Second Conference – Reflections on the Salve Maria

Yesterday we reflected upon the first four words of the Latin Hymn SALVE REGINA, namely Salve Regina Mater Misericordiae. This evening we will reflect upon the words, really the phrase, that immediately follow those four, namely, VITA, DUCEDO ET SPES NOSTRA, SALVE. Literally: Hail, Our Life, Our Sweetness and Our Hope.

The repetition of the greeting SALVE (Hail) indicates that certain other characteristics (besides mercy) of the Blessed ever-Virgin Mary are so completely identified with her being that these, too, can be considered as almost substantive elements of her nature. We know, of course, that that is not so, because we have specified that Our Lady is our Life, our Sweetness, and our Hope. She is all this only in relation to us. That is how we experience her in our lives. For these characteristics to be truly substantive, she would have to be Life, Sweetness and Hope apart from any relationship to us her children.

To say the same thing somewhat differently, when we address the Blessed Mother by these words, we are saying that we perceive her as much more than merely life enriching and life enhancing on our behalf. We assert that we perceive her as Life itself. Similarly, we affirm that we experience her as much, much more than merely sweet; we are saying that for us, she is Sweetness itself. Finally, we perceive her to be so super-abundantly Hope inspiring and Hope-confirming in relation to us, that we say she herself is our Hope.

So we must ask ourselves: In what sense is the Blessed ever-Virgin Mary these things in our behalf? First of all, in what sense is Mary our Life? In order to find a satisfactory answer, we have to ask a more fundamental, preliminary question: What do we mean by LIFE?

I find this question to be intimidating. As we mentioned in yesterday evening’s homily, everything in God is God. Therefore God, the Living God, is Himself LIFE. But God is so utterly transcendent, in addition to being Infinite and Eternal, that while we are still living here on earth as finite and mortal beings, we know it is possible for us even to begin to grasp all that is included in the Supreme Reality which is God. So it is with some trepidation that we would begin to inquire into the nature of Life, since we can never hope to comprehend it adequately or in its entirety.

Nevertheless, we can begin by reflecting upon our own personal experience of life in the material living beings we are familiar with. We can ask ourselves, how do we know that a living being possesses life?

Perhaps the best way to begin to appreciate what Life is, is to think about what happens to a living being when it dies. When a living organism, a plant, an animal, or a human being dies, it immediately begins to decay, it begins to decompose into the constituent, non-living chemical elements that made up its material body. As that process continues, the formerly living organism becomes more and more repugnant to our senses. Life, therefore, is that indefinable, immaterial force or energy that keeps living things fresh, lively and pleasing to the sense. It is that immaterial force or energy that keeps it from decomposing into those more basic, non-living material components that belong to a lower order of being.

Thus, the first conclusion that we draw is that Life is something relational. Life is what causes the constituent elements to combine and remain united in certain mutual relationships that enable them to participate in a higher form of being or existence.

When we apply that notion to the Blessed Virgin, we begin to get an insight into how, in what way, she is our Life. She is like that mysterious force or energy that keeps material organisms alive, and which the ancients called ANIMA, and which we call a soul. It is she who keeps us in together in (keeps us from falling out of) the mutual relationships that enable us to participate in a higher Order of being or existence. We can safely believe that Our Lady is the one who keeps us in a relational union with the Triune God, which union causes us to participate in the Trinity’s supernatural, eternal Life.

In other words, when we address the Blessed ever-Virgin Mary as our Life, we are acknowledging that we can depend upon her to help us persevere in a transforming union with the First Person of the Trinity, God our Creator and Father; and with the Second Person, Jesus our Brother, Saviour and Redeemer, Spouse of our souls, and much, much more. Finally, we can rely on her to keep us united with the Third Divine Person, the Holy Spirit, our sanctifier, our Paraclete, our Advocate, and much much more besides. This same God, the Holy Spirit, is also the Soul of the Church, Christ’s Body, in which we are united as members.

The relational union we enjoy with each of the Divine Persons is only possible in virtue of the Divine Love that has been poured out in our souls by the Holy Spirit. Because Divine Love is God’s Divine Life, we really and truly are raised up to and are able to exist and to function in a manner that is beyond the reach of the natural capabilities and faculties that are ours as descendants of Adam and Eve. In and through our union with God in Love, we exist and function as God Himself does. And we do this in virtue of supernatural Faith, Hope and Charity.

Faith enables us to know as God knows. By it we know God as He is in Himself, and all the supernatural knowledge He has revealed to us in Sacred Scripture concerning His Divine nature, His crated universe, ourselves and our relationship to Him.

Based upon that knowledge through Faith, Hope enables us to adhere to God as our future, eternal Goal and Beatitude.

Charity, also based upon the knowledge that comes through Faith, enables us to Love, as God loves. In virtue of Charity, we are able to love God Himself and all His creatures. Particularly, we are enabled to love our neighbor as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have loved us.

In other words, by Faith we know God as the Supreme, beatifying Truth. Through hope we possess Him in anticipation as Supreme, beatifying Beauty or Loveliness. By means of Charity we become one with Him as Supreme, beatifying Goodness.

Mary is able to preserve us in these transforming relationships with God because she is the creature who most closely resembles God Himself and most perfectly shares His Life. In her likeness to God, Our Lady immeasurably surpasses all other created beings who are made in His image and likeness. Therefore the Truth, the Loveliness or Beauty and the Goodness that god has conferred upon Mary are second only to that of God Himself. The more we know Mary, the more blessedly alive we become. The more we gaze upon her Loveliness, this more blessedly alive we become. And the more we embrace the Goodness that is Mary, again, the more blessedly alive we become.

She is indeed, the Mirror that reflects God perfectly. She gives Him to us without the least distortion. Because of that, the Blessed ever-Virgin Mary, our Queen and Mother of Mercy, is, in all truth, our Life.

Now we can ask: In what sense is Mary our Sweetness? Well, the first thing that came into my mind when asking this question was a song that occurs in the musical Mary Poppins. I’m sure you know which one I mean. It is the song that contains the line: Just a little bit of sugar makes the medicine go down, the medicine go down.

I do believe that this idea captures the essence of our experience of Mary as our Sweetness. In her relationship to us as Queen and especially as our Mother, she is the infallible antidote to all the bitterness we experience here in this valley of tears. She is even more than that, she is the antidote to the bitter poisons that in various ways gain access to our souls and threaten to cause their spiritual death.

When our souls are sick to the point of death because of our sinfulness, the bitterness of contrition, repentance and penance seem too great to bear, and we tend to shy away from those salutary means of restoring health to our souls. It is Mary who mitigates and sweetens our encounter with Jesus through His representative the Priest in confession, in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, to restore life and health to our souls.

When the bitterness we experience is not caused by our personal sins but is the normal consequence of living as fallen human beings in a fallen world, where sin and evil hold sway, where we have no control over the forces of nature, and even less control over the willfulness of free agents, again Mary is there to replace it with the sweetness of her maternal love and concern.

Then there is another kind of voluntary, medicinal bitterness we must impose upon ourselves if we would gain the mastery over our rebellious, fallen human nature. It goes with the putting to death of the unruly desires and appetites of the Flesh and of the Ego that prevent us from living fully and entirely by the Holy Spirit alone. It is Mary who overcomes that bitterness associated with that salutary discipline.

The sweetness that is Mary surely derives from the fact that she was utterly without the least stain of sin from the first moment of her existence. Therefore, she did not deserve to endure the bitterness that was her lot as Mother of the Redeemer and as Co-redemptress. Yet she endured all that bitter suffering most willingly, because she loved us ore than she loved herself. She permitted so many swords of sorrow to pierce her heart so that we might have life. We remember that she, a mere mortal, was like Jesus, her Divine Son, in that regard. Surely these are the memories we have of her that are capable of making all bitterness palatable, if not enjoyable. Mary is indeed our Sweetness.

Practically speaking, we experience the Sweetness of Mary when we turn to her in much the same way that we turned to our natural mothers when we were young children. Our mothers never failed to soothe our hurts and kiss our boo-boos, and to restore peace and security to our troubled minds, hearts and feelings by the warmth of their maternal embrace. That is typically a mother’s role, and no one fulfills it better than Our Blessed Mother. It is so important to know this, because everyone, whether saint or sinner, whether knowingly or unknowingly is constantly on the lookout for some sweetness to offset the bitterness we encounter almost daily in this world. To seek that sweetness anywhere else than in Mary, only makes it worse.

Finally, we consider in what sense Mary is our Hope. Here it is helpful to recall what the Virtue of Hope is, and its role in the purification of our memories. We remember that Faith purifies our intellect by casting out that which defiles it, namely error and falsehood. We remember, too, that Charity purifies the will (or heart) by casting out base loves and any other love or affection that cannot be made a part of, and remain subordinate to, our First Love, God Himself.

When we make an act of Hope, which as we said above, is a way of adhering to God as our future Goal and Eternal Happiness, we base our certainty of attaining Him upon His very own power and virtues. With the help of our memory we recall and rely upon God’s Infinite Wisdom, Power and Mercy, the highest form of Divine Love. We remember that all of these are operative in Jesus, especially, and we remember that His merits that have earned for us everything that we need to overcome the enemies of our Salvation. We remember that all of Jesus’ merits, and even Jesus Himself are made available to us through the Sacraments of the Church. Therefore, we remember and rely upon His God’s Fidelity because this attribute of His assures us that He will infallibly keep all the promises he has made to us throughout Sacred Scripture.

Hope, therefore, purges from the memory of anything that cannot assure our eternal salvation, such as power, wealth, ease and comfort, good looks, natural talent, influential friends, etc. Hope even turns our weakness; our helplessness, our sufferings, our nothingness and our foolishness to good advantage by reminding us that unless we endure the Cross with Jesus, we shall never share His eternal Life and glory.

So really, the memory is the arsenal of our soul. There we store the weapons that will enable us to win the battle against the enemies of our Salvation, which enemies are the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. There we store the evidence of the attributes of God and the merits of Jesus that we mentioned above recorded throughout Sacred Scripture. We remember the foreshadowing of the salvific events of the New Testament that are found in the Old, namely, the Promise of a Redeemer (where we first learn of Mary), the Paschal Lamb and the deliverance from Egypt, the sojourn in the Desert, the water from the Rock, the Manna and the Seraph serpents lifted upon on a pole, the introduction into the Promised Land, the story of David and Goliath, the song of the Suffering Servant, and more.

Mary is our Hope because she recapitulates and sums up in herself the entire history of the people of Israel, who were chosen by God to give the world its redeemer. She is our Hope because, remembering that she is our Queen Mother of Mercy, we know that she will not allow Jesus’ Blood to have been shed in vain for anyone who acknowledges that he/she is her child.

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