan, we, too, have work to do. And like Frodo, our success will come not through earthly power, but by humility. For it was by the humility that characterized Mary, the New Eve, that she untied the knot of the first Eve, and it was by His humility that Christ overcame death (Phil 2:5-11). May she who is full of grace obtain for us the graces we need to participate in Christ’s humility and to obey Him in whatever tasks He gives us.