THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL
Brigitte Williams
On the 15 August summer is still at its height, the sun still hot if it isn’t
covered by cloud, summer flowers are abundant and there are sweet smells
of mint, thyme, lilies, lavender and herbs. It is the right time to enjoy a
holiday if you aren’t a Scottish schoolchild who has to go back to everyday
work. If you should be somewhere in Europe on holiday at that time, you
would be surprised to find shops, museums and other amenities closed for
the day, because Catholics are celebrating a festival which shows Mary, the
mother of Jesus, in a heavenly splendour of which the season gives a fair
reflection. It is called ‘The Blessed Virgin Mary’ by Anglicans or the
‘Assumption of Mary’ by the Catholic Church. This is not the same as the
Ascension of Christ, who goes up to heaven by himself, while Mary is
supposed to be taken up or received there, in Latin ‘Assumptio Mariae’.
The names given to Mary by the ancient Church also remind you of summer:
‘Flower of the Field’ and ‘Lily of the Valley’, these are taken from the Song of
Songs in the Bible, which the Church thought that it related to Mary. The
legend of her death is similarly associated with sweet smelling flowers.
Some of the legends tell of James, son of Thomas the Apostle wanting to
see her body again after her burial, and when the grave was opened, the
body had gone and there was a smell of flowers and balm emerging from the
tomb. Other legends tell of the apostles finding a ‘mountain of roses’ in that
tomb which by a Latin litany is called ‘Rosa Mystica’.
Only in 1950 Pope Pius XII declared by a dogma that Mary was bodily taken
to heaven. Yet while early Christian writers quarrelled theologically about
this, a festival concerned with it was firmly established until it was abolished
by the Reformation. Those who celebrate it today do it in happy anticipation
of our own resurrection. It wants to remind us that not only our souls will go
to heaven but also our history, our ‘bodily experience’. The festival
emphasises the totality of mankind, body and soul. The festival celebrates
the ‘Tota Pulchra’ of Mary as the fairest of all women, but also beauty itself,
in nature and in mankind, men and women.
StOM Page 5