|
"Blessed is the womb that bore You!"
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. |
Jesus enters the synagogue. He picks up the great Isaiah scroll. And He reads it. It is at once a Divine decree and a Royal proclamation, for the words of this ancient and most holy text are mysteriously about Himself:
|
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." |
In this same scroll we find,
|
Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign:
Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel (Isa 7:14). |
We commemorate the reading of this scroll as the beginning of our liturgical year, by tradition observed on September 1. We commence again our Twelve Great Feasts beginning today with the Nativity of Our Most Holy Mother Theotokos, Ever-Virgin Mary, and concluding the year with our observance of her Dormition.
No wonder those at Our Lady of the Angels Hermitage regard the round of each year as a continual "patronal" (I should say "maternal") feast. For when are we not prayed over and protected by the Most Holy Theotokos, our Beloved Mother, Ever-Virgin Mary? It is right that we continually are mindful of her, Who is our great Patroness. And we are grateful beyond words.
In the present season, each evening we sing,
|
Eia, ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos
misericordes oculos ad nos converte; Et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exsilium ostende. Turn then, most gracious advocate, Thine eyes of mercy toward us; And after this our exile, Show unto us the blessed Fruit of thy womb, Jesus. |
Nonetheless, from the conception of a never-fading Virgin, from a birth immaculate as our own, a certain fragrance is detected. It is a familiar scent. We know this scent from the deepest recesses of our racial memory. Her birth has roused its long slumbering within us. It is the fragrance of the morning of the earth, of the utter east, of the pristine shore which will be warmed by the first life-giving beams of the new Sun.
The interior woodlands, long covered in opaque frost, now turn to crystalline glass encasing branches and twigs as warm currents flood in. A sound of droplets is heard. Green shoots begin to appear. And the smell of new life is borne on a mist that swirls through every orchard, holt, and meadow.
The world, long dead, begins to stir with expectancy. For in her birth a sign is given from above. Within her is renewed the hope of first Creation and the desire of the everlasting hills, her Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus.
She is the pristine grass upon which Heaven's dew will appear. And our hymns are joined to voices over millennia and centuries beholding and cherishing this same vision. From the fifteenth century,
| He cam also stylle | He came also still |
| þer his moder was | where His Mother was |
| as dew in aprylle, | as dew in April, |
| þat fallyt on þe gras. | that falleth on the grass. |
| He cam also stylle | He came also still |
| to His moderes bowr | to His Mother's bower |
| as dew in aprille, | as dew in April, |
| þat fallyt on þe flour. | that falleth on the flower. |
| He cam also stylle | He came also still |
| þer His moder lay | where His Mother lay |
| as dew in Aprille, | as dew in April, |
| þat fallyt on þe spray. | that falleth on the spray. |
| Moder and mayden | Mother and Maiden |
| ne neuere non as she — | there was never a One as She | wel may swych a Lady | Well may such a Lady |
| Godes Moder be. | God's Mother be. |
| ("Y syng of a mayden" Fifteenth-century Middle English lyric) |