Fr. Adrian Crowley opens with the question posed in the Song of Songs — “Who is she that comes forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army in battle array?” — and uses it to frame a meditation on who Our Lady is. He draws on Cardinal Newman’s image of Our Lady as an atom before the majesty of the Trinity: tiny as we all are, and yet the most exalted of all humanity, so that from her we can glimpse something of how glorious God must be.

He then reads the Book of Judith and the Book of Esther as Old Testament prophecies of Our Lady: Judith, wholly absorbed in prayer and fasting in her upper room, descending at the moment of crisis to defeat the enemy of her people; Esther, the humble, virtuous woman made queen who by prayer and fasting interceded with the emperor to save the entire people of God. Both are images of Our Lady going before the Father to win for us the gift of Jesus.

Fr. Adrian shares his recent return from Medjugorje, struck by the numbers in adoration, the visible transformation of stressed and strained people over the week, and the fruit of the place. He closes by naming Our Lady as “saint-maker”: reading the lives of the saints, he finds her presence at the heart of almost every conversion and sanctification, and reflects on the Pentecost scene in the Acts of the Apostles as the definitive image of Our Lady gathering the Church in prayer around her Son.

(NOTE: The idea of Mary being an atom compared to the Trinity may be more directly attributed to St. Louis de Montfort).

L'articolo Catechesis – Who Is She That Comes Forth?: Mary in the Old Testament – Fr Adrian Crowley proviene da Radio Maria.