Tag Archives: Mother of God

“Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes….”

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This image of the Mother of God, “Health/Salvation of the Roman People,” dates from the 6th century and is kept in a chapel of the St. Mary Major basilica in Rome. The Mother of God is frequently identified with the bride in the Song of Songs; just as this image is reputed to bring health and salvation to those who venerate it, the fragrance which the bride shares with her companions also brings health and salvation.

“Even though one may gather every perfume and every flower of fragrance from all the different meadows of virtue and is able to make one’s whole life fragrant with the scent of all these virtuous actions … still one could not look steadily upon the Bridegroom, the Word of God, any more than one could look directly at the sun.”

St. Gregory of Nyssa is commenting on a verse from the Song of Songs:

“Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes;
    your name is like perfume poured out.” (Song of Songs 1:3)

St. Gregory goes on to quote St. Paul the Apostle, who said that he was “the good fragrance of Christ” (2 Cor. 2:15). St. Gregory points out that the apostle “inhaled the fragrance of that inaccessible and transcendent grace, offering himself to others as a kind of incense for them to partake of according to their ability….” St. Gregory urges us to treasure this fragrance in our hearts, as the bride does in the Song of Songs. The bride makes a sachet of this fragrant perfume and keeps it between her breasts; the warmth of her heart enables all her actions to spread the beautiful scent of the perfume.

Some manuscripts specify that this perfume is frankincense or myrrh. In the medical theory of the ancient world, these scents strengthened and energized certain animals but acted as poison to others. The effect of these scents on humans, however, was the result of human choice: a person could choose to be energized and invigorated by the scent or to be weakened and debilitated by the scent.

The choice is up to us.

“Daughters of Jerusalem:” the Children of Our Lady

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Mary, the Mother of God, nurtures and is nurtured in glory by her Beloved, her Son; the eight angels reveal the mystery of the Eighth Day, the glorious Kingdom of God, which is manifest in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. At the altar, we enter into the eschatological reality of the Paschal Mystery, as we worship together— one Body of Christ, in heaven and on earth.

“Is he your Son, O Virgin of virgins? Is he your beloved, O most beautiful of women? ‘Clearly so… he is my Son, O daughters of Jerusalem (Song of Songs 5:9, 16). My beloved is love itself… and is found in whosoever is born of him.'”

In one of his sermons for the Nativity of the Mother of God, St. Guerric of Igny places these words from the Song of Songs on the lips of the Virgin Mary when he–the preacher–asks the Virgin to tell the congregation listening to the sermon about her Beloved, who is her Son. In this sermon, the “daughters of Jerusalem” are the monks and visitors listening to the sermon. These daughters of Jerusalem are also claimed as children of the Virgin as well: St. Guerric preaches that “she desires to form her Only-begotten in all those who are her children by adoption…. she nurtures them every day until they reach the stature of the perfect man, the maturity of her Son [Ephesians 4:13], whom she brought forth once and for all.” All those in whom love is found are members of her Son and thus her children by adoption and she nurtures them to share more completely in that Love which took flesh in her womb.

Just as St. Paul labored to give birth to Christ in his spiritual children (Galatians 4:19), the Mother of God is the mother of all those in whom Christ is born. “She herself, like the Church of which she is the type, is the mother of all who are reborn to life,” St. Guerric preached. What Mary gives the world, clothed with flesh, the Church gives us clothed with words, bread, wine, water, and oil. As the daughters of Jerusalem, we–no less than those who heard St. Guerric first preach his sermons–are privileged to nurture Love within us and among us as children of Mary, members of her Only-begotten.

St. Guerric of Igny (died 1157) was a scholar who became a disciple of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and took monastic vows to remain in St. Bernard’s community. But in 1138 St. Guerric was sent by St. Bernard to be the second abbot at the new monastery of Igny, near Rheims. As abbot there, St. Guerric became famous for the sermons he preached. His sermons for Advent-Christmas-Epiphany-Purification are especially stunning. Find translations of his sermons here.

“I am dark and lovely:” Part 2

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Our Lady of Montserrat at the Santa Maria de Montserrat monastery on the MontserratMountain in Catalonia, dates from the 12th century. The famed image once bore the inscription ”Nigra Sum Sed Formosa” (Latin: I am Black, but Beautiful). I had the privilege of visiting Our Lady in the church of Montserrat outside Barcelona many years ago; my children wanted to skip along the sheer edge of the mountaintop and protested when I insisted they step away from the edge: “Daddy won’t let us be light-hearted!”

“Do not gaze at me because I am swarthy, because the sun has scorched me,” protests the bride in the Song of Songs (1:5). St. Bernard of Clairvaux–in his sermons on the Song–interprets this swarthiness caused by the scorching sun, as the virtue that comes as the result of hard work and effort. It is also the swarthiness that “is caused by the heat of persecution…. the zeal for what is right…. to be on fire with fraternal love, to weep with those who weep, to rejoice with those who rejoice, to be weak with those who are weak.” St. Bernard tells us, Just like the burning sun therefore, the ardor of desire [for both God and neighbor] darkens her complexion while still a pilgrim in the body….”

She who loves God most ardently and is most burnt by her ardor for God and neighbor is identified by the tradition of the Church as Mary, the Mother of God. She is burnt by the burning sun but, like the burning bush, not consumed by the flame of the Divine. She is zealous for what is right while rejoicing and weeping with those who rejoice and weep. One of the most popular images of the Mother of God as swarthy lover of God is Our Lady of Montserrat.

The image is one of the Black Madonnas of Europe, hence its familiar Catalan name, La Moreneta (“the little dark-skinned one” or “the little dark one”). Believed by some to have been carved in Jerusalem in the early days of the Church, it is more likely a Romanesque sculpture in wood from the late 12th century.

Legend has it that the monastic community that developed on the mountain could not move the statue to construct the monastery, choosing to instead build around it. The statue’s sanctuary is located at the rear of the chapel, where an altar of gold surrounds the icon, and is now a site of pilgrimage.

The hymn to the Virgin of Montserrat, known as “el Virolai” and sung at noon each day by the Escolania de Montserratboys’ choir, begins with the words: “Rosa d’abril, Morena de la serra…” (Rose of April, dark-skinned lady of the mountain…). Therefore, this image of the Mother of God is sometimes also known as the “Rosa d’abril” as her feast is kept on April 27.