The Servant King

THE MONTH of March sees two topics in our Saint’s series of Festivals, the Annunciation to Our Lady and the Supper of the Lord. The former marks the opening of Our Lord’s earthly life, and because the Eucharist is the sacramental expression of His sacrifice on the Cross, we may say that the second marks its climax and close. Anthony does not give a Sermon for Good Friday as such.





Parallel lives





Anthony notes that Christ was conceived at Nazareth, born at Bethlehem, and crucified at Jerusalem. There is a progression from the obscure Galilean village, to the town of David, and to the Holy City. “So Christ was conceived in humility, born in charity (the ‘House of Bread’) and crucified by being lifted up.”



As always, there is a parallel to be drawn between Our Lord and His Mother, the new Adam and the new Eve. Mary replied to the angel, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” At the Last Supper, her Son told His disciples, “I am among you as one who serves.” Handmaid and servant, mother and son, each content to be humble and responsive to whatever the Father should require. Anthony writes beautifully of Mary, “She did not boast of her singular privilege, but, mindful in all things of her own condition and of the divine condescension, she professed herself to be the handmaid of Him whose mother she had been chosen to be.”



At the Last Supper, Our Lord laid aside His garments to wash His disciples’ feet. Anthony sees this as symbolic of His whole mission. “The Supper is the Father’s glory; the putting aside of the garments is the emptying of His majesty; the linen towel is His pure flesh; the water is the shedding of His blood or the infusion of grace; the basis is the hearts of His disciples, and the feet are their affections.” In His Incarnation, the Eternal Word entered the world He had made, not in the glory that was His right, but in poverty and humility. Nevertheless, His flesh is pure, since it is sin and not simply materiality that defiles (contrary to the teaching of the Cathars of Anthony’s day).





Water & blood





At the Annunciation, Mary placed herself entirely at the disposal of God. His will was all that mattered to her. While she could rejoice that God had looked upon the lowliness of His handmaiden, while she could recognise that the Almighty had done great things in her and for her, she experienced these great things in the form of hardship and suffering. A sword pierced her heart, especially when she stood by her Son at the foot of the Cross.



At the Last Supper, Jesus laid aside His garments, a foretaste of the terrible stripping He was to undergo the next day in His scourging and crucifixion. The Servant of the Lord (as Isaiah had prophesied) despised and rejected, a man of sorrows. The flesh He had taken in the womb of the Virgin was to be torn and mangled, and even body and soul were to be separated in death. It is typical of Anthony’s method of interpretation that he sees the pouring of water into the basin at the Supper as signifying both the shedding of the Lord’s precious Blood, and the outpouring of grace that resulted from it. John in his Gospel sees the same conjunction in the blood and water that flowed from the pierced heart of the crucified Lord, which he himself witnessed as he stood there with the Lord’s own mother, now by grace his own mother too.





Double blow





Eve is shown in scripture as deceived by the serpent, yet as hearing that her offspring will crush the serpent’s head though it should bruise his heel. Similarly, Mary and her Son combine to crush the Devil, the Spirit of Evil. “Blessed Mary crushed the pride of the devil with her humility,” says Anthony, “but he lay in wait, as it were, for her heel, in the Passion of her Son.” There is, so to speak, a double blow against Satan, in the Incarnation and in the Passion. We combat pride by remembering our birth and our death, the fact that we have received all we have as a gift from God, and must give an account of our stewardship when we return to Him.



Christ was born for us and Christ died for us. If anyone should ask why we should obey God, or why we should care for one another, the answer the Gospel gives is not, “Because if you do not, God will punish you.” God does not try to win us over by threats, but by kindness. “The loving-kindness of God our Saviour has dawned upon us,” we hear at Christmastide. “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son,” we hear at Passiontide.





The Betrothed





I have recently been re-reading Manzoni’s great novel, The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi), set in the seventeenth century in and around Milan. A turning point in the story is when a wicked man, a great nobleman who has terrorised his neighbours, looks at the terrified girl he has kidnapped and for the first time feels shame for the way he has misused his great power. Her weakness and vulnerability do what threats could not, and he repents, seeks absolution, and begins a new life. Anthony recalls the vision of Elijah on Mount Horeb, when the Lord was not in the earthquake, wind or fire, but in the sighing of a gentle breeze.



When the wicked are threatened with punishment, they may pretend to repent, but they do not really change. God’s way to win them over is by showing them His own weakness and vulnerability, and shaming them to repentance. I am the Lord, He says, but see how I am ready to lay it all aside for love of you. You know you are not really happy apart from me: come back, there is no disgrace in humbling yourself before me, who humble myself before you.