THE PASSION OF THE IMAGE. Chapter 17

THE PASSION OF THE IMAGE Author & iconographer: Sister Anne Eason O.S.B. Icon: The Passion of the Image: Crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ featuring His Mother and the Apostle John who is holding the scroll of his Gospel, with the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. The Hebrew inscription is from St Luke 22.19 ‘This is My Body given for you’. The translation of the Greek is from The Nestle New Testament in Hebrew and English, translated out of the original Greek. Traditional egg tempera (with Russian prinplesk technique) on gesso with gold and platinum leaf. Traditionally fired enamel inlays (with fired gold and platinum leaf). Mixture of traditional water and oil gilding. Burnished water gilding. THE GOSPEL OF SAINT JOHN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (1) Goldmund or Sacrament? (2) Can a Mother Forget? (3) There is no Gender in God. (4) Her Faith Touched Me. (5) Jesus saw His Mother and the Disciple whom He Loved. (6) How can you Die without a Mother? GOLDMUND OR SACRAMENT? “But how are you going to die one day, Narcissus, since you have no mother? Without a mother one cannot love. Without a mother one cannot die.” This is Goldmund speaking to Narcissus in Herman Hesse’s study of the so-called psychological types of artist and scholar/monastic in his novel Narcissus and Goldmund. 1 It is a brilliant attempt to sketch the differences between these two personality types, but it is limited by its polarisation of them. Narcissus tries to define the differences between himself and Goldmund in various ways: "Natures of your kind, with strong, delicate senses, the soul-oriented, the dreamers, poets, lovers are almost always superior to us creatures of the mind. You take your being from your mothers. You live fully; you were endowed with the strength of love, the ability to feel. Whereas we creatures of reason, we don't live fully; we live in an arid land, even though we often seem to guide and rule you.” However, 1 Narcissus and Goldmund: by Hermann Hesse. 1 I know many monastics who embody in the same person both types and are multifaceted in their giftedness. The monastic tends to develop on all fronts perhaps because of the nature of monasticism. The nun or monk who is musician can also be artist, scholar, scientist, botanist, cook, beekeeper. Monasteries are full of such people. Hesse gives Narcissus these words when he speaks to Goldmund: “You are a poet, I a thinker. You sleep on your mother's breast; I watch in the wilderness. On me there shines the sun; on you the moon with all the stars…” I think this is true of John, but he is also John the Theologian who knows full well how to watch in the desert. He did so for the rest of his life after the Ascension of Christ, and it was, according to tradition, a very long life. Hesse’s study does not consider the changing balances in the developing self. Or perhaps in some case, for example, mystics, the psyche is ‘given’ very developed, almost mature, and the rest of the self spends a long time catching up with it. But in the case of Goldmund we come to the end of the novel, and he is broken from his exclusive investment in one aspect of himself, the dominant artistic aspect. John is poet, mystic, and one who most deeply loves. He is also the monastically inclined theologian, and fisherman. Hesse understands something of the essential role of ‘the mother’ as an archetype in the being of an artist therefore this study has a contribution to make. When John leans upon the breast of the Lord at the Last Supper, I believe his knowledge of Christ as mother gives that gesture a particularly beautiful expression of chastity. For John, Christ is not an archetype, He is mother, truly mother, in Being and Person. For those who perhaps have been arrested on the perceptual plane of the carnal, the erotic, this is difficult to understand. This is not a moment of festivity and celebration. It is the most critical moment in the Public Ministry, immediately before the violent death of Our Lord. It is a crisis. The spiritual is extremely heightened and elevated. This is obvious from John 17 and the High Priestly Prayer apart from the events, as such. John’s gesture arises from within this crisis and the source is his spiritual essence. As such this movement to lean upon the breast of Christ, is sacramental in character. It is an outward sign of inward grace, and an incarnation of spiritual truth. I would argue that when John gives us this record of his gesture at the Last Supper, he has in mind what he has already written and established as the nucleus of his Gospel, that Christ is the Only Begotten of the Father who is in the bosom of the Father… Therefore, in John’s perception this moment at the Last Supper belonged to the most intense spiritual and theological reality.2 It reflected it in the humble person of himself as he rested upon the bosom of the Son of God. The Last Supper encompasses the full and complete mystery of the Incarnation and Passion, John’s Prologue does so likewise, and this is where John is locating his gesture. We have had occasion to look at this phrase of the Prologue several times and now The Passion of the Word, Chapter 3. The conclusion of this chapter examines an aspect of the Hebraic concept of truth: “This is to support as a nurse would support a child and in fact in its variant it is used of a father who carries his child. This returns us to the love of the Father for His Son. I have always found this intensely moving. But it is an association with the fatherhood of God, who carries Israel who bends down to feed him, and who lifts him to His cheek with tenderness. Jesus the Son also nurses His disciples in His bosom, and calls them ‘children’ and the Didache refers to Our Lord as the Child of the Father…” 2 2 once more, for it is characteristic of this Gospel to return repeatedly to its theological nucleus. When we look at this phrase in the Aramaic, as we have done before, with its very marked word play on ‘bosom’ and ‘father’, it is also obvious that John was thinking in Aramaic. Because this phrase in the prologue is critical to our understanding of John’s relationship with Christ and his action at the Last Supper, I am quoting fully here from The Passion of the Word Chapter 6 where I exegeted this for another reason and context: “No one has ever seen God at any time; the Only Begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father has declared Him.” 3 The Peshitta also has a footnote to this verse because John uses the Aramaic for ‘bosom’ and ‘Father’ to create poetic onomatopoeia and alliteration, or word play, which acts as a parallelism so typical of Hebrew poetry. The words are adjacent to each other in the text and it sounds like this: 0Bw9B (B'EuOB'oA) (in the bosom), and YhwB0d (D'aAB,uOH_Y) (of His Father): the one word is sounded and in it the other is also heard. John uses the same Aramaic noun for ‘bosom’ in his Gospel’s Prologue (of Christ) as he does in the Upper Room when he leans (the Aramaic is actually ‘fell upon’) upon the bosom of Christ in John 13.23. The use of the same noun is intentional, significantly connecting the repose of the Son in His Father’s bosom, and the repose of John on Christ’s breast. He uses a different word for ‘bosom’ in the Gospel when he makes historical reference, twice, to the moment in the Upper Room: John 13.25 and 21.20 where he uses the term ‘bosom’, 0Bw9 hydX (KHaD,YeH). The former word for (EuOB'oA) carries nuances of intimacy, embracing, of safe harbour, also in the Greek equivalent, κολπος. Interestingly the Old English word for bosom, means ‘breast, bosom or womb’.” The word for breast as used in John 13.25 and 21.20 is generally used less frequently in scriptural texts. The verb Lpnw (ONoP,eL) (and) ‘he fell’ upon Christ’s breast has within it something of the crisis of this ‘Hour’ before the Crucifixion. It is not the sense of serenely always ‘being’ in the bosom of the Father which is conveyed in John’s Prologue but an action of John’s which is a flight almost, to His side, His breast, by the disciple so sensitive to the fears in the group about who was to betray Him and what that would mean. The falling of John upon His breast is also humanity’s correction of the ‘falling’ into error of Adam in his succumbing to the temptation to ‘know’ good and evil. Here John does what should always be done, he turns, he falls in an action of need, trust and surrender upon Christ’s breast in the fright of the moment and the enormity of knowledge of this betrayal, the who, why and what of it. These are two different kinds of ‘good and evil’ to which humanity is connected. In Adam it meant crossing a threshold into knowledge by independently turning away from God, in John it is seeking a terrifying knowledge by turning towards the Son of God in dependence upon Him. The one fall is errorridden, the other is the fruit and acknowledgement of a confident spiritual union. For, unlike Goldmund, John does not only take his source from his mother, Christ; he relates from within that mutual abiding, to his mother, Christ. 3 John 1.18 3 St. Irenaeus, writing of John’s theology of Christ in the bosom of His Father, encapsulates the gravitas of the idiom: “… the Incomprehensible One is made known by One who can be comprehended, the Invisible One is revealed by One who can be seen; since the Son is not external to the Father, but abides in His bosom. For no one, it is said, has ever seen God, except the Only Begotten Son of God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known. In other words, the Father, who is invisible, is made known to all by the Son, who is in His bosom. That is how the Father comes to be known by those to whom the Son has revealed Him; and, for His part, the Father gives knowledge of His Son, through that Son Himself, to those who love Him.”4 CAN A MOTHER FORGET? So much of this study calls upon the prophet Isaiah, as has been seen in The Passion of the Word, and the essential truth in John’s being and life does so likewise. Isaiah says of God: “Can a woman [mother] forget the child at her breast, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely these may forget, and yet I will not forget you. See [Behold], on the palms of my hands I have inscribed you...”5 This comes between the second and third Servant Songs, when the prophecies are clearly building towards their climax in the description of the Passion of the Servant. John, as we saw in The Passion of the Word, has close connections with the Servant Songs, and I suggest that his experience of Christ as mother also takes its source from this prophecy. Surely, he would have remembered these words of Isaiah even on Calvary as his Lord was dying, His hands pierced, and bequeathing John to His own Mother. The verb ‘to inscribe’ in this verse, is from ‫( חָ קַ ק‬khaw-kak') meaning ‘to cut, inscribe, or decree.’ There is also the prophecy of Zechariah: “What are these wounds upon your hands?...” and the response, “I received them in the house of my friends…”6 But they are the wounds of loving remembrance in this context. This was fully exegeted in The Passion of the Word as the prophecies become intensely focussed on the Passion.7 The example from Isaiah’s Second Servant Song, 49.15, illustrates that the spirituality of scripture makes no facile opposition of the archetypes of father and mother. It is important to make this clear at this point. In this and other examples in the texts of scripture, it is the qualities of transcendent and sacrificial love, which are divine in nature and origin, which are often to be found in a mother, or in a father. The ability of the Semitic mind to hold together the qualities of mother and father is further illustrated in the word ‘Amen.’ The first verb of Isaiah 53.1 is Irenaeus, Homily as used for XVII Sunday of the Year, in Lectionnaire Monastique Isaiah 49.15-16 6 Zechariah 13. 6 7 The Passion of the Word, Chapter 13. 4 5 4 ‫( הֶ א ֱִ֖מין‬he-’e-mîn) from the root ‫( אָ מַ ן‬aw-man) which means ‘to support, to be faithful, to be true, to believe, have faith, to nurse, to bring up’ and it is the basis of the phrase ‘the nursing father’. The Aramaic and Hebrew root for this are the same. Our word ‘Amen’ in the Christian liturgy and scriptures comes from ‫( אָ מַ ן‬aw-man). ‘Amen’ expresses faith in action and also has in its forms the nuances of parental love for the child. I believe that this fundamentally characterises Semitic and Christian faith, which is trust held in relationship with the Divine. Moses says to the Lord in Numbers 11.11ff. “Why hast thou afflicted thy servant? Wherefore do I not find favour before thee? And why hast thou laid the weight of all this people upon me? Have I conceived all this multitude, or begotten them, that thou shouldst say to me: Carry them in thy bosom as the nurse is wont to carry the little infant, and bear them into the land, for which thou hast sworn to their fathers?”8 Our Lord also says in Luke 16.22 that the rich man would look up and see the beggar afar off ‘in the bosom of Abraham.’ In the prophecies of Hosea there abound images of the Lord as mother and father: ‘When Israel was a child I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt… they did not know that I led them with leading strings of love… I bent down to them and fed them… I lifted them to my cheek…’ I have selected these few instances. These images remind me of a phrase I read many years ago, in the Patristics, I think. I have never been able to find this phrase again, but it went like this: ‘When you look into the eyes of the Mother [of the Lord], you see the eyes of the Father.’ It was, if I recall correctly, talking about the formation of Christ’s Mother for Her role in the Incarnation, by God the Father, and the depth to which God was reflected in Her eyes. So the phrase should read with appropriate capitals: When you look into the eyes of the Mother, you see the eyes of the Father. It is also true, as several mystics have pointed out, that the Apostles, in having Christ’s Mother with them in the years after the Ascension and before her falling asleep, were able to look at her face and see their Lord in her features. He took His Body from her, and she was therefore a consolation for them in their physical loss. Yet it is profoundly part of this train of thought to add that when Philip asks the Lord to show them the Father and they would be satisfied, He replies: “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”9 Therefore in some mysterious way there is some resemblance between the Mother of Christ and the Father. It cannot be that Our Lord is speaking only of a spiritual likeness. It is perhaps more that the essence of likeness expresses itself in every way, including through the physical. In John there is a felt perception of the love of the mother, and Christ as his mother, and source, for Christ is so in both being and Gospel narrative. In reality, John’s Gospel will arise not only from Christ but also from Christ’s Mother in communion with him, the Mother he was given by the dying Son on Calvary. In Origen’s famous passage this is well stated: ‘We may therefore make bold to say that the Gospels are the first fruits of all the Scriptures, but that of the Gospels that of John is the first fruits. No one can apprehend the meaning of it except he have lain on Jesus' breast and received from Jesus, Mary to be his mother also’10 In St. Augustine’s words Douay Rheims translation. John 14.9. 10 Origen: Commentary on the Gospel of John, Book 1 as used in Lectionnaire Monastique 8 9 5 this is expanded to include the whole Church: “… in reference to the perfect repose in the bosom of that mysterious life to come did the evangelist John recline on the breast of Christ… nor did the latter alone drink at the fountain of the Lord's breast, to emit again in preaching, of the Word in the beginning, God with God, and those other sublime truths regarding the divinity of Christ, and the Trinity and Unity of the whole Godhead. which are to be yet beheld in that kingdom face to face, but meanwhile till the Lord's coming are only to be seen in a mirror and in a riddle; but the Lord has Himself diffused this very gospel through the whole world, that every one of His own may drink thereat according to his own individual capacity.’ 11 I think Hesse is right in that the ‘artist/mystic’ takes their being from their mother, or those qualities most beautifully found in motherhood, but as we have illustrated, also in fatherhood. The artist also instinctively knows this to be true. The Creator from whom we take our being is described in Wisdom literature thus: “For thou lovest all things that exist, and hate nothing which thou hast made, for thou wouldst not have made anything if thou hadst hated it...” 12 Even the human artist, if he is a true artist, loves, protects and rejoices in the beauty which springs from his hands. This love is the creating love of one who brings to birth, nourishes, and protects. I believe it is a grace that John has this instinctive knowledge. I suggest that it is ‘natural’ or spiritually logical, for John to make the step from this grace-filled knowledge of Christ as mother, source of his being, to Christ source of all being, Miltha and Logos. I am not suggesting that this is a psychological construct, but that what Providence gave to John was what was needed for the mystical theology of the Fourth Gospel to be so exceptionally true and beautiful. The Prologue phrases which express this are: “all things had their being through Him and without Him not even one thing existed of the things which have existed …”13 From this understanding of Miltha/Logos, John is able to appreciate and describe the beauty of sacrificial love found in the Passion. The Mother, He the Source of all life and being, lays down His life for His children. This is the climax and the completion of perfect love. The image of mother is brought to fulfilment for John at the Passion, and in the reception of Christ’s Mother as his, the image of mother is always the Passion image and the glory of love which loves to the end. There is a second important dimension which confirms the spiritual gravity of John’s reclining upon the breast of Christ. In the Gospel narrative which John gives us, in the hours preceding the arrest and Passion, Our Lord speaks profoundly and explicitly of the nature of ‘abiding’, and we have looked at this at depth in The Passion of the Word.14 Therefore, the fullness of this abiding is in some sense inaugurated by the Passion Hour. This reclining on Christ’s breast is of the essence of that ‘Hour’. John, I believe, was already living in the truth of that abiding by the time this ‘Hour’ arrived. He was already abiding in Christ, and Christ in him. This abiding has a counterpoint in the carrying of a mother of her developing child. In the months in which the child is inside its mother, there is a mutual abiding which is physically true but has a spiritual dimension. For John it was spiritually true. S Augustine, in his Tractate on the Gospel of John as used in Lectionnaire Monastique Wisdom 11.24. 13 This includes phrases literally translated from the Aramaic. 14 The Passion of the Word, Chapter 7. 11 12 6 The Last Supper by Giotto di Bondone Capella degli Scrovegni (Padova) Fresco (1304- 1306). St Augustine makes the point in a sermon on the New Testament that the gesture at the Last Supper reaches far beyond the moment in its implications. It is the essence of John’s abiding in which, always drinking from the breast of Christ, he is able to give us his Gospel: “For this same St. John the Evangelist is he whom Jesus specially loved; insomuch that he lay on His Breast at supper. There was this secret, that therefrom might be drunk in, what in the Gospel was to be poured forth”.15 THERE IS NO GENDER IN GOD. “In no way is God in man’s image. He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes. But the respective “perfections” of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God: those of a mother and those of a father and husband.”16 This paragraph from the Catechism affirms what Christ says to the Samaritan woman: “For God is spirit” and the sentence completed and literally translated in Aramaic means “and those who worship [Aramaic Jwdgsnd (D'NeSG'D,uON)] Him, in spirit and in truth must they worship”. The depths of that encounter in Samaria have not been fully plumbed because I was developing a specific aspect of it in the previous chapter. But what John says in 4.24 of his Gospel about the nature of God as told by Christ to the Samaritan woman, is pertinent here. Looking at what Our Lord says in the encounter with the Samaritan woman, the Aramaic verb for this worship in 4.24 as used in both instances is dgs (SG,eD) which means ‘to worship, S Augustine, Sermon 70 on the New Testament, para 1 as used in Lectionnaire Monastique Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part One, The Profession of Faith, III. “Male and Female he created them”, Equality and difference willed by God. 370. 15 16 7 to do homage, to bow down.’ The Hebrew equivalent of the Aramaic of John 4.24 is the verb ‫( סָ גַד‬saw-gad') to prostrate oneself in worship. The choice of verb is significant as other verbs expressing worship are less expressive of the gesture of the bow. In sacred art John is pictured reclining or bowing his head upon the breast of Christ at the Last Supper. John is expressing a spiritual reality. He knew Our Lord as the Son of God, and his action cannot be separated from that knowledge. In pointing this up, I wish to liberate this study of the image of the mother in John’s memory of the Passion, from an all too narrow preoccupation with genderbased idioms or psychological and sociological trends. John is neither labelled nor boxed and it requires us to step beyond narrow limitations to allow this Gospel its spiritual gravitas. The nature of bowing the head or body is an act of reverence and can be illustrated from within monastic culture where this gesture is an everyday action in the common life, both in the Liturgy and around the monastery. It is an act of homage and respect for the person themselves and for Christ who dwells in them. I mention this here because the monastic observance arises from the spiritual source of scripture and tradition. Monasticism allows for the bow as a mark of respect in particular towards the Abbot and Abbess of a monastery. The Abbess is in the place of Christ for the nuns and is also mother in the monastic community. But Dom Gueranger, founder of the Congregation of Solesmes, believed that the Abbot should be a mother to the monks and he said of himself: “I am often more like a mother than a father.” There is in the same genre of monastic tradition a story in the Desert Fathers about Abba Poemen which goes something like this: “Some old men came to see Abba Poemen and said to him 'When we see brothers who are dozing at our gatherings, shall we rouse them so that they will be watchful?' He said to them, 'For my part when I see a brother who is dozing, I put his head on my knees and let him rest'.” This is a journey across thresholds interior to the Fourth Gospel to understand more clearly how John’s image of the mother relates to his experience of the Passion. It is not, as I have shown in the quotations of the Fathers over the centuries, a preoccupation with contemporary gender-based idioms or sociological trends. One of those thresholds is John’s absorption of the Genesis narratives which sometimes surface clearly, as in the Prologue, and are sometimes veiled. Here the underlying Genesis sources of John’s theology have been pointed out by Doctor Stephen J Ternyik, who refers to the wisdom of Rabbinic commentators, relating the divine spiritual qualities to our own potential for spiritual development: “The teachings highlighted in these pieces of context suggest that, while God is not physically a man or woman, the spiritual traits reflected in both genders are aspects of God's infinite perfection. For instance, the "image" of God is expressed through the roles of both males and females, as per Rabbi Elazar's teachings in Yevamot 63. Similarly, in Sanhedrin 38, Rabbi Eliezer emphasizes the importance of knowledge and understanding in effectively responding to heretical views about God's nature. The suggestion that God consults with the Heavenly Court before taking action also implies a divine trait of collaboration and wisdom. However, these instances should not be understood as equating God to human forms or gender, but rather used to comprehend aspects of divine wisdom, divinity and perfection that are beyond natural human understanding. The [above] paragraph from the Catechism explains that God is spirit and not bound to physical 8 form or gender. Increase in spiritual vigilance, humility, wisdom, compassion, understanding, and other divine qualities can ideally be a pathway to understanding and connecting with this divine spirit within our own capacities.”17 It is necessary to cross these interior thresholds with an open and searching sensitivity, to allow the text to yield its treasures. In a meditation attributed to St. Bernard, he describes this seeking and finding: “The very One who is sought and desired, conceals Himself and yet is made manifest. He hides Himself so that He may be sought more ardently, and once sought, may be found with joy; and once found, may be held with loving care… her faith touched Me. Touch Me with that hand; seek Me with those eyes; run swiftly towards Me with those feet, for I am not far from you…”18 HER FAITH TOUCHED ME The biological mother of John was present on Calvary when John was given by the dying Christ to His own Mother. It is Mark who names Mary Salome as being on Calvary.19 But the Johannine text says: “… standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.”20 We know from Mark that when Jesus looked, He saw standing by His cross, the holy women, including Mary Salome, with His Mother and John. But for John’s purposes, he and Our Lady were focussed upon at this moment. It is significant that John’s biological mother was present for this and I want to look more closely at her before moving on to the Lord’s words from the Cross. It is also perhaps a testimony to the humility of Mary Salome that her son John did not refer to her in his Gospel at that moment. An extract from the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land puts Mary Salome in context: “Salome (Mary Salome), St. Her feast is on Oct 22 in Mart. Rom. She was the wife of Zebedee and mother of the apostles James, the Greater, and John. She stood by the cross of Jesus and took part in His burial (Mk 15, 40; 16, 1). She asked that her sons might sit, one on the right hand of Jesus and one on the left in His Kingdom (Mt 20, 20). - On Oct 22, the Franciscan Community of Nazareth makes a pilgrimage to the village of Yafa, 5 kms south of Nazareth, Doctor Stephen J Ternyik, Spiru Haret University (Bucharest, Romania) https://manuelaepure.academia.edu/StephenTernyik, commenting on this chapter of St. John’s Gospel in the Aramaic. 18 A meditation attributed to St. Bernard as used for the Feast of St. James, John’s brother, as used in Lectionnaire Monastique. 19 Mark 15, 40; 16, .1 20 John 19.25 ff. 17 9 and celebrates Holy Mass in the Chapel of St. James. Yafa is inhabited by Moslems and by Christians (Greek-Orthodox, Latins, Melkites).” I have regularly quoted the Ethiopian Synaxarium in these studies because of the historic relationship between Jerusalem and Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Church is one of the oldest expressions of Christianity. The stories and traditions it has preserved both from its Jewish and Christian heritage give insights which are not found elsewhere, into the lives of the saints from both Testaments. The emphasis of the Ethiopian Synaxarium is also of interest in the details they have preserved which may or may not be historical fact but handed down in their tradition. The Franciscan Custody records their material about Salome: “Salome, the sister of our Holy Lady, the Virgin Mary. Salome is 'saluted' by the Ethiopian Synaxarium on the 25th of Genbot: This Salome made bold to touch the seal of Mary's virginity, and her fingers were burned by divine fire; but as soon as she touched the Child Jesus, she was healed, and her fingers became as before. She sometimes carried Jesus in her arms during the flight to Egypt. She saw Him on the day of His Resurrection, before the Apostles saw him. In the Upper Room of Sion, the Holy Spirit came down upon her and the holy women.” The Ethiopian Synaxarium sees Salome as the sister of Our Lady and present at the birth of Our Lord and during the Flight into Egypt: “Salome, the daughter of the sister of Our Lady Mary. The Ethiopian Synaxarium relates on the 8th of Sane: Joseph rose up, and took our holy Lady, the Virgin Mary, and her Child, and Salome, the daughter of the sister of Our Lady, and they came to Egypt, and to Dabra Kueskuarn (or Ayn es Shems, the fountain of the Sun) (Heliopolis). And Our Lord Jesus made this fountain of water to spring up, when He was with His mother, and it exists to this day.”21 There are two or three legends or traditions in the Catholic Church about where Mary Salome might have been after the Resurrection. There is also uncertainty about whether she was the sister of the Blessed Virgin or a cousin. Some narratives place her in the boat which was set upon the sea without oars, with the Magdalen, Martha and Lazarus, as a form of martyrdom. This boat was believed to have miraculously come to rest on the shores of France where these saints are said to have lived and/or died. But it is likely that Mary Salome did, like the Magdalen, spend time in Ephesus with the Blessed Virgin after John had brought her there. Why not? She was devoted to her (she is said to have added ‘Mary’ to her name in honour of Christ’s Mother) and the Early Christians travelled around the Levant with relative ease during that period, it would seem. This aspect of Salome’s time is important as it has a bearing on how we view her presence on Calvary when Christ bequeathed her son to Our Lady. Mary Salome was John’s mother, and according to Gospel accounts, was with the Lord and His disciples in the Public Ministry. She was a woman of immense faith who, like many of the Holy Women, believed Christ’s warnings and promises. From that faith she approached him for her sons. We are not told how she perceived the Kingdom and He clarified the nature of it in response to her request. Her strength is reminiscent of Martha’s. 21 Extracts from Mertens Encyclopaedia, the Franciscan Custody. 10 I think St. Bede is correct when he says that John and James had agreed with her beforehand how she would approach Our Lord, but he also makes the point that they knew that Mary Salome was greatly loved by the Lord: “… when the sons of Zebedee demanded of the Lord that they might seat themselves in His kingdom, He immediately called upon them to drink of His chalice, that is, to imitate the struggle of His passion. Galilee Chalice: Digital Artwork Sister Anne Eason O.S.B. In this chalice, resting upon the Lake of Galilee, I have sought to describe the Paschal Mystery. What began in Galilee for James and John, would be fulfilled in Jerusalem. The darkness symbolizes the suffering, the rising sun, the Resurrection, the transparency locates the mystery in the Eternal where it enters Time. Thus they were to keep in mind that to seek the highest places in heaven presupposes first traversing the humiliations and harsh trials of our earthly existence. No one should suppose that the mother made this request on behalf of her sons without their consent and desire for it; rather it should be understood that this stratagem was the result of their unanimous agreement. Thus it was through their mother, whom they knew to be greatly loved by the Lord, that the disciples made known to Him their wishes.”22 Mary Salome’s openness and transparency, and Christ’s obvious love for her, also made it possible for Him to give her son to another Mother on Calvary, and that Mother to her son in her presence. He knew her and had confidence in her insight and generosity. Mary Salome was loved by all, humble, strong and faithful. That quality of love in her was also in John, which enabled him to abide, to wait for Our Lord to come for him, though he would doubtless have preferred to have left this world much sooner. How John left this world when his Lord came for him is surrounded by stories expressive of his exceptional spiritual beauty. Mertens Encyclopaedia has this entry about the tradition that John was assumed into heaven, rather like Elisha and Enoch perhaps, and it is honoured in some churches: “Assumption of John near Ephesus: The Assumption of John the Evangelist refers to the Gospel of John 21, 23 'The saying spread abroad among the brethren that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say, to him that he was not to die, but 'if it is my will 22 St Bede the Venerable, Homily as used on the Feast of St. James, in Lectionnaire Monastique. 11 that he remains until I come, what is that to you?' The Melkite liturgy has the Assumption of John the Evangelist on Sept 26. The Martyrologium of Jerusalem has it on Dec 27.” Mary Salome’s faith did indeed touch Our Lord. Mark tells us in 15.40 and 16.1 that she was present at the burial of Christ and that means that she had at all levels given her son to Our Lady. Whatever humble task she performed in laying her Lord to rest it was with faith that she touched Him, or His effects, in that duty. I am convinced that she believed that the Resurrection would happen, as she stood on Calvary. She had immense purity of heart at this moment of destiny. If we return to Hesse’s idea that the artist and poet takes his being from his mother then John’s purity of heart and a certain simplicity came originally from his biological mother. Mary Salome might well have been among Christ’s family when He was told they were standing outside wanting to talk to Him.23 He replied that those who do the will of God are ‘my mother and sister and brother…’ That saying works both ways. Mary Salome was doing God’s will, and she was therefore, in her faith, both His mother, and sister. Lament over the Dead Christ by Fra Angelika, tempera-onpanel, Museo nazionale di San Marco in Florence. In the Aramaic of Matthew 28.9 Mary Salome was among the myrrh bearing women running N=hrw (ORoH+oN) with fear and with great joy from the empty tomb. The Aramaic text says literally that He met up with them (gp (P'G,aE) and they drew near/touched Him, grabbed/held/took dx0 Brq (AoKHeD) His feet and worshipped Him (QaReB) Nydgsw. (OSoG,D'iYN). This is the same verb we explored above in relation to John bowing his head upon the breast of Christ when discussing the fact that God is Spirit. It is from dgs (SG,eD) which means ‘to worship, to do homage, to bow down.’ Here at this post Resurrection 23 Matthew 12.47. Luke 8.20. 12 encounter, there is a prophetic fulfilment of what Christ said to Photina at the well of Sychar: “and those who worship [Aramaic Jwdgsnd (D'NeSG'D,uON)] Him, in spirit and in truth must they worship”. This they did on the road to the Resurrected Christ and Photina may well have been among the Holy Women at that moment. Having got to know Mary Salome a little in these pages, when revisiting her request to Our Lord on behalf of her sons, it is clear that this came from a bedrock of faith and humility in her, a simple belief which expressed hers and her sons’ commitment to Our Lord. This in no way supports the sometimes-harsh portrayal of her as an ambitious mother. JESUS SAW HIS MOTHER AND THE DISCIPLE WHOM HE LOVED On Calvary the dying Christ, when He saw His Mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing near, said to His Mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then He said to the disciple, “Behold, your Mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home…24 He did not hand His Mother into the care of Peter whose domicile was on the shores of Galilee’s Lake to where Our Lord and His Mother had moved at the beginning of the Public Ministry. Their home would still have been there, and Peter’s mother-in-law might have cared for the Blessed Virgin. But Peter had only just denied His Lord three times, and Christ’s Mother would, humanly enough, have been grieved to the core by it. Christ did not bequeath her to Martha, whose homestead was in Bethany, who was a good and strong woman and was also standing beside the Cross. Nor did He give her into the care of Mary Marcus, mother of John Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, who was likely to have also been beneath the Cross, and who had a house in Jerusalem. The house of the mother of John Mark is still revered and believed by the Orthodox Church to have been the place of the Last Supper and Pentecost, testifying to her importance among the disciples. But one may ask why did Our Lord not commit Our Lady into the loving and strong hands of John’s mother, Mary Salome? We have seen the quality of her being, so there must have been strong reasons. Was Zebedee still alive at this time? He was part of Christ’s extended family living around the shores of the Lake of Galilee. “Zebedee: Father of the apostles James and John, with whom they were mending their nets, when Jesus called them (Mt 4, 21; Mk 1, 19). Zebedee is mentioned otherwise only as father of these two apostles. A local tradition places the house of Zebedee and of his two sons in Yafa, southwest of Nazareth. The Franciscans pilgrimage on July 25 to Yafa and have there the Holy Mass.” He is also believed to have had 24 John 19.26-27 13 a house in Jerusalem. “In David Street at the covered shops (bazars), two streets run south, three run north, and in an elbow of David Street is a structure called Kahwat el Umdan (Café of the Columns). There four roughly constructed arches rising from massive columns form a structure similar to that of a church. In medieval times, some suggested it to be a church, built over the site of the house of Zebedee, who had a fish-shop here. In reality the structure is a vaulted cross-point of streets.”25 These snippets tell us that Zebedee was of importance to the early Christians, although there is no record of his following Christ. In a brief excursus it would be helpful to explore the naming of the sons of Zebedee and Salome. The sons of Mary Salome and Zebedee were called by Our Lord ‘sons of thunder’. 26 He called Mary Magdalen who must have been statuesque, the Tower, and Peter He called the Rock. Was the name ‘Sons of thunder’ referring to a thunderous Zebedee, certainly not to Mary Salome, or to the disposition of the sons themselves, or was it to something else? I have never been convinced that Our Lord was referring to the temperaments of James and John, despite the incident referred to in the Gospel where they asked if they should call down fire (!) on the lukewarm.27 We understand that the Magdalen is so named because in Aramaic means ‘the tower’. The Aramaic for Peter is (MaG,D'LoA) 0p0k (K'iAP,oA) or as we say it, Cepha, the Aramaic for ‘rock’. Boanerges in the Aramaic of Mark is the Gospel line goes on to say ‘that is, fdgm Y4gr-ynb (Bnay-Raghshee) and 0m9r Ynb’ or, in English, 'sons of thunder'.28 But if we explore the Aramaic more deeply, a pun emerges. The pun is between ‘thunder’ and ‘lifting up’. 0m9r (RaEMoA) which means ‘thunder’ comes from the root root of Ramah is Mr M9r (REeM). But the (RoM) to ‘lift up’ which was exegeted in The Passion of the Word in relation to Rachel lifting up her voice in grief for her children.29 It was also explored in relation to Joseph of Arimathea (which was Ramah), and his role in the Lord’s Death and burial. Did he not lift the Lord’s Body down from the Cross and place it in his own tomb surely with grief? John also grieved on Calvary and lifted Him down grieving for the suffering and death of Christ. This use of the Aramaic pun and the interpretation of it in this instance is affirmed by the exegete Ishodad of Merv who worked in Ancient Syriac on both the Old and New Testaments. In his work Ishodad quoted both Isaac the Syrian and the Fathers of the West, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, among others. Therefore, he stands on an exegetical bridge as it were. As he develops his comments on the naming of James and John by Christ, he intuitively compares the name given to the sons to the role of a mother. “… the name of Sons Mertens Encyclopaedia: Op.cit. Mark 3.17 27 Luke 9.54 28 Mark 3.17 29 The Passion of the Word, Chapter 12, and more fully explored in Chapter 13. 25 26 14 of Noise, was given to James and to John his brother; in Hebrew Son of Thunder, that is to say, givers of the noise of Divine knowledge to men by means of their preaching, like thunder which is heard openly by all; or sons of the Gospel, because our Lord Himself calls His last manifestation lightning; and lightnings and thunders are related to one another; as indeed, by the expansion and contraction of the clouds full of waters that [come] from the winds, which are bound together in them; and sounds of thunders and rumblings are heard; and fire is flashed from them, like a rubbed flint; thus also here; because He was called lightning, His Gospel was called thunder, which lightens up the good things that are to be; and those were called Sons of Thunder, that is to say, Sons of the Gospel, because of the perfection of the love of its son who are led and kept by it, like sons by their mother; and it is honoured and loved by them like a mother by her sons. Some say that noise indicates the noise and tumult that is heard by many. Sons of thunder, then, that is to say, Sons of the Gospel. Others [say] that Sons of noise, that is to say, Sons of My mystery, since they are all sensible of His mysteries. This of Sons of Thunder, that is to say, that those things of which you only are sensible now, when I have risen from the dead, the time will come when they shall be preached as if by thunder throughout the whole world.”30 [underlining mine] Ishodad understands the naming as a projection into the future towards the Passion, the Gospels which follow it, and finally to the return of Christ as the Lightning which comes from the East and shines as far as the West. That is the sequence contained in the title Sons of thunder. As Ishodad says, the title leads the sons as a mother and it is as a mother to whom they refer. In her article: Missing Magdala and the Name of Mary Magdalen, Professor Joan E. Taylor briefly mentions James and John’s naming. She does so among a creative analysis of several instances of disciples being named by Our Lord. “For the sons of Zebedee, called Boanerges (Mark 3.17), the epithet Βοανηργές probably transliterates Aramaic ‘sons of noise’, b eni ragasha’, that is ‘noisy men’, and it illustrates how Mark tried to reflect the pronunciation of this epithet rather than its letters as written (Βοανη for beni, and ργές for ragasha’).”31 Her comments on this are technical rather than interpretative, but her work on the theme of naming in the Gospels points up the importance of it. I have explored it quite fully here because it is another aspect of John which needs to be clarified. There is another reference point for this naming which belongs with the sense of the Aramaic in John 12.29. Our Lord says in 12.17 that His soul is troubled 04yg4 (SHG,iYSHoA ) and He is referring to the hour of His Passion which He describes in 12.32 as being when He is lifted up. In between these two phrases the voice of the Father is heard saying that He has been glorified and will again be glorified. This glory is the Johannine perspective of the Passion: a love which loves to the end. The crowd standing there described the voice as ‘thunder’ 0m9r (RaEMoA), the same word used of the naming of the sons of Zebedee. Therefore, John locates Ishodad of Merv, quotation as provided by Dukhrana Commentary Reader: Ishodad of Merv – 0173: https://www.dukhrana.com/peshitta/comreader.php?cm=0&id=119,( accessed on 2/08/2024) 31 Missing Magdala and the Name of Mary Magdalen, Professor Joan E. Taylor. https://www.academia.edu/8651424/Missing_Magdala_and_the_Name_of_Mary_Magdalene?sm=b (accessed 1/11/2020) 30 15 the use of thunder in the naming of himself and his brother in the context of the Passion where the metaphor is used again but refers to a voice, confirming Ishodad’s interpretation as a proclamation rather than a trait of temperament. Our Lord also refers in 12.30 to the thunder as a voice, fq (QoLoA) which is in the emphatic state, a voice which proclaims, and in this case it is the voice of the Father. This was the same voice which expressed His Father’s love at the Baptism and the Transfiguration for His Beloved Son in whom He was well pleased. St. Peter the Venerable describes the moment well: “Today we have beheld His glory, glory as of the Only Begotten from the Father; and a voice came out of the cloud to Him from that magnificent glory. This is the glory of the Only Begotten from the Father, when the Father attested to His Only Begotten Son, when He revealed Him to those who did not know Him, when by divine actions He showed Him to be His own Son. This He did today, when He glorified Him in an unprecedented way, distinguishing Him from His adopted sons as being His very own Son, when He cried out from heaven and said: This is my beloved Son…”32 St. Peter in the same homily returns the theme to the theological nucleus of John: “ John saw this glory of the Only Begotten from the Father when he recognized that He was God from God, and both saw Him transfigured in glory and heard the Father teaching men about His Son. That is why he said: We have beheld His glory, glory as the Only Begotten from the Father...”33 Through this excursus into the naming of John and James by Christ, I seek to remove the sense of them being thunderous by temperament. The Aramaic names Christ gave, showed a quality which pointed beyond the person and had a prophetic dimension. Just so with the sons of Zebedee. John the Baptist was ‘a voice’, a ‘forerunner’, and James and John were the sons of the Father’s Voice, the Father’s Word. One was cut short, the other was to remain until Christ came. HOW CAN YOU DIE WITHOUT A MOTHER? We now approach the gift of Our Lady to John as Mother, and John to her as son with more clarity. I am convinced that just as John took his artistic being and source from ‘the mother’, so also grace built upon nature to form in John a unique receptivity. This would be essential to his conversations with Christ’s Mother after the Crucifixion and would form his mystical theology and Christology. It is obvious that this was not a pragmatic arrangement provided by the dying Son, for someone to take care of His Mother. The tradition of the Church teaches that that Our Lady is Mother of the Church, and that John stood for every disciple embraced by Christ’s Mother from that moment onwards. The Marian documents of the Church are eloquent about this. But I would like to take a further step in meditating upon this aspect of the Passion. 32 33 Homily by Peter the Venerable for the Feast of the Transfiguration, in Lectionnaire Monastique. Op.cit. 16 In Hesse’s novel Goldmund says to Narcissus: “Without a mother one cannot die…” Our Lord’s Mother was there in His dying as in His living, in every aspect of Her unique motherhood. But I believe that just as John understood his source to rise in Christ as mother, so Our Lord Himself allowed His motherhood in its spiritual essence to be more evident as His Passion approached. Luke tells us in 19.41 that in the hour of His entry into Jerusalem before the Passion, He looked upon the city and wept 0kb (B'oK,eA) over her, prophesying her suffering and downfall. In Matthew 23.37 and Luke 13.34 in the same approaching hour of the Passion we are told that He likened Himself to a hen. In the Matthean text He again prophesies Jerusalem’s downfall and iniquity. But although His vocabulary is that of war and destruction, He does not describe Himself as a mighty warrior to defend her. Instead, He uses the simile of the hen: ‘how often have I desired to gather your children as a hen gathers her chicks’.34 Abbatial pectoral cross, miniature Icon: Christ as Pelican feeding her young with her own blood, in traditional egg tempera with gold leaf, on Brazilian rosewood, by Sister Anne Eason O.S.B. The protection the mother hen gives her young is that of her own soft body, the shelter of who and what she is. She draws them in as close to her heart as possible beneath her wings. Our Lord’s choice of the image of the hen, symbolises the vulnerability of His Body, both on the Cross, to suffer and die for us, and also in the Eucharist, as nourishment for us. The hen gives her body as protection and she feeds the chicks, in most species, from within her own crop. It is also common for father birds to feed the chicks in like manner. I have exegeted this image from the perspective of a wing’s protection and its reflection of the Passion, in The Passion of the Word because it holds a key.35 Its purpose is pertinent for this moment, but I continue it in the following chapter. Moving more deeply into the metaphor, the aspect I wish to draw out now is that of Christ’s choice for an image of His motherhood, His divine, essential tenderness and protection which Jerusalem rejected. In the Aramaic, the image ‘like a hen’ Flwgnrt (T'aRNoG,uOLT'oA), the noun is feminine singular in the emphatic state. Christ’s tears reveal the power of His feelings. This is the Logos, the Miltha, the Creating Word of the Father, weeping over 34 35 As in Matthew and Luke 13.34 The Passion of the Word, Chapter 5, section, Shadows. 17 Jerusalem. The vocabulary He uses to describe how Jerusalem has treated the Just of the Old Testament, refers to Himself in His pending Passion also. The violence of the perpetrators against the Just is in extreme contrast to His image of Himself as a protective bird. The opposition of the imagery is indicative of the intensity of Christ’s feelings. I believe that it is not always understood how powerful this moment was for the Son of God. The evangelists show us in these texts, that the tenderness of Christ as Mother is integral to His redemptive act. In a prayer attributed to St Anselm, Christ is celebrated as Mother, and His death likened to the sacrificial love which is of the essence of motherhood. “And Thou, Jesus, sweet Lord Art Thou not also a mother? Truly, thou art a mother, The mother of all mothers, Who tasted death, In Thy desire to give life to Thy children.”36 Anselm uses the image of Christ as Mother in several different contexts, and in this particular example he is explicit about the image of the hen and her chicks. He shows that he understands this image to be connected to the sacrificial death of Christ. “And you, Jesus, are you not also a mother? Are you not the mother who, like a hen, gathers her chickens under her wings? Truly, Lord, you are a mother; … It is by your death that they have been born, for if you had not been in labour, you could not have borne death; and if you had not died, you would not have brought forth. For, longing to bear sons into life, you tasted of death, and by dying you begot them.… So you, Lord God, are the great mother.”37 Another instance, this time on the Via Dolorosa, of Our Lord’s mindfulness of motherhood in the Passion, is His encounter with the Women of Jerusalem. In this further instance it matters little whether these women were strangers performing a formal role or whether they were inclusive of the Holy Women. My own view is that it included Our Lord’s women disciples who lived in and around Jerusalem. In this charged encounter, Christ, only hours from His death, repeats His warnings about violent attacks on Jerusalem and the plight of those trapped in them. However, He is explicit about the vulnerability of mothers, even nursing mothers, with babies at the breast. “But Jesus turning to them, said: Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not over me; but weep for yourselves, and for your 36 37 St. Anselm of Canterbury St. Anselm, extract from A prayer to St. Paul. 18 children. For behold, the days shall come, wherein they will say: Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that have not borne, and the paps that have not given suck…”38 He need not have spoken in such detail, but I believe His sensitivity to the juxtaposition of violence and the love of mothers, was acute. It was so, given His own tenderness and love for humanity, being violently accosted unto death, a suffering in which, as a mother, The Mother, He would ask the Father to forgive, for “they know not what they do…”. It seems to me that His love which loves to the end, in tenderness, without anger, in the face of rejection and violence, is of the essence of motherhood, and fatherhood, and that essence is divine. Julian of Norwich is cited in a Vatican document entitled God is our Mother, in which there is this opening paragraph: “It is a characteristic of God to overcome evil with good. Jesus Christ therefore, who himself overcame evil with good, is our true Mother. We received our ‘Being’ from Him and this is where His Maternity starts. And with it comes the gentle Protection and Guard of Love which will never cease to surround us. Just as God is our Father, so God is also our Mother… Our highest Father, God Almighty, who is ‘Being’, has always known us and loved us: … He wanted the Second Person to become our Mother, our Brother, our Saviour.”39 This extract from Julian of Norwich gathers up Hesse’s partial truth about ‘being’ and the role of the mother and places it in a proper theological context. Divine Maternity begins with the gift of life from the Word, the Miltha and Logos, and we have seen how deeply aware Christ was in His Passion of this Maternity. But this is not only a question of parental tenderness or protection. It is on the level of Christ as source of being, of all being, and this means the Divine Giver of all Life. It also suggests that He, while going to His death and suffering it in His human nature, was acutely conscious of the fact that He was also Logos, Miltha, the Creating Word of the Father undergoing His Passion. It is within this context that the depth of Christ’s pain as He looked at Jerusalem, needs to be understood. Jerusalem here stands for all humanity including His Chosen People. It is within the context of His being the Source of Being that His tears need to be understood. It seems to me that John understood these things and was conveying them with all his skill. I believe that the essence of His creative and nurturing Motherhood was, through the action of grace, passed by Him to His Mother as she stood beneath the Cross. In John 19.26-28 He gives John and His Mother to each other. John says that “… after these things He knew that everything was complete…”. This statement is charged with the theology of the Ecclesia. He then utters the classic words “I thirst” which we looked at in Chapter 16 of The Passion of the Image. He took of the vinegar, the Fourth cup,40 and then uttered the words “…It is finished…” Luke 23.28 ff. Douay Rheims translation From “Revelations of Divine Love” by Juliana of Norwich (1342-1416), (LIX, LXXXVI) https://www.vatican.va/spirit/documents/spirit_20010807_giuliana-norwich_en.html#top.(Accessed /07/2024) 40 I am indebted to the exegesis of Scott Hahn for the interpretation of this moment as the partaking of the Fourth Cup of the Passover. It is available as a book and also in other formats, summaries and audio files. Scott 38 38 19 bowed His Head and breathed forth His Spirit. The sequence as given to us by John, and the juxtaposition of these last phrases affirms that His Motherhood completes and fulfils that of His Mother and is continued in her. In her He was and is the Mother of the Church. With Christ in her, and she in Him, after the Ecclesia received her Being from His pierced side on the Cross, the Church was and still is nurtured and developed. It is in this context and with these frames of reference, that John became Her son and she his Mother. It is in this transcendent and exalted sense that the mutual gift was given by the dying Son. It is for these reasons that it had to be John and it had to be the Mother of Christ. To conclude this chapter, I would like to refer to Guerric of Igny and Peter of Blois in their writings on the Mother of God. I would also like to show how Pope Paul VI has taken this teaching to its logical and ecclesial conclusion. Referring to her unique motherhood and the time Christ spent with her on earth, Guerric writes: “Outwardly He shows her the form of His glorified flesh, while within He imprints the form of the glorifying Word. This unique Virgin-Mother, who glories in having borne the Only Begotten of the Father, embraces that same Only Begotten of hers in all His members. Thus she can truly be called Mother of all in whom she recognises her Christ to have been formed, or in whom she knows He is in the process of being formed. Like the Church of which she is the type, she is the mother of all who are reborn to life. Mary is in fact the mother of the Life by which all live.” This affirms the depth at which He shares with her His qualities as Miltha, Logos, Word, the Source of all being. We are under her mantle, or as Guerric, says, under her wings, even as we are under the wings of the One who describes Himself before His Passion, as the hen who longs to gather us. “Already we go through life sheltered by the Mother of the Most High; we live under her protection, as if under the shadow of her wings. And afterwards, in participating in her glory we shall be cherished as if in her bosom…” [Italics mine].41 In one of his sermons, Peter of Blois writes boldly of the quality of the union between the Logos, the Son of God, and His Mother. “There are certainly other thrones, namely those heavenly spirits which are united to God most intimately; but blessed Mary is united much more closely with her Son, for the two are of the one flesh. The Father has given the Son the prerogative of consubstantiality with Him, but Mother and Son also enjoy a consubstantiality. … the Son, because of His Mother's presence as well as her merits and her prayers, generously grants pardon to the condemned, release to captives, sight to the blind, rest to the weary, health to the sick, abundance to those in need, security to those living in fear, trust among friends, peace between enemies, certitude to those in doubt, counsel to those in error, comfort to those in tribulation, a defence in battle, a refuge in exile, a safe harbour to the storm-tossed, wisdom Hahn, The Fourth Cup, Unveiling the Passover's fulfilment in Jesus’ final cup. The Fourth Cup: Unveiling the Mystery of the Last Supper and the Cross. 41 Guerric of Igny, Sermon as used for the Solemnity of the Assumption of Our Lady and as used in Lectionnaire Monastique. Daughter Zion: Meditations on the Church's Marian Belief, by Joseph Ratzinger, J. M.McDermott Translator, 1984. This small book provides excellent theology on many aspects of this theme. 20 to the ignorant, dignity to the humiliated, consolation to the orphan and the widow, grace to those setting out and those already on the way, and glory and crown to those who have reached the goal and have triumphed!”42 In his Exhortation, "Marialis cultus” Paul VI makes the following connection between the Mother of God and the Ecclesia: “The early Fathers rightly taught that the Church prolongs in the sacrament of baptism the virginal motherhood of Mary. Among such references we like to recall that of our illustrious predecessor, Saint Leo the Great, who in a Christmas homily says: "The origin of the life which (Christ) took in the womb of the Virgin he has given to the baptismal font: He has given to water what He had given to His Mother; the power of the Most High and the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, which was responsible for Mary's bringing forth the Saviour, has the same effect, so that water may regenerate the believer. If we wish to go to liturgical sources, we could quote the beautiful 'Illatio' of the Mozarabic liturgy: "The former (Mary) carried life in her womb; the latter (Church) bears life in the waters of baptism. In Mary's members Christ was formed; in the waters of the Church Christ is put on."43 42 Peter of Blois, sermon as used in Lectionnaire Monastique for the Office of the Queenship of Mary. 43 Extract from “The Exhortation "Marialis cultus" of Pope Paul VI” as used on the Saturday of Week XXII Per Annum in Lectionnaire Monastique. 21