Chapter 6 : The Fifth Star or Splendour of the Crown of Power of the MOTHER OF GOD
She is the Mother of the world to come and Redeemer of our race
Continuing our translation of the 1845 reprint of Fr François Poiré's Triple Crown of the Mother of God (1643 French edition).
§ 7. Reconciliation with God : the first fruit of mankind’s restoration by the Blessed Virgin
1 It belongs to God alone to bring life out of death death, to transform a poison into its antidote, or to bring forth fruits of sweetness from the very trunk of bitterness. This is how it appears to us and this is what truly happened : that out of the corrupt root of the old Adam emerged the new; from the ashes of him who had ruined everything was formed the one who restored everything; peace came from him who had started a war; order was born from confusion, and the father who had caused the fall from Grace delivered to the world the principle of reconciliation. These are references to Jesus who repaired and restored the fallen world, whom the prophet Isaiah called the Prince of peace[1] and whom St Paul referred to as our peace[2], forasmuch as He was like a bond causing us to be reunited with God, and like a peace offering by means of which our crimes were washed away. He is our Mediator and the foremost bringer of peace for us. Accordingly, in giving His most holy Mother to Him for a helper, we are not taking anything away from His merit for it is in and through Him alone that she has her being; but rather we are seeking to show His infinite love for her. As I demonstrated above, He allowed her a share in that most glorious title which He acquired at the price of His blood.
Take heart, therefore, all ye who have fallen from grace; for here we see the beautiful olive tree appearing in the city of peace; and here we see the arrival in our world of the Princess of peace, caduceus[3] in hand, with the commission of moving forward God’s plan for man’s reconciliation, and achieving this with His son.
Footnotes
[1] Princeps pacis: Isai. ix. 6.
[2] Pax nostra: Eph. ii. 14.
[3] caduceus : 1. The wand carried by an ancient Greek or Roman herald. spec. The fabled wand carried by Hermes or Mercury as the messenger of the gods; usually represented with two serpents twined round it. 2. staff covered with velvet, and decorated with fleurs de lys, which the French heralds of arms bear in their hands on solemn occasions. 3. Cf. Moses therefore made a brazen serpent, and set it up for a sign: which when they that were bitten looked upon, they were healed. Num. xxi. 9.
2 These are not just my ideas for I am following here the Holy Doctors who unanimously call her by titles such as: the agent of the world, the Angel of peace, the propitiatory[1] for all the earth and the Mediatrix for men. St Peter Chrysologus calls her[2]:
The one uniquely favoured by Heaven who had so much power and influence with God that she was to bring peace between all creatures and their Creator who was justly angry with them, because of the disobedience of him to whom he had subjected all creatures[3].
St John Damascene[4], referring to the children that the prophet Osee had by the wife he took in obedience to the express commandment of God[5], stated they were destined in the end to serve as a symbol prefiguring the friendship that God would one day renew with his people. He declares that:
This was a rough sketch of the happiness which would come to us by means of the most pure and the most immaculate Virgin who would be like a counterbalance to the Eve of old who had fallen; the new Eve and would bring forth into the world mercy itself, the beloved of Heaven, and His father could never refuse His request to receive in mercy the criminal by whom He had been offended.
The Emperor of the East, Matthew Kantakouzenos[6], observes most pertinently in this regard that:
On three separate occasions, the chaste Spouse went so far as to call out to His bride, that is to the Blessed Virgin, the Sulamitess (which means the peaceful one or she through whom peace is mediated); this was not only because he felt an ardent desire for her but because he knew better than any other the difficulties there would be in bringing about the planned reconciliation.
Footnotes
[1] propitiatory (n.): 1. A propitiation or atoning sacrifice; 2. a “mercy seat” or throne; see Thou shalt make also a propitiatory of the purest gold ; Exod. xxv. 17, where for propitiatorium KJV has mercy seat and Knox has throne.
[2] Serm. 142 : Invenisti gratiam : quantam ? quantam superius dixerat, plenam et vere plenam, quæ largo imbre totam funderet, et infunderet creaturam.
[3] Thou hast subjected all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen: moreover the beasts also of the fields. The birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea, that pass through the paths of the sea. Ps. VIII 8-9.
[4] Orat. I de Nativit. B. Virg.
[5] Osee (Hosea) Ch. i.
[6] In fine c. 6 Cant.
3 St Basil of Seleucia[1] (and before him, the Holy Prelate Epiphanius of Salamis) represented on one side the obstacles to this peace initiative and on the other the great power of the MOTHER OF GOD, saying that:
It was she who threw down the dividing wall which separated us from God.
There is no one, however little instructed in the Sacred Scriptures, who does not see immediately that the thought of these two learned men is based upon what St Paul wrote about the Saviour in the following terms[2]: For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and breaking down the middle wall of partition, the enmities in his flesh: Making void the law of commandments contained in decrees; that he might make the two in himself into one new man, making peace. This sheds further light upon a point that I have covered previously several times, and especially in the previous Chapter, namely that the Saints are very free in the way they grant to the holy Virgin the titles and qualities of her Spouse and her Son. Of these, I know of no one who has understood and explained this more clearly than the Abbot Rupert[3] in his comments upon the following words from the Canticle: Behold he standeth behind our wall, looking through the windows, looking through the lattices. Behold my beloved speaketh to me: Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one, and come[4].
Having noted that the heavenly Spouse
• is represented in Sacred Scripture by a buck or a hart;
• is able to stride over mountains like a giant, whose name is: Make haste, hurry up, do not delay; and
• is someone whom the prophet Isaiah praises by saying that He does not know what it is to delay;
the pious Abbot asks how can it be that He delayed His entry into the world for so long? How many centuries elapsed between Adam and Abraham? From Abraham until David there were no less than fourteen generations; from David until the Babylonian captivity, just as many; and from the latter until the coming of the Messiah another fourteen. How can these long passages of time be reconciled with an ardent desire to come as soon as possible to us, as with the nimble speed of a deer? This sort of question seems from a human point of view to be understandable but why do you not rather take time to measure the dividing wall which would first have to be cast down? Why do you not see that if one sin alone made a wall so prodigiously massive, every day new actual sins committed by men were reinforcing it and building it higher, so that it would need nothing less than God’s omnipotent artillery to throw it down? The Holy Spouse however, with an infinite desire to see this wall brought down to the ground, made frequent appearances on the battlements, speaking to men. In the end, however, as soon as He caught sight of the dear Bride that His eternal Father had promised Him, there was no longer any way of holding Him back; for from that moment onwards He began to make a breach in the wall, attacking this great obstacle to His plans with such power that in a very short while He succeeded in breaking it down.
I earnestly entreat you, however, to note how He proceeded from that point onwards, and how He advanced the work of our salvation. In a little over thirty-three years, His progress proceeded by leaps and bounds which astonished the Blessed Spirits: from Heaven down into the womb of the most sacred Virgin, from there to the Cross, from the Cross into the Sepulchre and from the Sepulchre up to Heaven. Who had ever heard speak of such things?
Take heart once more, ye poor fallen men, for behold the wall of the old divisions now cast down; peace has arrived, and henceforth ye are free to go unto God, and to call Him our Father as before. But you should recognise to whom you are obliged for all this: first and foremost it is to Jesus, who is the Prince of Peace; and after Him, you can truthfully say that it is to Mary, because it was mainly love for her that these ramparts and bastions were demolished. Indeed, she herself helped to cast them down in all the ways that I have described above.
Footnotes
[1] Serm. de Annuntiat.
[2] Eph. ii. 14-15.
[3] Lib. II in Cant.
[4] Cant. ii. 9-10.
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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 Virgin of Tenderness. >12th century.
Totus tuus ego sum
Et omnia mea tua sunt;
Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam.
© Peter Bloor 2025