Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary

 Lectionary: 460

"Hear, you neighbors of Zion!
God has brought great mourning upon me,
For I have seen the captivity
that the Eternal God has brought
upon my sons and daughters.
With joy I fostered them;
but with mourning and lament I let them go.
Let no one gloat over me, a widow,
bereft of many:
For the sins of my children I am left desolate,
because they turned from the law of God.

In August, I preached a novena on the Mother of God at the Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation in Carey, Ohio. I reflected on the types of Mary who appear in the Old Testament. They include Eve, Sarah, Miriam, Ruth, Esther, and Judith, Each of these women was animated by the Spirit of God, the same Spirit which filled Mary's body when she conceived the Lord Jesus. 

But there was one woman who appears hundreds of times within the Bible that I could not speak of, simply because there are too many citations. She is Jerusalem, sometimes called Zion.  

The scriptures describe her as the Bride of God; beautiful, glad, and adorned with the finest clothing. Isaiah says the Virgin Daughter Zion laughs at the Assyrian approaching for she knows the LORD will destroy them. But she also appears as an unfaithful wife. The language can get very colorful as the outraged prophets -- all of whom are men -- rail against Jerusalem's persistent, reckless infidelity. Feminist theologians today complain of that characterization. It seems to vilify all women as genetically immoral. 

If we responded to those objections and remove the image of sinful woman, we might be left condemning the nation of Israel -- men, women, and children -- for the sins of Jerusalem. But that's no help either. Jews were elected as the children of God's friend Abraham (and his wife Sarah); but they are genetically the same human beings as the rest of us. Which is to say, habitually unfaithful. 

We don't have to sin. There's no law that forces us to sin. But we do. "The fault," as Cassius said to Brutus, "is not in our stars but in ourselves." We can blame something or someone else, as Adam did to Eve. It's society, the culture, the media, the system, the economy, our ancestors, or -- very often -- "mother." 

Which brings us back to Jerusalem, the sorrowful mother of today's reading from the Prophet Baruch. Who turns the blame back to us: 

For the sins of my children I am left desolate,

because they turned from the law of God.

Our Lady of Sorrows 
in Carey, Ohio

Our Catholic tradition remembers the Sorrowful Mother grieving at the foot of the cross, and urging us to turn back to the Lord. Our Lady of La Salette and Our Lady of Medjugorge are among many Marian devotions which resemble the stricken, ravaged Jerusalem. 

The images of a grieving woman complement the images of an angry God, such as the Hebrew prophets depict. His most famous image may be Michelangelo's Christ in the Sistine Chapel. Catholic visitors in Washington DC are sometimes distressed to see the fierce King of the Universe; he is not quite the Good Shepherd we all know and love. 

Weeping Jerusalem, weeping Madonna, Judging King, and Crucified Lord speak together of our sins: their persistence, their gravity, and their consequences. As we celebrate today's Memorial of the Holy Rosary, we do well to approach the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It's not going to go away because we ignore it, although we might soon not have enough priests to administer it. (That too is an unfortunate consequence of sin.) 

Our first reading today concludes with a word of hope, for those who would hear it: 

Fear not, my children; call out to God!

He who brought this upon you will remember you.

As your hearts have been disposed to stray from God,

turn now ten times the more to seek him;

For he who has brought disaster upon you

will, in saving you, bring you back enduring joy.