Queen, mother of mercy:
our life, sweetness, and hope, hail.
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve.
To you we sigh, mourning and weeping
in this valley of tears.
Turn then, our advocate,
those merciful eyes
toward us.
And Jesus, the blessed fruit of thy womb,
after our exile, show us.
O clement, O loving, O sweet
Virgin Mary.
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve.
To you we sigh, mourning and weeping
in this valley of tears.
Turn then, our advocate,
those merciful eyes
toward us.
And Jesus, the blessed fruit of thy womb,
after our exile, show us.
O clement, O loving, O sweet
Virgin Mary.
The other day I posted from our Symbols:
Now we grant that the blessed Mary prays for the church. But she does not receive souls in death, conquer death, or give life, does she? What does Christ do if the blessed Mary performs all these things? Even though she is worthy of the highest honor, nevertheless she does not want herself to be made equal with Christ, but instead wants us to consider and follow her example. The fact of the matter is that in the court of public opinion the blessed Virgin has completely replaced Christ. People have called upon her, trusted in her mercy, and through her have sought to conciliate Christ, as though he were not the propitiator, but only a dreadful judge and avenger.—Apology XXI:27, 28
Now we grant that the blessed Mary prays for the church. But she does not receive souls in death, conquer death, or give life, does she? What does Christ do if the blessed Mary performs all these things? Even though she is worthy of the highest honor, nevertheless she does not want herself to be made equal with Christ, but instead wants us to consider and follow her example. The fact of the matter is that in the court of public opinion the blessed Virgin has completely replaced Christ. People have called upon her, trusted in her mercy, and through her have sought to conciliate Christ, as though he were not the propitiator, but only a dreadful judge and avenger.—Apology XXI:27, 28
This prayer, so beloved of our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, exemplifies the truth of the Apology’s words in spades. In fact, it is almost certainly what Melanchthon had in mind when he penned the above! What I have found particularly curious is that the early Lutherans, recognizing the loveliness of the words and the melody, realized that to keep it, they would need to reassign the whole to our Lord Jesus, for this would make the words not merely beautiful and moving, but beautifully and movingly true. And this was not merely done for Lutherans of the 16th century! Loehe includes it in his Seed-grains of Prayer (p. 118). I’ll cite the Lutheran version of this prayer from there:
All hail! King of mercy.
Hail! Thou Who art the life, the joy, and the hope of our souls.
We miserable children of Eve cry unto Thee.
We long for Thee, sorrowful and weeping in this vale of tears.
Hail, therefore, O Lord Christ!
Thou who dost intercede for us with God,
turn Thine eyes, beaming with mercy, upon us
and show Thyself unto us,
Thou blessed Son of God and of Mary,
when the days of our misery shall have passed,
O gracious, gentle, sweet, and lovely Jesus Christ. Amen.
There you have the beautiful phrases of the prayer addressed to the one that the New Testament tells us is the one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus; who by the way it also calls our Advocate. He can and will receive such supplications and delight to answer them.
Absolutely lovely and stunning the music no doubt is, but even more lovely and stunning is the truth that we may cry directly to our Jesus and that Scripture contains command to do so, many promises about doing so, and numerous examples of such; whereas, the Spirit-inspired Scripture is utterly silent on any command to, promise concerning, or an example of invoking the Mother of God.
No comments:
Post a Comment