Sweetest Wood and sweetest iron, sweetest weight is hung on thee!

 Today, along with the feast of the Presentation, is perhaps one of my favourite feasts. It is perhaps one of the richest in theology, symbolism and devotion, as the texts, especially of the office, prove.

Why does this feast occur on this day? It is an odd time of year to sing Passion-tide hymns. Today, according to legend, commemorates the day when the emperor Heraclius carried the Cross back to Calvary, it having been stolen by Chosroes, the emperor of Persia. He, having been safely defeated (or rather murdered by Siroes, his son), was out of the way, and the Cross could be brought back. However, when Heraclitus was the gate which led to Calvary, he found himself rooted to the spot, unable to advance. The bishop of Jerusalem (Zacharius) then pointed out to him that if he wished to follow Christ's road to Calvary, he should imitate Him in His poverty and humility. So Heraclius stripped himself of his robes of state, which he happened to be wearing, and took up the Cross, and carried it easily to Calvary, then put it back where it belonged. Truly, we should glory in the Cross of Christ. And nothing else.

As I said, the Office for today gives us Venantius Fortunatus' three great hymns to sing once more: Vexilla Regis, Pange lingua & Lustra sex. These, I think, are three of the deepest hymns the church has at her disposal. When sung in Passion-tide they have an understandably doleful air to them; but today the glory of the Cross shines through. Today it is not the tree of shame and humiliation, but, because of Christ's redeeming work, it is the tree of glory. The hymns portray this beautifully, and use a very ancient motif, which still persists in many places, of personifying the Cross: they speak not only of, but to the Cross. (I suppose much in the way I speak to recalcitrant photocopiers, but with a degree more tenderness and without threats of violence if it doesn't start doing what I want it to).

Thou alone wast counted worthy,

This world's ransom to uphold;

For a shipwrecked race preparing

Harbour, like the Ark of old;

With the sacred Blood anointed

From the smitten Lamb that rolled.

In this verse alone, we see a great deal of depth in one word: the Ark. This takes us down the path of the various things foreshadowed, fulfilled & completed in the Cross; beginning with the Ark, the forerunner of the church: made of wood, like the Cross, it gave safety in the floods, so to, the Cross gives us safe harbour through the storms, changes and chances of the world (a religious sister, on the day I was received, told me that the church was truly like the ark: the stench inside would be unbearable, were it not for the floods outside. I think there is a little truth in this). The old testament reading in the ordinary form gives us Moses and the serpents, another type of the Cross: Moses staff, with the serpent entwined about it gives healing to those bitten by the snake, by their gazing on it. In a final twist against the spoiler, he is outwitted by the Cross: we can see the Devil dogging the footsteps of Christ on the way to the Cross, and it is easy to imagine the serpent entwining itself about the base of the Cross in a final attempt to thwart the inevitable. This is alluded to Christ Himself in conversation with Nicodemus in John 3: the Son of Man must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent. We also see in the wood of the Cross the wood of the table of the Last Supper, the wood of the barque of Peter.

The motto of the Carthusians is Stat crux dum volvitur orbis- the Cross is steady as the world turns. I would go further and say that the world turns around the Cross: there are few sensible historians, I think, who would deny that in those three hours Christ hung on the Cross, the world changed forever. No event had the same effect on the world as when an itinerant preacher in a back-water of the Roman Empire was put to death. The whole world, even the whole universe, turns on that one point fixed point in history.

+Fulton Sheen was fond of pointing out the threes: 30 years our Lord was hidden in Nazareth. Three years he preached. Three hours he suffered. And on the third day He rose again. Those 33 years changed everything. Those three hours proved beyond a doubt that God so loved the world.

Therefore, to quote St. Paul and the authorised version, it behoveth us to glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

O cross, our one reliance, hail!

Still may thy power with us avail

To give new virtue to the saint,

And pardon to the penitent.

On a personal note, today is also a glorious day, not only for the implementation of Summorum Pontificum, but also it the anniversary of my acting as Subdeacon for High Mass for the first time.

Source

On the Worthlessness of Mary

Will great round to writing the next day of Downside up in the near future. In the meantime, here is a little something on our Lady- my first attempt at anything homiletic/ theological.

Our Lady has a great many, very beautiful titles: Mirror of Justice, Seat of Wisdom, Tower of Ivory, Ocean of Bitterness, House of God, Morning Star, Mother of Perpetual Help, and so on ad infinitum. For every conceivable aspect of human need, there is a title of Our Lady that we may name her, and beg her help and intercession and gain what we require, either for spiritual or material aid.

This is all well and good- I have an especial devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, who’s intercession I have sought a great many times, and never without success. She is also Patroness of my diocese (Middlesbrough) - but one title we never hear is “Mary most Worthless”. I was suddenly, through misreading “worthiness” struck by this; that Our Lady, the Mother of God, and Assumed and Glorious Queen of Heaven, conceived without sin, and first of all creation, is in fact, of herself of no worth.

Except for Grace.

Through the operation of Grace; that is through the loving kindness of our God; all generations call her blessed. It was Grace that rescued her from ever being in original sin, and from ever committing the slightest sin making her the fairest of all women. None of this is achieved by herself through her own merits. Without God deigning to bestow on her an infinite number of Graces, and making her the Theotokos, she would have been no better than she ought to be; just like the rest of us.

And yet she is just like the rest of us; she was created by God, in His image and likeness, as we all are; she is a God bearer- as we all are whenever we receive Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament; she is a recipient of God’s mercy and loving kindness; and many, many other ways.

I am nervous of the term which seems to be so prevalent among the Orthodox Churches of “Deification”. I don’t know why, it is a very good term for what God desires to happen to us, that over time, as with John the Baptist, He increases, as I decrease, we draw closer, and closer to the Godhead, until we become God: until we are so lost in God, so hidden in the face of the Almighty (to quote Bernard of Clairvaux) that all our flaws have been lost, even our littlest sins and peccadilloes are smoothed away that we achieve (I don’t want to use the phrase, but work with me on this) perfection- we become one with the Godhead.

This is what, I think, has happened to Mary; she has become so intimate and so close to God; not just because she bore Him for nine months in the womb, not just because she was the one who taught Him his religion, because our Lord says in response to “Blessed is the woman who bore thee”, “Nay, Blessed rather is he who hears the word of God and keeps it”. Would our Lady be so worthy of praise if she had not been the perfect example she was? What if she’d gone off the rails and hit the Gin? Who knows? Does it really matter? Probably not. I suspect that was nor part of the Almighty’s plan, to which she was utterly submissive.

But the impression I get is that she is worthy of praise and adoration because she is the most perfect follower of Christ, more so than for her having borne our Lord in the womb. But she did, and she is and she was, if that makes sense. And through this, through her pondering all things in her Immaculate Heart, she drew ever closer to God and closer and closer and closer, until she had diminished to the point where she only displays the will and love of God- can one think of Mary except as the God bearer? Would we think of her at all if she had not been the God bearer, if she had instead become a proud and domineering housewife, feared and respected in Nazareth? I suspect not; her name would have died with the last person who remembered her. So through her humility, through her utter obedience to God, through her loosing herself totally in Him, she has become Mirror of Justice, Seat of Wisdom, Tower of Ivory, Ocean of Bitterness, House of God, Morning Star, Mother of Perpetual Help, &c., &c. And not Mary most worthless, Mary most unremembered.

This may all be abundantly clear to everyone, but it had never really occurred to me.