Our Lady Saint Mary Part 20

The modern man tries to reform life rather than to regenerate it.

And, I repeat, I cannot help a.s.sociating with a repudiation of the cultus of the saints, and especially of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a consequent failure to understand the Christian life as a supernatural creation. If one leaves out of account the greater part of the Kingdom of Heaven, all the mult.i.tudes of the redeemed, and their activities, and fastens one's attention exclusively upon that small part of the Kingdom which is the Church on earth, one can hardly fail to miss the significance of the earthly Church itself. Religion understood in this limited way may well drift more and more toward Deism and Humanitarianism, and further and further from any supernatural implications. This is no theory; it is what has happened. It was the course of Protestantism from the Reformation to the eighteenth century; and, after a partial revival of supernaturalism, is once more the rapid course of Protestantism to-day. Protestantism has lost or is fast losing any grip on the Trinity or the Incarnation: to it G.o.d is more and more a barren unity, and Jesus a good man. And this largely because all interest in the world of the Redeemed has been abandoned and all intercourse with the inhabitants of that world denied.

It is therefore of the last importance that we, infected as we are with Protestantism, should stress the revival of the cultus of the saints, and should insist upon our right and privilege to pay due honour to the Mother of G.o.d and ask our share in her prayers. We must do all we can to make her known to our brethren. We need her sympathy, her aid, her example.

Above all, the example of her spotless purity. It is notorious that one of the most marked features of our time is the virulent a.s.sault on purity. We had long emphasised a certain quality of conduct which we called modesty; it was, perhaps, largely a convention, but it was one of those protective conventions which are valuable as preservative of qualities we prize. It was protective of purity; and however artificial it was, in some respects, it existed because we felt that purity was a thing too precious to be exposed to unnecessary risk. Well, modesty is gone now, whether in conduct or convention. One hears discussed at dinner-tables and in the presence of young girls matters which our mothers would have blushed to mention at all. The quality of modesty is declared Puritanical and hypocritical. "Hypocritical virtue" is a phrase one frequently meets; and we seem fast going on to the time when all virtue will be regarded as hypocrisy. Customary standards are falling all about us, overthrown in the name of personal liberty.

And by liberty, one gathers, is meant freedom to do as one pleases, and especially as one s.e.xually pleases. The a.s.sault is pushed hardest just now against the sanct.i.ty of the sacrament of matrimony and the morals of that sacrament as they have been developed by the Christian Church.

Protestantism long ago a.s.sented to the overthrow of Christian standards in the marriage relation and has aided the s.e.xual anarchy with which we are faced to-day. To-day the chief attack is on the purity of marriage in the interests, ostensibly, of humanity. A vigorous campaign in favour of what is called birth-control is being carried on, and is being supported in quarters which are professedly Christian. There are many grounds for opposing the movement, social, humanitarian and other. We are here concerned with it only as it is an attack on purity. From the Christian point of view the marriage relation has for its end the procreation of children for the upbuilding of the Kingdom of G.o.d. If circ.u.mstances are such, through reasons of health or economy, that children seem undesirable, the remedy is plain, self control. The theory that human beings have no more control over their appet.i.tes than beasts, while it has much to support it in contemporary life, cannot be admitted from the point of view of religion. Self-control is always possible, and is constantly exercised by many men and women who choose to be guided by principle rather than by pa.s.sion. And in any case the Christian Religion can become no partner, not even a silent one, in a conspiracy to murder, or in the sort of compromise that turns marriage into a licensed sodomy.

If indeed the economic status of the modern world is such that the average couple cannot support a family, then the Christian Church may well aid in the bringing about of an economic revolution; but it can hardly aid in the destruction of its own ideals of purity.

What is ultimately at stake in the modern world is the whole conception of purity as a quality that is desirable. This att.i.tude has become possible among us for one reason because we have consented to the suppression of ideals of life which were calculated to sustain it. To sustain any moral or spiritual conception there must be maintained certain appropriate ideals which, while out of the reach of the average man, create and sustain in him an admiration and respect for the ideal standard. So the standard of purity presented in Mary and protected by the belief in her Immaculate Conception and her a.s.sumption, has the effect, not only of commending the life of chast.i.ty in the sense of the vows of religion, but also in the broad sense of the restraint and discipline of appet.i.te whether within or without the marriage relation.

It impresses upon us the truth that purity is not only a human quality but a divinely created virtue, the result of the infusion of sanctifying grace into the soul. Is it not largely because the young are taught (when they are taught anything at all in the premises) that purity is a matter of the _will_, that they so often fail? If they were taught the nature of the _virtue_ and were led to rely more on the indwelling might of the Holy Spirit would they not have better success? And if there were held constantly before their eyes the example of the saints and especially of Blessed Mary ever-virgin, would not they have an increased sense of the value of purity?

The life and example of S. Mary are an inestimable treasure of the Church of G.o.d, and her removal from the world has only enhanced that value. To-day her meaning is clearer to us than ever. The spirit-guided mind of the Church has through the centuries been meditating on the meaning of her office as Mother of G.o.d. The words in which she accepts her vocation, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, implying, as they do, an active co-operation with the divine purpose, a voluntary a.s.sociation of herself with it, imply, too, the perpetual continuance of that a.s.sociation, and contain in germ all Catholic teaching in regard to her office. She pa.s.sed from this world silently, and to the world unknown; but to the Church of G.o.d she ever remains of all human beings the greatest spiritual force in the Kingdom of G.o.d.

Weep, living things, of life the Mother dies; The world doth lose the sum of all her bliss, The Queen of earth, the Empress of the skies; By Mary's death mankind an orphan is.

Let Nature weep, yea, let all graces moan, Their glory, grace and gifts die all in one.

It was no death to her, but to her woe, By which her joys began, her griefs did end; Death was to her a friend, to us a foe, Life of whose lives did on her life depend: Not prey of death, but praise to death she was.

Whose ugly shape seemed glorious in her face.

Her face a heaven; two planets were her eyes, Whose gracious light did make our clearest day; But one such heaven there was, and lo, it dies, Death's dark eclipse hath dimmed every, ray: Sun, hide thy light, thy beams untimely s.h.i.+ne; True light since we have lost, we crave not thine.

Robert Southwell, 1560-1595

PART TWO

CHAPTER XXV

THE a.s.sUMPTION

Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me.

S. John XVII, 24.

Hail! Holy Queen, Mother of mercy, hail! Our life, our sweetness, our hope, all hail. To thee we cry, poor exiled children of Eve. To thee we send up our cries, weeping and mourning in this vale of tears. Turn, then, Most gracious Advocate, thy merciful eyes upon us, and now, after this our exile, show unto us the blessed Fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O gracious, O merciful, O sweet Virgin Mary.

Anthem from the breviary. Attributed to Hermann Contractus, 1013-54.

There is nothing more wonderful or beautiful, nothing that brings to us a more perfect revelation of our Lord's mind, than this prayer which is recorded for us by S. John. There is in it a complete unfolding of that sympathy and love which we feel to underlie and explain our Lord's mission. As we come to know what G.o.d is only when we see Him revealed in Jesus; when we enter into our Lord's saying, "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father," so in the revelation of Jesus we understand G.o.d's att.i.tude toward us. In Jesus the love of G.o.d shows itself, not as an abstract quality, a philosophical conception, but as a burning, pa.s.sionate eagerness to rescue, an outgoing of G.o.d to individual souls.

There is a deep personal affection displayed in this final scene in the Upper Chamber. This is our Lord's real parting from His disciples. He will see them again, but under conditions of strain and tragedy, or under such changed circ.u.mstances that they cannot well enter into the old intimacy. But here there is no bar to the expression of love. Here He gives them the final evidence of His utter union with them in the humility of the foot-was.h.i.+ng. Here He marvellously imparts Himself in the Breaking of the Bread, wherein is consummated His personal union with them. This is the demonstration, if one were needed, that having loved His own, He loved them unto the uttermost.

It is inconceivable that pa.s.sionate love such as this should ever end.

It is a personal relation which must endure while personality endures.

It is really the demands of love which more than anything else outside revelation are the evidence of immortality. We are certain that the love of G.o.d which in its fulness has been made known in Christ cannot be annihilated by death. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee." Love such as that must draw men, not only in this world, but in all worlds. If it can draw men out of sin to G.o.d, it must create an enduring bond. If it can draw G.o.d to men, it must be the revelation of a permanent att.i.tude of G.o.d to man. It is a love that goes out beyond the world, that love of which S.

Paul says: "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor princ.i.p.alities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of G.o.d, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Our instinctive thought of the Judgment seems to be of it as condemnation, or, at best, as acquittal. But why not think of it as consummation? Why not think of it as setting the seal of G.o.d's approval upon our accomplishment of His will and purpose for us? The final Judgment is surely that,--the entrance of those who are saved into the full joy of their Lord. There once more will our humanity be complete because it is the whole man, not the soul only, but the soul clothed with the body of the resurrection, once more clothed upon with its "house from heaven," which is filled with the joy of the Beatific Vision. The thought of the particular judgment may fill us with dread; but if we are able to look beyond that to the general Judgment at the last day, we shall think only of our perfect bliss in the enjoyment of G.o.d.

The belief in the a.s.sumption of our Lady is a belief that in her case that which is the inheritance of all the saints, that they shall rise again with their bodies and be admitted to the Vision of G.o.d, has been antic.i.p.ated. In her, that which we all look forward to and dream of for ourselves, has been attained. She to-day is in G.o.d's presence in her entire humanity, clothed with her body of glory.

This teaching, one finds, still causes some searching of hearts among us, and is thought to raise many questions difficult to answer. And it may be admitted at the outset that it is not a truth taught in Holy Scripture but a truth arrived at by the mind of the Church after centuries of thought. Unless we can think of the Church as a divine organism with a continuous life from the day of Pentecost until now, as being the home of the Holy Spirit, and as being continuously guided by Him into all the truth; unless we can accept in their full sense our Lord's promises that He will be with the Church until the end of the world, we shall not find it possible to accept the a.s.sumption as a fact, but shall decline to believe that, and not only that but, if we are consistent, many another belief of the Christian Church. But if we have an adequate understanding of what is implied in the continuity of the Church as the organ of the present action of the Holy Spirit, we shall not find that the fact that a given doctrine is not explicitly contained in Holy Scripture is any bar to its acceptance. We shall have learned that the revelation of G.o.d in Christ, and our relation to G.o.d in Christ, are facts of such tremendous import and inexhaustible content that it would be absurd to suppose that all their meaning had been understood and explicitly stated in the first generation of the Christian Church.

We shall not, then, find it any bar to the acceptance of belief in the a.s.sumption of our Lady that its formal statement came, as is said, "late." We simply want to know that when it came it came as the outcome of the mature thought of the Church, the Body of Christ, the Fulness of Him that filleth all in all.

It is to be noted that the a.s.sumption is not a wholly isolated fact.

There are several cases of a.s.sumption in the Old Testament though of a slightly different character in that they were a.s.sumptions directly from life without any interval of death. Such were the a.s.sumptions of Enoch and Elijah. Moses, too, it has been constantly believed, was a.s.sumed into heaven,--in his case after death and with his resurrection body. A case which is more strangely like what is believed to have taken place in the experience of blessed Mary is that closely connected with our Lord's resurrection and recorded by S. Matthew. "And the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." Although it is not a.s.serted that these were a.s.sumed into heaven, it seems impossible to avoid the inference; and if "many saints which slept" were raised from the dead and a.s.sumed into the heavenly world, there can be no _a priori_ difficulty in believing the same thing to have taken place in the Blessed Mother of G.o.d. Nay if such a thing as an a.s.sumption is at all possible for any human being one would naturally conclude from the very relation of S. Mary to our Lord that the possibility would be realised in her.

And there were elements in her case which were lacking in all the other cases which suggest a certain fitness, if not inevitability, in her a.s.sumption. She was conceived without sin,--never had any breath of sin tainted her. Was it then possible that she should be holden by death?

Surely, in any case, it was impossible that her holy body should see corruption: we cannot think of the dissolution of that body which had no part in sin. If ever an a.s.sumption were possible, here it was inevitable--so the thought of the Church shaped itself. The compelling motives of the belief were theological rather than historical. The germ out of consideration of which was evolved the belief in the a.s.sumption was the relation of Blessed Mary to her Son. That unique relation might be expected to carry with it unique consequences, and among these the consequence that the body which was bound by no sin should be reunited to the soul which had needed no purgation, but had pa.s.sed at once to the presence of its G.o.d and its Redeemer who was likewise Son. It is well to stress the fact that the a.s.sumption is not only a fact but a doctrine.

Fact, of course, it was or there could be no doctrine; but the truth of the fact is certified by the growing conviction in the mind of the Church of the inevitability of the doctrine.

What is implied in the word a.s.sumption is that the body of the Mother of our Lord was after her death and burial raised to heaven by the power of G.o.d. It differed therefore essentially from the ascension of our Lord which was accomplished by His Own inherent power. When this a.s.sumption took place we have no means of knowing. We do not certainly know where S. Mary lived, nor where and when she died. Jerusalem and Ephesus contend in tradition for the privilege of having sheltered her last days and reverently carried her body to its burial. There is no way of deciding between these two claims, although the fact that our Lord confided His Mother to S. John throws some little weight into the scale of Ephesus. And yet S. Mary may have died before S. John settled in Ephesus. We can only say that history gives us no reliable information on the matter.

In the silence of Scripture we naturally turn to the other writings of the early Church for light and guidance on the matter; but there, too, there is little help. There is, to be sure, a group of Apocryphal writings which have a good deal to say about the life of S. Mary, where the Scriptures and tradition are silent. Among other things these Apocryphal writings have a good deal to say, and some very beautiful stories to tell, of S. Mary's last days, of her burial and a.s.sumption.

Are we to think of these stories as containing any grain of truth? If they do, it is now impossible to sift it from the chaff. These stories are generally rejected as a basis of knowledge. And there has been, and still is in some quarters, a conviction that the belief of the Church in the a.s.sumption rests on nothing better or more stable than these Apocryphal stories; that the authors of these Apocrypha were inventing their stories out of nothing, and that in an uncritical age their legends came to be taken as history. Thus was a belief in the a.s.sumption foisted upon the Church, having no slightest ground in fact. The human tendency to fill in the silences of Scripture has resulted in many legends, that of the a.s.sumption among them.

There is a good deal to be said for this position, yet I do not feel that it is convincing. That the incidents of the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary as narrated in the Apocrypha are historical, of course cannot be maintained. But neither is it at all probable that such stories grew up out of nothing: indeed, their existence implies that there were certain facts widely accepted in the Christian community that served as their starting point. While the Apocryphal stories of the life of our Lady cannot be accepted as history, they do presuppose certain beliefs as universally, or at least widely, held. Thus one may reject all the details of the story of the death and burial and a.s.sumption of our Lady, and yet feel that the story is evidence of a belief in the a.s.sumption among those for whom the story was written. What was new to them was not the fact of the a.s.sumption but the detailed incidents with which the Apocrypha embroidered it. I feel no doubt that these Apocryphal stories are not the source of belief in the a.s.sumption, but are our earliest witness to the existence of the belief. They actually presuppose its existence in the Church as the necessary condition of their own existence.

Another fact that tells in the same direction is the absence of any physical relics of our Lady. At a time when great stress was laid upon relics, and there was little scruple in inventing them, if the authentic ones were not forthcoming, there were no relics produced which were alleged to be the physical relics of S. Mary. Why was this? Surely, unless there were some inhibiting circ.u.mstances, relics, real or forged, would have been produced. The only probable explanation is that the inhibiting circ.u.mstance was the established belief in the a.s.sumption. If the a.s.sumption were a fact, there would be no physical relics; if it were an established belief, there would be no fraud possible. Add to this that various relics of our Lady were alleged to exist; but they were not relics of her body.

Again: by the seventh century the celebration of the feast of the a.s.sumption had spread throughout the whole church. This universal establishment of the feast implies a preceding history of considerable length, going well back into the past. The feast was kept in many places, and under a variety of names which seem to imply, not mere copying, but independent development. It is alleged, to be sure, that the names by which the feast was called do not imply belief in the a.s.sumption. The feast is called "the Sleeping," "the Repose," "the Pa.s.sage" of the Virgin, as well as by the Western t.i.tle, the a.s.sumption.

But a study of the liturgies and of the sermons preached in honour of the feast will convince any one that the underlying tradition was that of our Lady's a.s.sumption.

These quite separate and yet converging lines of evidence seem to me to show convincingly what was the wide-spread belief of the early Christian community as to the destiny of Blessed Mary. They imply a tradition going well back into the past, so far back, that in view of the theological expression of the mind of the Church they may well be regarded as apostolic. Our personal belief in the a.s.sumption will still rest primarily upon its theological expression in the mind of the Church, but having attained certainty as to the doctrine, which is of course at the same time certainty as to the fact, we shall have no difficulty in finding in the above sketched lines of historical development the evidence of the primitive character of the belief.

It may not be amiss to give a few characteristic quotations as indicating the mind of the Church in this matter.

S. Modestus, patriarch of Jerusalem (d. 614), preaching on the Falling Asleep of the Mother of G.o.d, said:--

"The Lord of heaven and earth has to-day consecrated the human tabernacle in which He Himself, according to the flesh, was received, that it may enjoy with Him forever the gift of incorruptibility. O blessed sleep of the glorious, ever-virgin Mother of G.o.d, who has not known the corruption of the grave; for Christ, our all-powerful Saviour, has kept intact that flesh which gave Him His flesh.... Hail, most holy Mother of G.o.d: Jesus has willed to have you in His Kingdom with your body clothed in incorruptibility.... The most glorious Mother of Christ our Lord and Saviour, Who gave life and immortality, is raised by her Son, and forever possesses incorruptibility with Him Who called her from the tomb."

S. Andrew, Archbishop of Crete (d. 676), also preaching on the Falling Asleep of the Mother of G.o.d, says:--"It is a wholly new sight, and one that surpa.s.ses the reason, that of a woman purer than the heavens entering heaven with her body. As she was born without corruption, so after death her flesh is restored to life."

In one of his sermons at the same feast, S. Germa.n.u.s of Constantinople (d. 733), speaks thus:--"It was impossible that the tomb should hold the body which had been the living temple of the Son of G.o.d. How should your flesh be reduced to dust and ashes who, by the Son born of you, have delivered the human race from the corruption of death?"

Preaching on the same festival, S. John Damascene (d. 760) said:--"Your flesh has known no corruption. Your immaculate body, which knew no stain, was not left in the tomb. You remained virgin in your child-bearing; and in your death your body was not reduced to dust but has been placed in a better and celestial state."

There are one or two practical consequences of this doctrine concerning which, perhaps, it may be well to say a few words. The first is as the result of such devotions to our Lady as are implied in, or have in fact followed, a belief in her a.s.sumption. It is objected to them that even granting the truth of the fact of the a.s.sumption, still the stress laid on the fact and the devotions to our Lady which are held to be appropriate to it, are unhealthy in their nature, and do, in fact, tend to obscure the wors.h.i.+p of our Lord: that where devotions to our Lady are fostered, there devotion to our Lord declines. That therefore instead of trying to advance the cultus of our Lady, we should do much better to hold to the sanity and reserve which has characterised the Anglican Church since the Reformation.

These and the like arguments seem to me to hang in the air and to be quite divorced from facts. They imply a state of things which does not exist. The a.s.sertion that where devotion to our Lady prevails devotion to our Lord declines is as far as possible from being true. Where to-day is the Deity of our Lord defended most ardently and devotion to Him most wide spread? Is it in Churches where devotion to our Lady is suppressed?

On the contrary, do you not know with absolute certainty, that in any church where you find devotion to our Lady encouraged, there will you find the Deity of our Lord maintained? Has the Anglican "sanity and reserve" in regard to the Blessed Virgin Mary saved the Anglican Church from the inroads of unitarianism and rationalism? Is it not precisely in those circles where the very virginity of our Lady is denied that the divinity of our Lord is denied also? No, devotion to Mary is far indeed from detracting from the honour due to Mary's Son.

And we cannot insist too much or too often that the doctrines of the Christian Church form a closely woven system such that none, even the seemingly least important, can be denied without injuring the whole. No article of Christian belief expresses an independent truth, but always a truth depending upon other truths, and in its turn lending others its support. To deny any truth that the mind of the Church has expressed is equivalent to the removal of an organ from a living body.

And to-day we feel more than ever the need of the doctrine of the a.s.sumption. One of the bitterest attacks on the Christian Faith which is being made to-day, emanating princ.i.p.ally from within the Christian community, and even from within the Christian ministry, is that which is being made on the truth of the resurrection of the body, whether the resurrection of our Lord, or our own resurrection. In place of the Christian doctrine believed and preached from the beginning, we are asked to lapse back into heathenism and a doctrine of immortality. Not many seem to realise the vastness of the difference that is made in our outlook to the future by a belief in the resurrection of the body as distinguished from immortality. But the character of the religions resulting from these two contrary beliefs is absolutely different. It needs only to study them as they actually exist to be convinced of this fact.

And it is precisely the doctrine of the a.s.sumption of our Lady which contributes strong support to the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body. It teaches us that in her case the vision and hope of mankind at large has been antic.i.p.ated and accomplished. The resurrection of our Lord is found, in fact, to extend (if one may so express it) to the members of His mystical body; and the promise which is fulfilled in Blessed Mary, is that hope of a joyful resurrection which is thus confirmed to us all. In its stress upon the a.s.sumption the mind of the Christian Church has not been led astray, has not been betrayed into fostering superst.i.tions, but has been led by the Spirit of Christ which He promised it to the development of a truth not only revealing the present place of His glorious Mother in the Kingdom of her Son, but encouraging and heartening us in our following of the heavenly way.