Késsinnimek - Roots - Racines

A sequel - From Dante's Inferno...

by      Norm Léveillée

  As a follow up to my May dedication to Mary for the Feast of the Annunciation on March 26 this year, I would like to quote from the Prayer Book that I use on a daily basis Magnificat. The following was written by Anthony Esolen, a professor of English at Providence College, for the March issue of Magnificat:

...
The Miracle of all time

Dante knew it was the cardinal miracle of all time, both for mankind as a whole and for the individual sinner. So it is that once the poet has entered the gates of purgatory and climbs the first terrace of the mountain, he sees what look like speaking, breathing sculptures carved by God into the cliff wall beside him. Fittingly, the first sculpture is that of the Annunciation:

The angel who came down
with the decree that brought to earth the peace
for which men wept so many years, which freed
The gates of Heaven long prohibited,
to us appeared so true, engraven there
in sweet and courteous pose, he did not seem
A silent form. You'd swear you heard him say
"Hail!" - for the one who opened Heaven's high love
was there in image, she who turned the key,
And in her pose was stamped the spoken word,
exactly as a seal in molten wax:
"Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord."(Purg. 10.34-45)

Upon entering every terrace on the corkscrew mountain of purgatory, the sinner meets examples of the virture that slays the vice atoned for there. In each case, the greatest examplar will always be Mary, our Mother and model of virtures. She seems almost too shy to rebuke the boy Jesus in the temple. She hastens to Elizabeth when she learns that her kinswoman is with child. She lays her own burden down in a poor stable. She does not lady it over the family of the groom at Cana, but turns to her Son to say, "They have no wine." At Cana, she did not think of her belly, but moved her lips to pray for the good of others, as she prays for our good now. And her first words to the angel proclaim her purity: "But I have not known man." Generosity, meekness, zeal, poverty, temperance, and purity - but none of them possible without the roots and the life of them all, which is humility. ... (Magnificat, March issue, pp. 7-8)

I feel so strongly that Mary's "Yes" is what started Christianity, a "woman" accepting what our Creator needed to do in this world to save what "man" had created by way of straying from God's plan. Why can't the "woman" have equal privileges and rights in Catholicism! Perhaps, maybe not so much as a "priest" as I first proposed, but more as a "minister" as Denise Larson has proposed in her article in this month's issue.

I'm sorry that some of our readers are distancing themselves from our magazine because of my belief. I wish that each one of these would look at my belief as that of one person only. There are so many other authors and articles in this magazine to make being a part of our readership worthwhile.

I apologize to these people if I have offended them.

I'll leave you with one thought:
In reading John's Gospel, Chapter 8, Verses 1-11, in which the scribes and Pharisees (all men ? ) brought a "woman" caught in adultery to be stoned, I've often wondered why they did not take the "man" also caught in adultery and for him to be stoned to death! Was his action not against the law?

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Created 1 Feb 2003