With Our Lady on Saturday

 

Sacred Scripture often instructs us in the ways of God by the use of extreme contrasts. Today we recall the essential role the Mother of God plays in our lives as she accompanies us every step of our way to the Kingdom. Startlingly, the Church puts before us the distressing scene in Matthew’s Gospel of the lascivious dance of Herodias’ daughter before Herod at his birthday party (Mt 14:1-12). In the narrative, you can practically hear the hiss of the serpent as it slithers around Herod’s banquet hall. The girl’s dance bears the fruit of death in the beheading of John the Baptist. She performs a grim dance of lustful enticement and manipulation, which keenly contrasts our Lady’s lovely dance of humility and obedience before the throne of God—a dance of grace, this, that bears us the fullness of life in the fruit of her womb, Jesus.

 The dazzling contrast between stubborn Eve and gracious Mary, respectively our mothers in the orders of creation and of redemption, is to be found on every page of the Bible if you look for it. It is intended to provoke in us a crisis that makes us choose between haughty self-will and loving obedience, which is to say between death and life. To what, then, do we want to give birth in this world? For whose delight shall we dance? Without hesitation, let us joyfully join our Lady in her virginal dance of life!

Photograph by Brother Brian. Reflection by Father Simeon.