Meditation 18
The Blessed Virgin and the Tetramorph
It is St. Paul who who sheds an unique light on the soul's
stature or growth in Christ in his letter to the Ephesians, “to build
up the Body of Christ, until we all reach unity in faith and knowledge
of the Son of God and form the perfect Man fully mature with the
fullness of Christ himself” (Ep 4. 12, 13). He sheds still further
light on this mystery in following verses and concludes,
He said still further light on this sublime truth in his 1st letter to the Corinthians speaking of Christ “who is both the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1. 24). God chose the humble ones – the anawarim as they said in Hebrew formerly – His “humble fools” according to the scale of value judgment of the glory of the flesh, In order to reduce it to nothing as no human being might feel boastful before God because the formation of “the perfect Man fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself” is based on humility. Just as Albert Einstein formulated his theory of relativity in the twentieth century, Maximilian Kolbe put forward his theory of sanctification,
You were to put aside
your old self, which belongs to your old way of life and is corrupted
by following illusory desires. Your mind was to be renewed in spirit so
that you could put on the New Man that has been created on God's
principles, in the uprightness and holiness of the truth (Ep 4. 22-24).
He said still further light on this sublime truth in his 1st letter to the Corinthians speaking of Christ “who is both the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1. 24). God chose the humble ones – the anawarim as they said in Hebrew formerly – His “humble fools” according to the scale of value judgment of the glory of the flesh, In order to reduce it to nothing as no human being might feel boastful before God because the formation of “the perfect Man fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself” is based on humility. Just as Albert Einstein formulated his theory of relativity in the twentieth century, Maximilian Kolbe put forward his theory of sanctification,
“YOUR WILL = my will !”
No created being has accomplished this total submissiveness
regarding the will of God as the Blessed Virgin, her “LET IT HAPPEN TO
ME AS YOU HAVE SAID” (Lk 1. 38) has been the conscription or roll call of all the saints of the Church through the ages. We can thus without
hesitation call her our pattern of sanctification. It is thus fitting
that the emblem of St. Luke refers to the mystery of the Virgin as well
regarding the fullness of the sacrament of Baptism in the Tetramorph.
Thus we can draw a diagram of THE TETRAMORPH OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN as
exposed above or the Divine Order of March of the New Covenant. All the
mystery discussed in Meditations 11 and 12 above is here explicitly
exposed by the numerals 1-12. Within the brackets we can thus see the
nine jewels of sanctification which the soul picks up from the dry bed
of the river of death, the flow of sin streaming from the original sin
of Adam. This truth is not an historical fact taking place once and for
all but an ontological reality repeating itself in our own lives
because we are all sinners before God's countenance. If someone
maintains that he is not a sinner, the person in question is a liar. In
its alienation from God the human will lives in a hell of love and
needs badly healing.
The inner effects of this healing of the soul's powers is exposed by the letters A, B, C and D on the diagram. The will of the Blessed Virgin was turned so fully towards her Son's birth that it did not matter what she saw or heard: her will was completely enchanted by Him in everything. Thus our own will becomes nothing but a longing after Him when it will be healed and transformed into pure love in the Christification when we have attained full participation in the stature of Christ as a theological beings.
When we speak of the Blessed Virgin as the First Living Ark of the New Covenant replacing the ark of the old Testimony in the center of the Divine Order of March of the new and spiritual Israel – the Church – her role becomes sublime, which is in full accordance with the apostolic tradition from the beginning. No created being has been as pure a mirror being in the live of grace as the Blessed Virgin at the Announcement of the archangel Gabriel. She is a golden and polished mirror in the purity of her Immaculate heart: her heart is indeed the throne of the Most High on earth. It is this mystery which is prefigured by the lid of the ark in the Holy of Holies of the Sanctuary of the Tabernacle which was made of polished gold plate, and in accordance with God's predestination called the mercy seat of God's glory. God sees only the reflection of His glory in such purity of the heart. This is indeed what John of Damascus emphasized in his Defense of the Holy Icons. when he wrote,
This is the truth which the author of the letter to the Hebrews pointed also to, “In it (the Ark) were kept the gold jar containing the manna (the prefiguration of the Son), Aaron's branch that grew the buds (the prefiguration of the Holy Spirit), and the tables of the covenant (the prefiguration of the Father). On top of it were the glorious winged creatures, overshadowing the throne of mercy” (Heb 9. 5). When the archangel overshadows the Blessed Virgin at the Announcement her “face is turned so fully towards this birth, that everything point her to God and this birth,” [2] as Meister Eckhart stated.
When a human being becomes such a clear thoroughfare of God's glory it becomes a living praise of the glory of His grace (Ep 1. 6) and He makes such a soul His abode in the eternal birth of the Word: “And we shall come to her and make a home in her” (see Jn 14. 23), “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High (the Father) will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God” (Lk 1. 35). All souls attaining such purity in the virtue of obedience give the child a birth in the mystery of an immaculate heart as we encounter here an ontological fact. God is able to let His dream come true by this silver clear thoroughfare of His glory, accomplish His predestination which He had decided “before the world was made” (Ep 1. 4). At this moment the Blessed Virgin is like a sponge, or by the words of the Carmelite father Wilfred Stinissen,
Thus God the Father gives us already in the beginning two patterns or exemplars to follow in the live of grace by the apostolic tradition of the Church, His Son who shows us God with man and The Blessed Virgin Mary, a human and created being with God. The blessed Theotokos is the Hodigitria – the one who shows us the way to her Son. By pointing her hand to her divine Child she says, “LOOK TO HIM” and just as at the wedding feast in Cana she says, “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2. 5). Thus she is truly our Mother of Perpetual help, as the Church expresses clearly through the ages by her icons (see Meditation 50). In order to emphasize still further her role as the First living ark of the New Covenant the two winged cherubim are always represented on the icon of the Hodigitria. Continuously can we see her point her fingers at her Son as the Savior of the world. And this was God's intentional plan from the beginning of creation:
The ancient fathers as Athanasius the Great (d. 373), Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444) and Augustine (d. 430) [4] agreed, that the excerpts from the Proverbs above referred to the incarnation of the Son of God, the foundation stone of the redemption, when He who is “the image of the unseen God, the first born of all creation” (Col 1. 15) was clothed in flesh in the womb of the Virgin in order to make those that He had predestined able to be “molded to the pattern of his Son” (Rm 8. 29). This moment St. Paul calls the completion of the time, “God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Gl 4. 4). In this divine predestination the Blessed Virgin is intended to be the Hodigitria, just as she appears in the ancient iconography and John of Damascus defended with such vigor in the times of the icon breakers. Thus the Blessed Virgin shall be an instrumental sign for the the militant Church on its pilgrimage on earth – a sacred image to follow – as God intends that His earthly kingdom becomes an authentic theocracy under His divine Kingship. Thus the Blessed Virgin directs all souls who seek her intercession to the mystery of her Son by her guiding hand as the Queen of Heaven,
It is thus no coincidence that the Bible begins with the mystery of the woman and she appears again at its close as she plays central role in God's warfare against the enemy of our salvation, the red and terrible dragon, but his name is also death, or by the words of Peter Kreeft,
By the Blessed Virgin's intercession God gives us invaluable help in order to cloth us in the bridal garments of His Son – our Lord Jesus Christ – as the only and true Bridegroom of a loving soul because He loves a soul who loves Him. Thus He was “for us made wisdom from God, and saving justice and holiness and redemption” (1 Cor 1. 30). In order to sustain us still further in His divine materialism God gives us still another invaluable help or armory which the ancient fathers of the Icelandic church named “medicine of grace” but we know better as the seven sacraments or mysterion (mysteries) of the Militant Church on earth. It is this mystery which was prefigured by the seven trumpets mentioned above (Med.14) when the Israelites devastated Jericho, the prefiguration of the black tabernacle of Satan in every human heart and the prophet Ezekiel has given us so vivid insight into as a place of distorted worship which takes place in this black tabernacle of deceits,
Later our Lord and Redeemer repeated this lesson as an admonition for us all while still on earth,
The glory of the flesh in its human presumptuousness cannot fathom the true image of humbleness incarnated making a whip of cords to drive all impurity out of His house as the King of Life as it mistakes always true humbleness as supervience and in its blindness it does not realize that demons oppose the spiritual growth of God's children (Ep 6. 12) and is thus easily entangled in their net. It is here were the Blessed Virgin gives us an invaluable help when we enter her “University of Prayer” and as Pope John Paul II emphasizes in his Encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharist (Chapter Six at the School of Mary, “the Woman of the Eucharist,”),
We can maintain the same regarding the other sacraments because the Blessed Virgin “is completely united to Christ” as the Church which “makes her own the spirit of Mary (58).
Let us thus scrutinize the mystery of the seven sacraments as revealed in the Sanctuary of the Tabernacle as God's intentional plan for His becoming Church because in His divine materialism He shows us how we can clean the Tabernacles of our own hearts. At this place we Latins can recite with our brothers and sisters in the Eastern Church,
O All holy Lady, Mother of God, the light of my darkened soul, my hope and protection. my refuge and consolation and my joy, I give thee thanks that Thou hast made me, who am unworthy, worthy to receive of the holy Body and the precious Blood of Thy Son. Do thou who didst bear the true Light enlighten the spiritual eyes of my heart; thou who didst engender the Fountain of immortality give life to me who am dead in sin; thou the compassionate mother of the merciful God have mercy on me and give me compunction and contrition of heart, humility in my thoughts, and the recall of my reason powers from their captivity. And make me worthy unto my latest breath, uncondemned to receive the sanctification of the divine mysteries unto the healing of soul and body, and grant to me tears of repentance and confession so that I may praise and glorify thee all the days of my life. For thou art blessed and glorified unto the Ages. Amen.
[1]. A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, Volume IX.
[2]. Meister Eckhart, Pfeiffer, p. 24.
[3]. Maria i Bibeln, i vårt liv, p. 13.
[4]. See Athanasius the great: Against Arian, III and IV; Cyril: Treasures, IV. 4-8 and St. Augustine: De Trinitate.
[5]. Angels and Demons, p. 126.
The inner effects of this healing of the soul's powers is exposed by the letters A, B, C and D on the diagram. The will of the Blessed Virgin was turned so fully towards her Son's birth that it did not matter what she saw or heard: her will was completely enchanted by Him in everything. Thus our own will becomes nothing but a longing after Him when it will be healed and transformed into pure love in the Christification when we have attained full participation in the stature of Christ as a theological beings.
When we speak of the Blessed Virgin as the First Living Ark of the New Covenant replacing the ark of the old Testimony in the center of the Divine Order of March of the new and spiritual Israel – the Church – her role becomes sublime, which is in full accordance with the apostolic tradition from the beginning. No created being has been as pure a mirror being in the live of grace as the Blessed Virgin at the Announcement of the archangel Gabriel. She is a golden and polished mirror in the purity of her Immaculate heart: her heart is indeed the throne of the Most High on earth. It is this mystery which is prefigured by the lid of the ark in the Holy of Holies of the Sanctuary of the Tabernacle which was made of polished gold plate, and in accordance with God's predestination called the mercy seat of God's glory. God sees only the reflection of His glory in such purity of the heart. This is indeed what John of Damascus emphasized in his Defense of the Holy Icons. when he wrote,
Again, an image is
expressive of something in the future, mystically shadowing forth what
is to happen. For instance, the ark represents the image of Our Lady,
Mother of God, so does the staff and the earthen jar. [1]
This is the truth which the author of the letter to the Hebrews pointed also to, “In it (the Ark) were kept the gold jar containing the manna (the prefiguration of the Son), Aaron's branch that grew the buds (the prefiguration of the Holy Spirit), and the tables of the covenant (the prefiguration of the Father). On top of it were the glorious winged creatures, overshadowing the throne of mercy” (Heb 9. 5). When the archangel overshadows the Blessed Virgin at the Announcement her “face is turned so fully towards this birth, that everything point her to God and this birth,” [2] as Meister Eckhart stated.
When a human being becomes such a clear thoroughfare of God's glory it becomes a living praise of the glory of His grace (Ep 1. 6) and He makes such a soul His abode in the eternal birth of the Word: “And we shall come to her and make a home in her” (see Jn 14. 23), “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High (the Father) will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God” (Lk 1. 35). All souls attaining such purity in the virtue of obedience give the child a birth in the mystery of an immaculate heart as we encounter here an ontological fact. God is able to let His dream come true by this silver clear thoroughfare of His glory, accomplish His predestination which He had decided “before the world was made” (Ep 1. 4). At this moment the Blessed Virgin is like a sponge, or by the words of the Carmelite father Wilfred Stinissen,
From the beginning she
(Mary) was open before God. From the first moment she stood
“directly under God” (Eckhart) with “open mouth” (Ps 81. 11). Thus not
one moment of her life was fruitless. She received all the gifts of
grace that God had planned for her. She lets everything stream through
herself, just as the sponge soaks the water, but is never satiated. The
love finds no obstacle in her. [3]
Thus God the Father gives us already in the beginning two patterns or exemplars to follow in the live of grace by the apostolic tradition of the Church, His Son who shows us God with man and The Blessed Virgin Mary, a human and created being with God. The blessed Theotokos is the Hodigitria – the one who shows us the way to her Son. By pointing her hand to her divine Child she says, “LOOK TO HIM” and just as at the wedding feast in Cana she says, “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2. 5). Thus she is truly our Mother of Perpetual help, as the Church expresses clearly through the ages by her icons (see Meditation 50). In order to emphasize still further her role as the First living ark of the New Covenant the two winged cherubim are always represented on the icon of the Hodigitria. Continuously can we see her point her fingers at her Son as the Savior of the world. And this was God's intentional plan from the beginning of creation:
From everlasting, I was
firmly set, from the beginning, before the earth came into being. The
deep was not, when I was born, nor were the springs with their
abounding waters (Pr 8. 23, 24).
The ancient fathers as Athanasius the Great (d. 373), Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444) and Augustine (d. 430) [4] agreed, that the excerpts from the Proverbs above referred to the incarnation of the Son of God, the foundation stone of the redemption, when He who is “the image of the unseen God, the first born of all creation” (Col 1. 15) was clothed in flesh in the womb of the Virgin in order to make those that He had predestined able to be “molded to the pattern of his Son” (Rm 8. 29). This moment St. Paul calls the completion of the time, “God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Gl 4. 4). In this divine predestination the Blessed Virgin is intended to be the Hodigitria, just as she appears in the ancient iconography and John of Damascus defended with such vigor in the times of the icon breakers. Thus the Blessed Virgin shall be an instrumental sign for the the militant Church on its pilgrimage on earth – a sacred image to follow – as God intends that His earthly kingdom becomes an authentic theocracy under His divine Kingship. Thus the Blessed Virgin directs all souls who seek her intercession to the mystery of her Son by her guiding hand as the Queen of Heaven,
For you will go before
the Lord to prepare a way for him, to give his people knowledge of
salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the
faithful love of our God in which the rising Sun has come from on high
to visit us, to give light to those who live in darkness and shadow of
death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace (Lk 1. 76-79).
It is thus no coincidence that the Bible begins with the mystery of the woman and she appears again at its close as she plays central role in God's warfare against the enemy of our salvation, the red and terrible dragon, but his name is also death, or by the words of Peter Kreeft,
Pray to Mary, the
Second Eve, the Lady who conquered the serpent who seduced the first
Eve (Gn 3. 15). She conquered that serpent two thousand years ago (see
Rv 12), and again in Mexico 1531, and again in Germany in 1945, and
again in Russia in 1989, and she can do the same in the nation pious
Muslims now call “the great Satan”, a civilization that spills the
human blood from millions of tiny victims every year into the hungry
mouth of Moloch. Only the Queen of Angels and her heavenly army can
defeat this evil angel of death and change our culture from a “culture
of death” into a culture of life and light and love. [5]
By the Blessed Virgin's intercession God gives us invaluable help in order to cloth us in the bridal garments of His Son – our Lord Jesus Christ – as the only and true Bridegroom of a loving soul because He loves a soul who loves Him. Thus He was “for us made wisdom from God, and saving justice and holiness and redemption” (1 Cor 1. 30). In order to sustain us still further in His divine materialism God gives us still another invaluable help or armory which the ancient fathers of the Icelandic church named “medicine of grace” but we know better as the seven sacraments or mysterion (mysteries) of the Militant Church on earth. It is this mystery which was prefigured by the seven trumpets mentioned above (Med.14) when the Israelites devastated Jericho, the prefiguration of the black tabernacle of Satan in every human heart and the prophet Ezekiel has given us so vivid insight into as a place of distorted worship which takes place in this black tabernacle of deceits,
Go in and look at the
loathsome things they are doing inside. I went in and looked and there
was every kind of reptile and repulsive animal, and all the foul idols
of the House of Israel, carved round the walls (Ezk 8. 9, 10).
Later our Lord and Redeemer repeated this lesson as an admonition for us all while still on earth,
Take all this out of
here and stop using my Father's house as a market (Jn 2. 17).
The glory of the flesh in its human presumptuousness cannot fathom the true image of humbleness incarnated making a whip of cords to drive all impurity out of His house as the King of Life as it mistakes always true humbleness as supervience and in its blindness it does not realize that demons oppose the spiritual growth of God's children (Ep 6. 12) and is thus easily entangled in their net. It is here were the Blessed Virgin gives us an invaluable help when we enter her “University of Prayer” and as Pope John Paul II emphasizes in his Encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharist (Chapter Six at the School of Mary, “the Woman of the Eucharist,”),
In a certain sense Mary
lived her Eucharistic faith even before the institution of the
Eucharist, by the very fact that she offered her virginal womb for the
Incarnation of God's Word. The Eucharist, while commemorating the
passion and resurrection, is also in continuity with the incarnation.
At the Annunciation Mary conceived the Son of God in the physical
reality of his body and blood, thus anticipating within herself what to
some degree happens sacramentally in every believer who receives, under
the sign of the bread and wine, the Lord's body and blood (55).
We can maintain the same regarding the other sacraments because the Blessed Virgin “is completely united to Christ” as the Church which “makes her own the spirit of Mary (58).
Let us thus scrutinize the mystery of the seven sacraments as revealed in the Sanctuary of the Tabernacle as God's intentional plan for His becoming Church because in His divine materialism He shows us how we can clean the Tabernacles of our own hearts. At this place we Latins can recite with our brothers and sisters in the Eastern Church,
O All holy Lady, Mother of God, the light of my darkened soul, my hope and protection. my refuge and consolation and my joy, I give thee thanks that Thou hast made me, who am unworthy, worthy to receive of the holy Body and the precious Blood of Thy Son. Do thou who didst bear the true Light enlighten the spiritual eyes of my heart; thou who didst engender the Fountain of immortality give life to me who am dead in sin; thou the compassionate mother of the merciful God have mercy on me and give me compunction and contrition of heart, humility in my thoughts, and the recall of my reason powers from their captivity. And make me worthy unto my latest breath, uncondemned to receive the sanctification of the divine mysteries unto the healing of soul and body, and grant to me tears of repentance and confession so that I may praise and glorify thee all the days of my life. For thou art blessed and glorified unto the Ages. Amen.
[1]. A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, Volume IX.
[2]. Meister Eckhart, Pfeiffer, p. 24.
[3]. Maria i Bibeln, i vårt liv, p. 13.
[4]. See Athanasius the great: Against Arian, III and IV; Cyril: Treasures, IV. 4-8 and St. Augustine: De Trinitate.
[5]. Angels and Demons, p. 126.