Mysteries of Light

ALTHOUGH in the Gospel narrative the Baptism of Our Lord is immediately followed by His temptation in the desert, liturgically there is a gap of some weeks between the feast of the Baptism, and the first Sunday in Lent when we think about the temptation. During these weeks, in the modern lectionary, the Church sets before us the opening phase of Our Lord’s public ministry.

We can easily relate this phase of Christ’s life to the first three ‘Luminous Mysteries’ of the Rosary, instituted by Blessed John Paul II: the Baptism of the Lord, the Wedding at Cana, and the Proclamation of the Kingdom. How can our friend and teacher Saint Anthony guide us in thinking about these mysteries?

 

The Baptism

 

In his treatment of the (then appointed) Gospel for the first Sunday after Epiphany – which was in fact that of the wedding at Cana (Sermons, III, 344ff) – Anthony offers some thoughts on the significance of Our Lord’s Baptism in the Jordan. He sees this as manifesting the humility of the Saviour, a virtue which in a special way shows forth the presence of the Holy Spirit in Him.

“The Holy Spirit makes the soul humble and poor, as it is said: To whom shall I have respect, but to him that is humble and poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at my words?” Anthony here quotes the prophet Isaiah. It is thought that the words were originally a warning to those who put their trust in the material Temple in Jerusalem, implying instead that the true Temple of God is the soul of the believer. This is in line with Saint Paul’s later words about believers being temples of the Holy Spirit. Anthony wishes us to ponder the three characteristics emphasised by Isaiah: humility, poverty and contrition. These were exemplified in Francis and his first followers, as they sought to model their lives on that of Jesus Christ.

Anthony continues, “At the river Jordan, he [that is, the Holy Spirit] came down upon Jesus in the likeness of a dove, a bird that is gentle, and has as it were a sigh for a song.” The manifestation of the Spirit of God is not in “earthquake, wind and fire”, but in gentleness – the rustle of the breeze, the descent of a dove. We may recall that, in the story of Noah, the sign of the abating of the destructive flood, and of a world renewed, was the return of the dove, bearing a twig of olive. The olive tree, with its fruit that gives oil, is another symbol of the mercy and loving-kindness of God towards His people. It is this oil, used for healing and strengthening, that forms the basis of the anointing chrism, an anointing which makes a person a ‘Christ’. At his baptism, at the descent of the Dove, Our Lord was anointed with the Holy Spirit. What richness of symbolism!

But Anthony the moralist reflects on the contrast between Christ’s example of humility and the lives of many that claim to follow him. “How hard it is to preserve humility in the midst of riches! How hard to keep modesty amid pleasure; it seldom ever happens. If you find a rich man who is humble, or a ‘bon viveur’ who is chaste, you can reckon them to be the two lamps in the firmament!” That is, in rarity they resemble the sun and the moon, unique among the stars in the sky!

 

Wedding at Cana

 

In commenting on the marriage at Cana, Anthony notes that he has treated the subject of marriage before, on the twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (Sermons, III, 68ff). It is worth our while to turn to that place, before returning to Cana. Anthony is commenting on the parable of the marriage-feast, and he points to three spiritual marriages. The first is the Incarnation itself, when divinity and humanity were united in a single person, in the womb of the virgin-mother. The second is the union of grace and nature in the individual soul: “The soul’s husband is the Holy Spirit’s grace.” The third is union of the Church triumphant with her Lord, at the end of time. This is referred to at the end of the Apocalypse, when the heavenly Jerusalem is seen to descend from heaven, like a bride adorned for her husband.

Bearing all this in mind, the wedding at Cana must be seen as more than the story of a village festival, at which Our Lord first worked a miracle. It is not just an interesting anecdote, but (in St John the Evangelist’s terms) a ‘sign’ of the kingdom, a revelation or manifestation of the truth about Jesus. And the mother of Jesus was there. And Jesus also was invited, and his disciples, to the marriage (John 2:1-2). “O happy marriage,” says our Saint, “so greatly privileged, so outstandingly blessed!” The presence of Jesus, Mary and the disciples (including, of course, John himself) brings together the elements of the three marriages Anthony expounded earlier.

In Jesus himself, of course, we have the union of divinity and humanity. In Mary we see the fullness of grace in an individual soul. In the disciples we see the germ of the Church, which will one day include a countless number from every tribe and people and nation, the City of God which is founded by God Himself as His dwelling. John, in the story of Cana, shows that foundation in symbolic form. In his second account involving the presence of Jesus, His mother and the beloved disciple, he shows us the literal beginning of the Church as a community, born (as St Bonaventure says) like Eve from the side of the second Adam.

 

Proclaiming the kingdom

 

The Gospel readings now used for the first few Sundays of the year, in which Our Lord is shown opening His public ministry with the proclamation, “The kingdom of God is close at hand,” (Mark 1.15), or speaking in the synagogue at Nazareth (cf. Luke 4:16-22), did not feature in the Sunday lectionary of Anthony’s day, which means that he did not directly comment on them. Yet it is clear that for him, as for Saint Francis, the proclamation of the Kingdom of God was the key to his own ministry. “I am the herald of the Great King,” said Francis to the robbers, and Anthony has much to say on the work of the preacher.

Pope Benedict, in his first volume of Jesus of Nazareth, has a whole chapter on the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. “The core content of the gospel,” he writes, “is this: the Kingdom of God is at hand.” He explains that the word ‘kingdom’ does not refer to a reality still to be established, but to God’s actual sovereignty over the world, which is becoming an event in history in a new way. The acknowledgement of this sovereignty is expressed in the entrance Psalm appointed for the second Sunday of the year. Anthony comments, “This is the marriage-song chanted in the Introit of today’s Mass: Let all the earth adore thee, O God, and sing to thee: let it sing a psalm to thy name, O most High.”

Jesus is “the good herald of good tidings.” (Sermons, III, 406). The springtime of His ministry was the period of His preaching, “when the flowers appear in the earth, in the promise of eternal life, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land, the voice of the Son of God, who cried out: Do penance, for the kingdom of God is at hand!” (Sermons, I, 36).