The Shepherd, August 2004
From the Writings of Abbot Aelfric
Homily on the Dormition of the Mother of God
MARY is more beauteous than the moon, for she shines without the waning of her brightness. She is choice as the sun with beams of holy virtues, for the Lord, Who is the Sun of Righteousness, chose her for His mother. Her course is compared to a wedding band, for she was surrounded with heavenly powers and with companies of angels. Of this heavenly Queen it is yet said by the same Spirit of God, “Isaw the beauteous one as a dove mounting above the streaming rills, and an ineffable fragrance exhaled from her garments; and so as in the spring-tide, blossoms and lilies encircled her.” The blossoms of roses betoken by their redness martyrdom, and the lilies by their whiteness betoken the shining purity of inviolate maidenhood. All the chosen who have thriven to God through martyrdom or through chastity, they all journeyed with the blessed Queen; for she is herself both martyr and maiden. She is as beauteous as a dove, for she loved meekness, which the Holy Spirit betokened, when He appeared in the likeness of a dove at His Baptism. Other martyrs suffered martyrdom in their bodies for Christ’s faith, but the blessed Mary was not bodily martyred, yet her soul was sorely afflicted with great suffering when she stood before Christ’s Cross and saw her dear Child fastened with iron nails on the hard tree. Therefore she is more than a martyr, for she suffered that martyrdom in her soul which other martyrs suffered in their bodies. She loved Christ above all other men, and, therefore, was her pain for Him greater than other men’s, and she made His death as her own death, for His suffering pierced her soul as a sword.
Written at Cerne, Dorset, c. 996 A.D.
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