Sermon for the Feast of Mary, Mother of God

Germinavit radix Jesse: orta est stella ex Jacob; Virgo peperit Salvatorem: te laudamus. Deus noster.

The root of Jesse has flowered; a star has risen out of Jacob: the Virgin has given birth to the Saviour: we praise thee, our God.

Whose fest is this? Is it Our Lord’s; are we celebrating his circumcision” Is it Our Lady’s; are we celebrating her motherhood It’s both; but this year, perhaps because the earthly Israel is involved in such terrible bloodshed, it seems to me that we are celebrating something which is at the root of both, and which. as the world calculates time, goes back far beyond either. We are celebrating the true Israel. The chosen people, God’s election. As Paul insists, the New Covenant has not abolished or deleted that election. Mary is the daughter of Zion, and Jesus is – well, Jesus is both the summation of Israel which was chosen, and the God who chose Israel. As he did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfil it, so he did not destroy Israel but fulfil it. his own received him not; but that does not change the ontological effect he had on his own, and also on those sheep who were not of that fold.

From the time of Moses and long before the time of Moses, Israel is a blessed nation, and in its name were all the nations of the world to be blessed.. It might seem hard to understand why God – who is God of the whole earth, should choose one particular nation out of all nations to be his own; why he should, in the early days, choose one man out of all to be the vehicle of his blessing. We can hardly imagine it: Abraham was the only believer in the entire world: he had no support or affirmation from any other human being. That is why he is the father of faith = he’s almost faith personified. The reason, I think, is not that God prefers or chooses any person or nation to the exclusion of any others. He is infinite and therefore capable of preferring, absolutely, each one of us, and does. However, we can’t grasp that; indeed, if God hadn’t begun by choosing Abraham and not Lot, Israel and not Esau, we simply couldn’t have grasped the concept of being “chosen”. And it is only once we have grasped that concept that we can begin to grasp the fact that all creation, and each member of creation, is his chosen – in just that “preferential” sense.

“What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way. First indeed because the words of God were committed to them. For what if some of them have not believed? Shall their unbelief make the faith o God without effect? God forbid. But God is true.” there has grown up – though I think it is less strong now – a form of “replacement theology” in which Christianity is seen as the replacement of Judaism, the Church the replacement of the synagogue. There is a small amount of truth in this, in that present-day Judaism is incomplete; it needs the Christian revelation to complete it. Christianity is not the replacement but the fulfilment of Judaism. Jesus himself said so; and Paul who might be accused of being at the origin of the replacement theology, insisted that there is one God who justifies circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision by faith. “Do we then”, he asks. “destroy the Law through faith? God forbid; but we establish the Law”. A possible analogy, it seems to me, is the relation between an engagement and a marriage. When the couple have married, they could say with equal truth “The engagement is at an end, it is over it is not longer relevant”; and “The engagement has been fulfilled, has come to full flowering, in the marriage.” So too with Judaism and Christianity. The flower that came forth from the root of Jesse is the full flowering of Judaism. Christianity is simply the full faith implicitly contained in Judaism, and is named after its full flowering. Jesus was not a Jew by chance. “For the end – in both senses – of the Law is Christ, unto justice to everyone that believes”.

the motherhood of Mary contains all we need to know about the new dispensation: the Virgin overshadowed by the Holy Spirit gave birth to Jesus Christ, God incarnate, true God and true Man, who was born to save his people from their sins. Yet that same Jesus was circumcised according to the old dispensation, thus sealing his identity as a Jew. The Apostle of the Gentiles used very strong language in order to insist on this, to stress the continuity between the two Testaments. It would certainly never have occurred to him that he had ceased to be a Jew because he accepted Jesus as the Christ. “I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit—I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised!” I have no doubt that although Mary suffered greatly at the sufferings of her son, that sword which Simeon predicted would pierce her heart was made up largely of that same great sadness and continual sorrow of which Paul speaks. She too was an Israelite, and could see that blindness in part had happened in Israel. The will of her heart, indeed, and her prayer to God, was for the unto salvation. For she could bear then witness that they had a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they, not knowing the justice of God, and seeking to establish their own, had not submitted themselves to the justice of God.

Blindness in part. justification by faith and not by law. And yet, it was an Israelite, a daughter of Abraham, whom God chose as his mother. “It is not as though God's word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring.” No, God had not cast away his people. Mary also was an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah.

We are told that God is able to bring good out of evil, and there is no doubt that Mary believed this, and so did Jesus – except during those agonising hours in Gethsemane. No, the Israelites have not ceased to be children of God. “As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable.” What has happened is that those who were not Israelites according to the flesh have received the sonship which previously appeared reserved only to Israelites. it is as if the failure of part of Israel had opened a breach in that dividing wall which Jesus cam to destroy, and allowed the Gentiles to enter Somehow, by their offence, salvation is come to the Gentiles; that blindness in part is temporary: it is to last only until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and so all Israel will be saved.

There’s a homily for the feast of St Stephen by Fulgentius of Ruspe which seems to me to express beautifully the end result of all this. “This is the true life, in which Paul is not brought to confusion by the murder of Stephen, but Stephen rejoices at the company of Paul, and charity gives joy to both. Charity in Stephen overcame the ferocity of the Jews; in Paul, charity covered a multitude of sins. Charity has given to both the possession of the Kingdom of Heaven.” Paul, the Jew, and Stephen, the Gentile, will be joyfully united in the Kingdom of Heaven. “For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches. If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you…And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?”

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of the children of God.” Children of God, and with the Only-Begotten Son, children of Mary, mother of God, and mother of the Church.

Venerunt nobis vere omnia bona pariter cum illa!