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Our Lady and her Rosary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

Gerald Vann O.P.
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Those who accuse the Church of mariolatry would dowell to study the history of mariology. Of our Lady more than of any other creature it can be truly said that she has had greatness thrust upon her; true, she foresaw it, and humbly stated it when she sang, ‘Behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed’; but the honour, the glory, the veneration were not of her seeking, and when they came to her it was first of all as a result of defending the truth about her son; and as they grew and grew through the ages their effect was, as she would wish, to increase men's love and understanding of her Son; while on die other hand attempts to destroy her cultus and deny her greatness have ended in a denial of the divinity of her Son. She began by declaring, ‘Behold the handmaid—the chatted—of the Lord’; and her words summarize not only her life and personality but the story of her cultus as well.

Type
Research Article
Information
Life of the Spirit , Volume 12 , Issue 143 , May 1958 , pp. 486 - 494
Copyright
Copyright © 1958 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Gal. Iv, 4.

2 Misunderstanding of our Lord's reply to his mother has often been due to a misreading of the sense of his words: ‘Woman’ is, in the original idiom, a term not of rebuke but of bonour; the rest of the phrase can mean simply ‘Leave it to me'. (Cf. Lagrange. Evang. S. S. Jean in ch., ii, 4.)

3 Luke i, 35, 43, 48.

4 What a heart-felt relief it is to turn, from the turgid sentimentality of modern ‘devotions' To the Mother of God, to such splendid things as the prayer which Villon, the rascalpoet, wrote for his old mother—

Dame du del, regents terrienne,
Emperiere des infemaux palus—

and which was so beautifully paraphrased by Synge:

'Mother of God, that's Lady of the Heavens, take myself, the poor sinner, the way I'll be along with them that's chosen.

'Let you say to your son that he'd have a right to forgive my share of sins, when it's the like he's done, many's the day, with big and famous sinners. I'm a poor aged woman was never at school and is no scholar with letters, but I've seen pictures in the chapel with Paradise on one side, and harps and pipes in it, and the place on the other side, where sinners do be boiled in torment; the one gave me great joy, the other a great fright and scaring; let me have the good place, Mother of God, and it's in your faith I'll live always.

'It's yourself that bore Jesus, that has no end or death, and he the Lord Almighty, that took our weakness and gave himself to sorrows, a young and gentle man. It's himself is our Lord surely, and it's in that faith I'll live always.

5 ‘Popular’ Is not at all the same thing as ‘debased': valuable developments of theology And ultimately of defined doctrine have come from the devotional life of the people;

6 The Forgotten Language, pp. 190