I shall say today what I wanted to last week, when we had a letter from the cardinal archbishop. After several weeks of talking about the Catholic Mass, I have wanted to introduce another significant element of the devout lives of Catholics: the devotion to Our Lady. If we peer into the chronicles of the Hebrew nation in the old testament, we shall quickly see the honour that was given to the mother of the Jewish king, who was called the great lady. In one instance, this great lady even seized control of the kingdom and ruled like a tyrant.
But, centuries before, King Solomon himself greatly loved his mother Bat’sheva, and even gave her a throne upon his right hand (III Kings, 3:13-20). Everything changes with the Blessed Virgin Mary, the most beautiful of the children of Adam and the masterpiece of all the perfections wrought by the Holy One, created Immaculate and without sin, prepared from her beginning to be the mother of the Holy One Himself. It is her humility and determined purity that wins God’s heart for her, and she soon becomes the Help of Christians and the Mother of the Church.
The Church has often called our Lady a co-redemptrix to Christ our Redemptor (Redeemer), for she has always worked with Him for the mending of the rift between God and men. Therefore, she is also called the new Eve, who in her humility reverses the sin of the old Eve in the garden of Eden. She has a martial aspect in the tradition of the Latin Church, because she has proved in her humility to be a powerful force against the evil spirits who too often infest our lives. If we in this life are the Church Militant – in a constant war against the enemy of our souls, the devil – she has always been a great captain of ours, and our great guiding light, the Stella Maris, who brings us from the choppy waters of this life into the peaceful harbour of her Son.
In the next few days of Holy Week, I shall be mentioning in some way the role in the Passion of our Lord of the Immaculate Lady – whom we shall then call Our Lady of Sorrows, the afflicted soul, faithful in all things, and thus refusing to despair – who watched the Light of her life be seemingly extinguished by human malice.
In today’s events of Palm Sunday, we see the Christ entering into His own City as the Son of David, the descendant of that king, long expected by the Jews. S. Matthew’s version of this event is the most detailed, for it talks not of one colt, but of two animals, an ass together with her colt.
“When they were near Jerusalem, and had reached Bethphage, which is close to mount Olivet, Jesus sent two of His disciples on an errand; ‘Go into the village that faces you,’ He told them, ‘and the first thing you will find there will be a she-ass tethered, and a foal at her side; untie them and bring them to Me. And if anyone speaks to you about it, tell him, The Lord has need of them, and he will let you have them without more ado.’ All this was so ordained, to fulfil the word spoken by the prophet: ‘Tell the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King is coming to thee, humbly, riding on an ass, on a colt whose mother has borne the yoke.’ The disciples went and did as Jesus told them; they brought the she-ass and its colt, and saddled them with their garments, and bade Jesus mount. Most of the multitude spread their garments along the way, while others strewed the way with branches cut down from the trees.”
Gospel of S. Matthew, 21: 1-8 [link]
If we picture that as a mobile throne, where the larger animal is the seat and the smaller a footrest, we may better understand the prophecy made by Zechariah (9:9) hundreds of years before, about the humility of the Servant-King. If the King is entering His city, the Queen Mother is not far behind. We may pictures her with her sisters and her nephews in the train (many of whom remained with her at the foot of the cross), rejoicing with the people as they cried out what we do in our Sanctus during the Mass, Blessed is He Who comes in the name of the Lord. And she must have known, as vividly as He did, how quickly this welcome would end and how soon the mob that pressed around them would either desert Him, or howl for His crucifixion and death.
Remember the beautiful tunic He wore as he carried that cross through the same streets a few days later, in agony. The beautiful tunic woven without seam that was so precious that instead of ripping it from Him before His crucifixion, the Roman soldiery gambled to possess. Would this not have been the garment of the King, which he wore now on Palm Sunday – the day of His welcome into Jerusalem? Tradition makes the Blessed Virgin something of a weaver. Could she have made Him the tunic that would bring Him into the City and out of it, to the Cross? But would He not have sat nobly upon his momentary throne, dressed as the successor of David, as the people waved branches and strewed the streets leading to the Temple with garments.
Hosanna, they cried, and that word has the same root as the Hebrew name of our Lord. It refers to salvation, and they don’t quite know what they are asking for. Save us, they cried, perhaps from the tyranny of foreign rule by the Romans. And save them He will, within a week, but from every sin and from eternal death, when from the height of the Cross He will declare, It is accomplished…
…and all things are made new again, when humanity once more enters the Garden of Eden.
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 