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Issue 324
The Immaculate Conception - Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696 - 1770)
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4 MARY, THE NEW ARK
Catholic Voice
27th August 2021
“Mary, Ark Of The New Covenant”
Canon Altiere - Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest “Arise, O Lord, into thy resting place: thou and the ark, which thou hast sanctified.” David, the poet king of ancient Israel, composed Psalm 131, which I have just quoted, to celebrate the triumphant entry of the Ark of the Covenant into the holy city of Jerusalem. His son Solomon went on to build a magnificent temple to house it. The last book of the Old Testament gives us this very curious detail: at the time that the Jews went into exile after the destruction of the Temple six centuries before the time of Christ, the Prophet Jeremy rescued the Ark of the Covenant and hid it in a cave, saying that it would not reappear until the time of the promised Messiah (cf. II Machabees 2:4-8). The Ark of the Covenant, the precious golden box which contained the holy Law of God inscribed on two stone tablets as well as a pot of the miraculous manna from heaven, was the most sacred object in the religion of the Hebrews. In the year 63 b.c., during the first Roman conquest of Jerusalem, the general Pompey the Great committed the shocking sacrilege of striding into the Holy of Holies of the vanquished Temple. His morbid curiosity led him to enter that sacred space behind the veil which only the high priest himself had the right to enter, once a year. Pompey was disappointed and could not understand all the fuss, for the Holy of Holies was empty. You see, in this Temple rebuilt after the Babylonian exile, the Ark of the Covenant never entered. Only a stone step marked the spot in the holy place where it should have stood.
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Back in the fifth century, the pious empress Pulcheria was building a church in honour of the Mother of God. She had heard that the Christians in Palestine venerated a tomb of Our Lady on Mount Olivet, and so, presuming that the tomb held Our Lady, she asked the holy bishop Saint Juvenal of Constantinople if he could obtain some relics for her church. The bishop’s response is instructive: he explained that the Apostles were gathered in Jerusalem by the Holy Spirit to be witnesses to the end of Our Lady’s life of earth. Three days later, they opened her tomb and found it empty, with only her winding sheets and a lovely fragrance. According to the account, “they could only think that He whom it had pleased to take flesh from the Virgin Mary … to the same it was now pleasing that after she had departed this life, her immaculate and undefiled body should be honoured by being made incorrupt and by being translated [to heaven] before the general resurrection of the dead.” Already 1500 years ago, St. Juvenal referred to this story as “the most ancient and credible tradition.” This has always been the faith of the Church. Indeed, no one has ever claimed to possess a relic of the Mother of God: relics associated with her, yes, like her veil which is at Chartres or her wedding ring which is in Prato, but not of Our Lady herself. The Palestinian Christians venerated the empty tomb of Mary like they venerated the empty tomb of Christ. Where is that holy body, which the native Preston poet Thompson lovingly describes as that “flesh-girt paradise garnered by the Adam new”? It is not on this earth. Who could imagine for an instant that the flesh from which was drawn the flesh of God could be left to moulder in a grave? These details of biblical archaeology take on new meaning when we contemplate the opening antiphon for the Mass of the Assumption: “a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Apocalypse 12:1). The preceding verse, however, tells us even more: “the temple of God was opened in heaven: and the ark of his testament was seen in his temple” (Apocalypse 11:19). The woman crowned with the sun is the Ark of the Covenant. Mary could apply to herself these words of Ecclesiasticus: “he that made me, rested in my tabernacle” (24:12).
27th August 2021 Catholic Voice
Just as the old Ark contained the Word of God written on stone and the bread from heaven, Mary the new Ark bore within herself the Word of God made flesh, him who said, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven” (St. John 6:41). The new Ark, gilded inside and out, is Mary. The joy felt by the Jews when the Ark was carried in triumph into the holy city pales in comparison to the joy of the angels when holy Mary was assumed body and soul into the celestial city. After the Mass, what the devil hates most is Mary, because he hates purity, meekness and humility. He hates love. Satan knows that Mary is the woman promised in the Garden of Eden who would crush his head.
MARY, THE NEW ARK 5
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