Hodie egressa est virga de radice Iesse, we sing tonight at Vespers. Today from the stock of Jesse a shoot has come forth (cf. Is 11:1). Hodie sine ulla peccati labe concepta est Maria. Today without any stain of sin Mary is conceived. Hodie - soaring this time up a 5th, a 6th, a whole octave - contritum est ab ea caput serpentis antiqui, alleluia! Today the head of the ancient serpent is crushed by her, alleluia!
How can we sufficiently praise Mary? How can we sufficiently honour her, rejoice in her, thank her, love her? The grace of our Blessed Lady is unique, super-abundant, surpassing all others that ever have been or ever will be. Mary is the perfection of all God’s work, in creation and redemption and sanctification and glorification. This morning at Vigils we heard a Sermon by St. Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem in the mid-seventh century. “No one”, cries Sophronius to Mary, “has ever been as favoured as you, no one as blessed as you, no one as perfectly sanctified as you, no one as highly praised as you. No one else has like you been possessed from the first by purifying grace, no one else has been enlightened like you, or exalted like you, for no one has approached so close to God as you, or been enriched with such divine gifts, or endowed with such heavenly grace.”
At the beginning of the human race, Eve took the forbidden fruit, and incurred on behalf of all her children the sentence of pain and death. Jesus the Lord reversed that sentence, and blotted out that sin, by his atoning death. Sin came from the tree in the garden; grace, life and holiness from the tree of the Cross.
Apart from these two trees, the mystical tradition of the Church has noticed in holy Scripture another tree. This one is not a symbol of disobedience and alienation, nor a symbol of horror and death: instead it symbolises intimate communion in love. My love, says the Bride in the Song of Songs, is like an apple tree. I sat down in the delightful shade of him whom I desired, and his fruit was sweet to my taste (Cant 2:4).
That is: any graced soul who is freed from all the impediments of sin may dwell with God in intimate and delightful communion. St. John of the Cross comments on this verse from the Song of Songs in his own Spiritual Canticle: In this state, he says “the Bride drinks the clear water of sublime contemplation and the wisdom of God, and the cool water of her refreshment and comfort in God, and she also rests in the shade of his protection and favour, where she is divinely and delightfully consoled, and fed, and refreshed” (2nd Redaction Stanza 34 n. 6). Our Lady rested there, at every moment of her life.
Once the Lord had asked Adam, hiding in wild and thorny bushes: Where are you? If ever he put this question to his Immaculate Mother, she could only reply: “Always with you, in the garden of your delights, enjoying at each moment the sublime communication of your grace and love.”
We can imagine that dialogue continuing, the reverse of the terrible first dialogue in Eden. Ablaze with the glory of the Resurrection, the Lord appears and joyfully addresses us: “Who told you that you were redeemed?” And we respond: “The Immaculate Church of God, who is our Mother, and image of our Blessed Lady, who has the fullness of all grace, and from whom all the graces we receive flow.”
The Lord then continues: “Have you been freely receiving this grace which I have freely offered to you?” And we respond: “All we have, we received through and from this Woman you gave us. She gave us the fruit of her womb, who is Christ the Lord. And by the divine grace flowing in the first place through her and from her, we have received him, and been made whole, and given eternal life.”
And the Lord then turns to his Mother: “What is this you have done?” And she replies: “Always and only your will.” And in response he sings: “Because you have done this, be blessed beyond all women, and all creatures whatever. You shall be raised up in eternal glory. I will set an everlasting enmity between you and the serpent, between you and sin. He can and will strike at you externally, but he has no part in you, and can do nothing to draw you away from me. And you will overcome him. By your purity and love and humility, by the grace with which you are filled, by your cooperation in my redemptive work, you will crush his head. And then finally a great gulf will separate you and all who belong to you from him, and from those who belong to him, forever.”
It’s the custom today for the Pope to honour the Immaculate Virgin by visiting her beautiful statue in the Spanish Place in Rome. This large bronze was cast soon after the Papal definition of 1854. Our Lady is set on a pillar over 30 feet high. In ancient Rome this pillar had supported the image of a pagan goddess. Mary here stands on the serpent of course, but also on the crescent moon, according to the description in Apocalypse Chapter 12. So she has a crown of 12 stars, and is turned as if in ecstasy towards heaven. This expresses the theological truth that Our Lady is far far above us, and always perfectly united with God. Here is expressed also Mary’s triumph, and thereby also the triumph of the Church, over all hostile forces of sin, or paganism, or heresy.
A few years before this, another image of our Lady was made, expressing a complementary theological truth, surely for us even more wonderful and consoling. In 1830 St. Catherine Labouré was given this image in a vision, in the Church of her Order in Paris, and ordered to have a medal struck according to its pattern.
On what we now know as the Miraculous Medal, Mary Immaculate stands on the serpent, and on the world. But her attitude here is not up, but down. She turns towards us, her hands stretched down to us, pouring out rays of abundant grace over the whole world. And this is true, and it’s happening even now, and to know it is good for us, and a cause of joy, and love, and gratitude. So now and always we turn with total confidence to Mary, and we ask her: O Mary Immaculate, conceived without sin, pray for us, who have recourse to you. Amen.