Chapter 11 : The Tenth Star or Splendour of the Crown of Excellence of the Mother of God
Continuing our translation of the 1845 reprint of Fr François Poiré's Triple Crown of the Mother of God (1643 French edition).
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| Notre Dame des Grâces, Cotignac.(Poggi, 2020) |
Mary is the Miracle of Glory
§ 1. The great privileges of the death of the MOTHER OF GOD
5 The time has now come to consider in greater detail the manner of Mary’s extraordinary death and the various degrees of love which prepared her for it. With this in mind, try to recall what we said earlier[1] about how exceptional the level of her charity was and to what inordinate heights it had arisen by the time she came to the end of her life. Up to this moment, she was accustomed to receiving regular visits and loving embraces from her dear Son, but she had a persistent yearning to be completely united with Him. She fully understood that her body was preventing this, being the only barrier separating her from her beloved, and so she longed unceasingly for its dissolution. I am well aware of the fervent desire for death which may be found in the lives of David, St Paul, St Augustine, St Martin, St Gregory and many others, and the frustration they felt at the prolonging of their lives. I am also aware that St Catherine of Genoa[2] spent two whole years seeking death, moved by a spirit of love. Sometimes she would call death cruel and inhuman for turning a deaf ear to her wishes and desires; at other times she used different language and made use of flattery by saying how beautiful death was, how sweet and pleasing, how enriching and restful, the source of her contentment, delight and love. In short, she said that death had only one fault, being so ready to come seeking those who fled death and so unwilling to help those who desired it so greatly.
I have read how the Blessed Teresa of Jesus suffered death daily because she was unable to die and that one of her greatest consolations was to hear the sound of the clock as this seemed to show her that she was approaching the end of her life. She could not hold back from asking God for death because she could find no remedy in living, and (what amounted to the same thing) she asked to die so as to be delivered from the evil besetting her. Now, I am aware that these longings the Saints had for death came only from the great love they had for God and the impatience they felt at being separated from Him. It was quite different, however, in the case of the Holy Virgin’s desires to be united with her beloved since there was so little equivalence between their love and hers. How many times did she say with the Spouse in the Canticles[3]: Shew me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou liest in the midday ? How many times did her wishes become the yearnings of a lover, which is the second degree of love preparing her for death?
Footnotes
[1] Cap. 8, § 3.
[2] Vitæ ipsius, c. 7.
[3] Cant. i. 6.
6 How many times did she address the blessed Spirits visiting her with the tender words from the Canticles[1]: I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him that I languish with love ? How many times did she say with the Spouse who was dying of love: Stay me up with flowers, compass me about with apples[2] (or as it says in the Septuagint, Strengthen me with perfumes, stay me with apples; or according to the original text, Bring me wine), because I languish with love ?
Picture someone who is ill with a raging fever who is repulsed by his meat and whose illness makes him reject all the food that once gave him pleasure. We make a special effort to provide him with relief and consolation such as vases full of flowers and greenery, with the best fruit according to the season and with wine we always have in reserve ready for illness and problems of the heart. In the same way, we can picture this holy soul doing all she could :
• to win the hearts of her enemies;
• to take delight in the beauty and fragrance of holy speech[3], especially in the recollection of those she heard coming from the sacred mouth of her beloved Son;
• to try and take pleasure in the fruit of good deeds, especially visits to those sites imprinted with the marks of His terrible Passion[4];
• to strengthen her sorrowful heart with the pleasing fragrance[5] spread everywhere by the announcement of the Gospel of peace and good news she received regularly from the Apostles; and finally,
• to mitigate the pain of her yearning heart with the wine that fructifies Virgins, namely by making frequent visits to the most holy Sacrament of the Altar.
Footnotes
[1] Cant. v ; v. Guerricum Abbatem, Serm. 1 de Assumpt.
[2] Cant. ii. 5.
[3] Rupertus, lib. V in Cant.
[4] Ildefons., Serm. 5 de Assumpt. ; et Brigitta, lib. V Revel., c. 61.
[5] Rupertus, sub finem lib. I in Cant.
7 It sometimes comes to pass, however, that something taken by people to quench their thirst makes it even worse. This is what happened in the case of the Queen of Angels, for the very things she used to console her inner yearnings were like so many matches that increased the ardour of her longing[1], so that she would fall into a swoon of love. This is the last degree of that gentle violence which the same love caused her to undergo and the last application of force given her to separate her blessed soul from her body.
Now, in order to make this easier to understand, it should be noted that in the order of nature the strong overtakes the weak and converts it into itself through the imprinting of its qualities, just as we see when fire takes hold of physical thing because it is more powerful. The same principle holds true in the supernatural order for, as there is an infinite distance between the Creator and a mere creature, when God goes to work in a person’s soul so that he feels His impact He simultaneously draws the soul to Himself on high, so that the soul is transmuted. This means that, with God drawing the soul from one side and the body holding it back on the other, the poor soul finds itself as though in a state of suspension and it feels as though it is time to quit the body at all costs.
It is illuminating to read how St Ephrem, St Francis Xavier, St Teresa of Jesus and many more describe the pressure of these feelings of love that made them want to be united with God. The effect was such that they prayed with insistence to God asking Him to be so gracious as either to moderate their yearnings or to sever the ties binding them to their bodies because it was no longer possible for them to withstand this martyrdom of love.
Now if one spark of love was able to set the hearts of these Saints so on fire that they could no longer bear to continue in their bodies, what are we to think would be the case with the Queen of Saints, with her who in the fervour of her contemplation, the sublimity of the colloquy she had with the most holy Trinity, in her ecstasies and swoons of love, was like a volcano[2] giving forth flames of divine fire capable of causing a conflagration in heaven and on earth? Without any doubt, if God had not lent His miraculous strength to Mary, then her heart would long before have burst so as to achieve that for which she yearned. In the end, however, God had to yield to the gentle assaults made upon Him by this holy love, and it became impossible to turn a deaf ear any longer to the unceasing cries she sent up to Heaven.
Footnotes
[1] Sophronius, Serm. de Assumpt. ; Rupertus, lib. V in Cant.
[2] volcano: the French text uses the word Montgibel, translating the Italian Mongibello which is another name for Mt Etna.
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SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen.
The Vladimirskaya Icon. >12th century.
Totus tuus ego sum
Et omnia mea tua sunt;
Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam.
© Peter Bloor 2024
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