Totus tuus ego sum et omnia mea tua sunt.
Tecum tutus semper sum.
Ad Jesum per Mariam
[ ] References in the text to numbered footnotes are not hyperlinked but may be found at the end of the relevant extract.
Mary is the "Domus Aurea," the House of Gold
Why is she called a House? And why is she called Golden? Gold is the most beautiful, the most valuable, of all metals. Silver, copper, and steel may in their way be made good to the eye, but nothing is so rich, so splendid, as gold. We have few opportunities of seeing it in any quantity; but anyone who has seen a large number of bright gold coins knows how magnificent is the look of gold. Hence it is that in Scripture the Holy City is, by a figure of speech, called Golden. "The City," says St. John, "was pure gold, as it were transparent glass."[1] He means of course to give us a notion of the wondrous beautifulness of heaven, by comparing it with what is the most beautiful of all the substances which we see on earth.
Therefore it is that Mary too is called golden; because her graces, her virtues, her innocence, her purity, are of that transcendent brilliancy and dazzling perfection, so costly, so exquisite, that the angels cannot, so to say, keep their eyes off her any more than we could help gazing upon any great work of gold.
But observe further, she is a golden house, or, I will rather say, a golden palace. Let us imagine we saw a whole palace or large church all made of gold, from the foundations to the roof; such, in regard to the number, the variety, the extent of her spiritual excellences, is Mary.
But why called a house or palace? And whose palace? She is the house and the palace of the Great King, of God Himself. Our Lord, the Co-equal Son of God, once dwelt in her. He was her Guest; nay, more than a guest, for a guest comes into a house as well as leaves it. But our Lord was actually born in this holy house. He took His flesh and His blood from this house, from the flesh, from the veins of Mary. Rightly then was she made to be of pure gold, because she was to give of that gold to form the body of the Son of God. She was golden in her conception, golden in her birth. She went through the fire of her suffering like gold in the furnace, and when she ascended on high, she was, in the words of our hymn,
Above all the Angels in glory untold,
Standing next to the King in a vesture of gold.[2]
[1] [21] And the twelve gates are twelve pearls, one to each: and every several gate was of one several pearl. And the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.
Et duodecim portae, duodecim margaritae sunt, per singulas : et singulae portae erant ex singulis margaritis : et platea civitatis aurum mundum, tamquam vitrum perlucidum. [Apoc 21]
[2] From Compline, night time prayer before sleep:
Above all the angels
in glory untold,
standing next to the King
in a vesture of gold.
Super omnes angelos
pura, immaculata,
atque ad regis dexteram
stans veste deaurata.
From the Little Office of the Immaculate Conception [Officium parvum Conceptionis Immaculatae]
Solomon's Temple: the Holy of Holies
Consider, too, the dwelling built by Solomon as the House of God: the Temple and the Holy of Holies. Mary was later to be a second Holy of Holies, a fit dwelling place for God the Son, the Word made flesh.
[7] And the gold of the plates with which he overlaid the house, and the beams thereof, and the posts, and the walls, and the doors was of the finest: and he graved cherubims on the walls.
Porro aurum erat probatissimum, de cujus laminis texit domum, et trabes ejus, et postes, et parietes, et ostia : et caelavit cherubim in parietibus.
[8] He made also the house of the holy of holies: the length of it according to the breadth of the temple, twenty cubits, and the breadth of it in like manner twenty cubits: and he overlaid it with plates of gold, amounting to about six hundred talents.
Fecit quoque domum Sancti sanctorum : longitudinem juxta latitudinem domus cubitorum viginti : et latitudinem similiter viginti cubitorum : et laminis aureis texit eam, quasi talentis sexcentis.
[9] He made also nails of gold, and the weight of every nail was fifty sicles: the upper chambers also he overlaid with gold.
Sed et clavos fecit aureos, ita ut singuli clavi siclos quinquagenos appenderent : coenacula quoque texit auro. [2 Chron]
Totus tuus ego sum et omnia mea tua sunt.
Tecum tutus semper sum.
Ad Jesum per Mariam
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