Glorious Church, holy and immaculate...

I am by no means suggesting that we, Christ's Church, have ever come close to being either of these things. When people tell me that they fell the Church is in a decline - that things are so evil and wretched today - I remind them that I, whose concentration was largely mediaeval and renaissance, have it on good authority that, yes, it is His Church, and thus shall survive.

Let us take a look at Ephesians for a moment. I'm not digging out my commentaries this time - it is my anniversary of vows, and I'm in one of my moods of combined awe (that He's kept me close to Himself, Lord knows sometimes going after the wandering sheep) and what I can only describe as 'quiet.' So, here are some verses from chapters 1 and 5 of Ephesians, which are in the Roman Office as 'daytime prayer' for the feast of the Immaculate Conception:

Before the foundation of the world, he chose us in Christ to be his people, to be without blemish in his sight, to be full of love; and he predestined us to be adopted as his children through Jesus Christ... In Christ indeed we have been given our share in the heritage, as was decreed in his design whose purpose is everywhere at work, for it was his will that we, who were the first to set our hope in Christ, should cause his glory to be praised... Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for it, so that he might present the church to himself all glorious, with no stain or wrinkle or anything of the sort, but holy and without blemish.

Franciscans will be noted for their propagation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It was a great favourite of their preachers, in the Middle Ages and beyond (yes, even if Thomas Aquinas did not think it wise... now and then, I suppose, heart wins over head, even in the mind of the Church.) Franciscan preaching - then as now, tending to appeal to the heart, 'meet people where they are,' and to favour topics related to Christ's humanity (and a Son without a family, especially a mother, is unthinkable) - can be of great value indeed. Yet the flaw which Franciscans sometimes encountered (and this by no means unique to them... but, since there were so many of them and they travelled so widely, they did tend to have more influence) was that they stressed the humanity of Jesus, or an attribute of his Mother, to an extent where the divine Logos and deeper meanings surrounding doctrines about Mary became a bit on the veiled side.

This week, when I was reading the works of the Tractarians, I believe it was a Tract written by Pusey which deplored excessive Marian devotion, quoting from devotional literature (such as that which boiled down to 'pray to Mary - she has authority over her son'), and saying, quite rightly, that Mary is not to be elevated to a 'fourth person' of the Trinity. Of course, devotional writings (...and he did not even get to the Franciscans!) and preaching are not strictly doctrinal in many cases. There assuredly is no doctrine that Jesus is subject to Mary, as if she were a superior.

The entire richness of Marian devotion is two-fold - and, too often, neglected. The first element is always Christology. If we forget, for example, how often Jesus' humanity or divinity were challenged in heretical theological thought, we equally will neglect to recall that Mary as "Mother of God" (since Jesus is the divine person) reminds us of one who was God and Man.

Second, Mary is always the model of the Church. As I mentioned in a previous post, the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity is beautiful in that virginity, in a Christian tradition, is an eschatological sign - a reminder that there is more to creation than this world as we know it. The perpetual virgin is an icon - a sign of the Church in eschatological expectation.

Here, I shall made an admission that would cause any Franciscan to blush - yes, I know Augustine's writings (all too well), but I'm not about to try to explain the Immaculate Conception, because I've never fully understood either the Augustinian concept of original sin (being more inclined to favour Irenaeus) or the Immaculate Conception. Yet, once again, Mary is an icon. She is the model for the Church - a church which assuredly falls far short of what we are called to be, as we see in the exquisite lines from Ephesians which I quoted above.

I found the brief readings from Ephesians to be enormously powerful. Christ is true Man - but one in whom all things were made. His humanity, his incarnation, our deification in his assuming our nature and being glorified - these are of value we can not begin to contemplate. Yet we must not forget the omnipotent, timeless, divine Logos - who called the Church to himself before mankind had any idea of Christianity, long before Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth.

Mary was never within the power of evil - the Church is not, wicked though we can be (and we've shown ourselves capable of being major shites since Cain and Abel were young.) Evil cannot triumph. Now, I am not so eloquent or deep as to be able to explain this... it would seem impertinent to even try. :) But if Jesus' mother was redeemed before his birth (and she needed a redeemer no less than the rest of us), why would this be so surprising? It is not just a commentary on Mary's sinfulness, but a reminder of the all - powerful Logos, who was always at work as redeemer, always active in creation, and, if this was not known, it was because of the limitations of human vision, not because the reality was any less.

Yes, what we have here today is a poorly constructed, sloppy sort of sermon... but I'm a Franciscan, so humour me. God give you peace and a blessed Advent. Pray for this weak but loving soul who occasionally lets her intellectual discipline lapse to be a mere Herald of the Great King.