A reflection for Saturday of Our Lady — Sanctæ Mariæ Sabbato, IV classis (31 October), Sabbato infra Hebdomadam XXII post Octavam Pentecostes
This is the last Saturday of October and the last day before All Saints. The Church sets aside the weekday Mass and offers instead the Saturday Mass of Our Lady, Salve, sancta Parens. She has done this on free Saturdays for more than a thousand years. The votive Masses arranged by Alcuin at the court of Charlemagne already gave Saturday to Our Lady, and the custom spread from there across the Latin Church. Many reasons have been given for the choice. The most beloved, kept as a pious tradition rather than as history, is that on the first Holy Saturday, while the Lord lay in the tomb and the Apostles were scattered, the faith of the whole Church lived on in one heart: hers.
The day has a second character as well. In the older books this was the Vigil of All Saints, the Eve of All Hallows. The reform of 1955 suppressed that vigil, so the 1962 Missal keeps no fast and no vigil Mass today. But the evening still belongs to tomorrow. At Vespers this afternoon the Church begins the Office of All Saints, a feast of the first class. The Mass of Our Lady in the morning and First Vespers of All Saints in the evening fit together, as we will see. The Epistle itself ends with the words in plenitudine sanctorum detentio mea: “my abode is in the full assembly of saints.”
The Introit greets the Mother of God with lines from the fifth-century poet Sedulius: Salve, sancta Parens, enixa puerpera Regem, qui cælum terramque regit in sæcula sæculorum. “Hail, holy Mother, who didst bring forth the King who ruleth heaven and earth for ever and ever.” The psalm verse is from the forty-fourth Psalm, the royal wedding song: Eructavit cor meum verbum bonum, “My heart hath uttered a good word” (Ps. 44:2). Hold on to that phrase, a good word. The whole Mass is about a Word: where it came from, where it rested, and who kept it.
I. Ab initio et ante sæcula: the Epistle
“From the beginning, and before the world, was I created, and unto the world to come I shall not cease to be, and in the holy dwelling place I have ministered before him. And so was I established in Sion, and in the holy city likewise I rested, and my power was in Jerusalem. And I took root in an honourable people, and in the portion of my God his inheritance, and my abode is in the full assembly of saints.” (Ecclus. 24:14-16)
Whose voice is this? In the twenty-fourth chapter of Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom speaks in her own praise. A few verses earlier she has said where she came from: Ego ex ore Altissimi prodivi, “I came out of the mouth of the most High, the firstborn before all creatures” (Ecclus. 24:5). The Fathers read these words, first of all, of the eternal Son, the Wisdom of the Father. St. Paul calls Christ “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24). How, then, can the Church put this text on the lips of Mary?
Blessed Pius IX answered that question in 1854, in the bull Ineffabilis Deus, which defined the Immaculate Conception. He explains that the Church, in her Office and in the Mass, applies to the origin of the Virgin the very words Scripture uses of uncreated Wisdom. She does this because Mary was foreordained together with the Incarnation of Divine Wisdom, in one and the same decree. When God willed from eternity that the Word should become flesh, He willed in the same act the Mother from whom that flesh would be taken. So the words belong first to the Son by nature, and then to the Mother by her share in His mission. This is not a pious exaggeration. It is the Church reading her own Scriptures with the same eyes that wrote them into the liturgy.
“He that made me, rested in my tabernacle.” Just before today’s passage stands a verse the Church has always loved in this context: et qui creavit me, requievit in tabernaculo meo, “and he that made me, rested in my tabernacle” (Ecclus. 24:12). Of Wisdom herself, the words are mysterious. Of Mary, they are simply true. The One who created her came to rest in her womb for nine months. The Gradual of today’s Mass says it in plain terms: Virgo, Dei Genitrix, quem totus non capit orbis, in tua se clausit viscera factus homo. “O Virgin Mother of God, He whom the whole world cannot contain, being made man, enclosed Himself in thy womb.”
Read this way, each phrase of the Epistle opens out. In the holy dwelling place I have ministered before him: Mary is that holy dwelling, the living Ark, and she ministered before Him there, first at Nazareth, then at the manger, then at Calvary. In the holy city likewise I rested: the Word, who had no place on earth to lay His head, found rest in her. My power was in Jerusalem: at the foot of the Cross, in the city where He died, her quiet constancy was a kind of power.
“I took root in an honourable people.” Wisdom did not descend on the world in general. She took root in one nation, Israel, in parte Dei mei, “in the portion of my God.” Mary is the flower of that root. Isaias had promised that “there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root” (Is. 11:1). The Fathers read the prophecy with one voice. Tertullian (De carne Christi 21), St. Ambrose (De Spiritu Sancto II.5) and St. Jerome (In Isaiam IV, on 11:1) all explain, in substance, that the rod is Mary, a daughter of David’s line, and the flower that rises from her is Christ. Divine Wisdom took root among men through a real family with a real genealogy, and the root reaches through Mary into the soil of Israel.
“My abode is in the full assembly of saints.” The last phrase reaches past Nazareth and Jerusalem to the end of all things. In plenitudine sanctorum detentio mea: Wisdom’s final dwelling is the gathered fullness of the saints. This is where the Mass of Our Lady hands us on to tomorrow. In the year 609, Pope St. Boniface IV took the Pantheon at Rome, the temple of all the gods, and consecrated it to Holy Mary and all the martyrs, Sancta Maria ad Martyres. From that dedication, through the work of later popes, grew the universal feast we keep tomorrow. The first church of All Saints in Rome was a church of Our Lady. She is, in the words of her Litany, Regina Sanctorum omnium, Queen of all Saints. Where she dwells, the saints are gathered. Where the saints are gathered, she is at home.
II. Beatus venter: the Gospel
“At that time, as Jesus was speaking to the multitudes, a certain woman from the crowd, lifting up her voice, said to him: Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and the paps that gave thee suck. But he said: Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it.” (Luke 11:27-28)
The first of all generations. In the house of Elizabeth, Our Lady had prophesied: ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generationes, “for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed” (Luke 1:48). Here, in the middle of the Lord’s public ministry, an unnamed woman fulfils the prophecy for the first time in the Gospel record. She calls the Mother blessed. Every Ave Maria we pray belongs to the same line of praise that begins with this woman’s cry.
St. Bede, in the commentary on St. Luke that the Breviary reads at Matins on feasts of Our Lady (In Lucæ Evangelium expositio IV), praises her courage. She spoke up, he says in substance, in the very moment when the scribes and Pharisees were slandering the Lord and saying that He cast out devils by Beelzebub (Luke 11:15). Against their blasphemy she confessed, with great faith and devotion, the true Incarnation. Bede sees her as a figure of the Catholic Church, which lifts her voice in every age against those who would deny either the Lord’s divinity or the reality of the flesh He took from His Mother.
“Yea rather.” Our Lord’s answer is often misread, as if He were brushing aside the praise of His Mother. The Fathers do not read it that way. The Vulgate’s word is quinimmo: not “no,” but “yes, and more than that.” The Lord does not deny that the womb that bore Him is blessed. He shows why it is blessed, and opens that blessedness to others.
St. Augustine says this more clearly than anyone. In his treatise On Holy Virginity (ch. 3), he teaches that Mary was more blessed in receiving the faith of Christ than in conceiving the flesh of Christ. Her bodily relationship to Him, he says in substance, would have profited her nothing had she not carried Christ more happily in her heart than in her flesh. Preaching on a related Gospel (Sermo 72A, 7), he goes further: it is a greater thing for Mary to have been the disciple of Christ than to have been His Mother. And in a Christmas sermon (Sermo 215, 4) he gives the famous formula that she conceived Christ first in her mind, by faith, before she conceived Him in her womb.
Bede follows Augustine. Mary is blessed, he says, because she was found worthy not only to bring forth the Word of God bodily but also to keep Him in her soul. The Gospel itself bears this out. At the Annunciation she answered: Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum, “be it done to me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). Elizabeth greeted her: Beata quæ credidisti, “blessed art thou that hast believed” (Luke 1:45). Twice St. Luke tells us that she “kept all these words, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19, 51). The one who heard the word of God and kept it most perfectly is the one whose womb was blessed. The Lord’s answer does not lower His Mother. It is the highest praise He could give her.
An open door. But the answer does something else. It opens Mary’s blessedness, in its root, to everyone in the crowd. No one else can bear the Word in the flesh. Anyone can hear the Word and keep it. Our Lord had said the same thing in another setting: “My mother and my brethren are they who hear the word of God, and do it” (Luke 8:21). St. Ambrose calls Mary the type, the pattern, of the Church (Expositio in Lucam II.7). What happened in her bodily happens in the Church spiritually. The Church too receives the Word, keeps it, and brings Christ forth in the souls of the faithful.
The Communion verse. Notice what the Church does with this Gospel at the altar. The Communion antiphon takes up the woman’s cry almost word for word: Beata viscera Mariæ Virginis, quæ portaverunt æterni Patris Filium. “Blessed is the womb of the Virgin Mary, which bore the Son of the eternal Father.” The faithful sing it at the very moment they receive that Son. The woman in the crowd praised the womb that bore Him. The communicant receives the fruit of that womb. And in the moment of Communion the Lord’s answer comes true in us: blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it. We keep Him, for a little while, as she kept Him.
III. The Mass as a whole: the Word goes out and finds rest
The Thomistic pattern of exitus and reditus, all things going out from God and returning to Him, runs through today’s Mass with unusual clarity.
The exitus is in the Epistle. Wisdom comes forth “from the mouth of the most High.” She goes out into creation, seeking a place of rest among men (Ecclus. 24:11). She finds it in Jacob, in Sion, in Jerusalem, and at last in the Virgin, in whom the Creator rests in the tabernacle He Himself made. The Introit’s verse names the same movement: Eructavit cor meum verbum bonum. The Father’s heart utters the good Word, and the Word goes out.
The reditus is in the Gospel. A word that goes out from God does not return empty. “So shall my word be, which shall go forth from my mouth: it shall not return to me void, but it shall do whatsoever I please” (Is. 55:11). It returns through those who hear it and keep it. Mary is the first and perfect hearer. In her the Word is received without resistance, kept without loss, and given back in perfect fruit. Every Christian soul is called to the same pattern in its own measure: to hear, to keep, and to return.
The end of the return is the last line of the Epistle: in plenitudine sanctorum. The Word that went out from the Father comes back to Him bearing a whole people, gathered from every nation and tongue (Apoc. 7:9). That multitude is what we celebrate tomorrow. So the two days belong together. The Saturday of Our Lady shows us the first soul in whom the Word was perfectly received. The Feast of All Saints shows us the harvest of all those who received Him after her pattern. She is the first of the assembly, and her abode is in it.
IV. The Collect and the Secret
Concede nos famulos tuos, quæsumus, Domine Deus, perpetua mentis et corporis sanitate gaudere: et gloriosa beatæ Mariæ semper Virginis intercessione, a præsenti liberari tristitia, et æterna perfrui lætitia.
“Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord God, that we Thy servants may rejoice in continual health of mind and body; and by the glorious intercession of blessed Mary ever Virgin, be delivered from present sorrow, and enjoy eternal gladness.”
The Collect sets two things side by side: præsens tristitia, the sorrow of this present life, and æterna lætitia, the gladness that does not end. On the threshold of November the contrast is very near. Tomorrow we keep the gladness of the saints. On Monday we pray for the souls still being purified, and for our own dead. Between the two, the Church asks Our Lady to bring us from the one to the other. Mary knows both. She stood in the sorrow of Calvary, and she now rejoices in the glory of the Assumption. The prayer asks her to lead us along the road she has already walked.
The Secret asks the same thing at the offering of the Sacrifice:
Tua, Domine, propitiatione, et beatæ Mariæ semper Virginis intercessione, ad perpetuam atque præsentem hæc oblatio nobis proficiat prosperitatem et pacem.
“By Thy mercy, O Lord, and by the intercession of blessed Mary ever Virgin, may this oblation profit us unto prosperity and peace, both now and for ever.”
The oblation is the Body that was formed in her womb. It is fitting that we ask her prayers as it is offered. The gift on the altar came to us through her consent.
V. A word for practice
Examine. How do I hear the word of God? Do I hear it at all, through Scripture, sermons, spiritual reading, and the quiet of prayer? When I hear it, do I keep it, or does it pass out of my mind by the time I leave the church? Is there a word God has spoken to me, in conscience or in counsel, that I have heard but not kept?
Do. Choose one sentence from today’s Mass, perhaps Beati qui audiunt verbum Dei, et custodiunt illud, and carry it through the day, returning to it as Mary returned to the words she pondered. If you are able, pray Vespers of All Saints this evening, or at least the Magnificat, so that the Church’s own evening prayer carries you from Our Lady’s Saturday into the feast. Prepare well for tomorrow’s Mass, which is a holy day of obligation, and take some thought for gaining the indulgences the Church offers for the holy souls in the first days of November.
Pray. The Collect of the day, resting on the words a præsenti liberari tristitia, et æterna perfrui lætitia. Then the Litany of Loreto, lingering on its last invocations: Regina Sanctorum omnium, ora pro nobis.
Aspiration. Beati qui audiunt verbum Dei, et custodiunt illud. “Blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it.” (Luke 11:28)
Devote. Saturday is Our Lady’s day. Keep it with the Rosary, or with the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin if you pray it. Tonight, as the Church begins to celebrate all the saints, ask the Queen of All Saints to bring you, at the end, into the assembly where her abode is.
If you wish to go deeper: the Sacred Liturgy path explains the Saturday Mass of Our Lady and its history, the Marian use of the Wisdom books in the Mass and Office, and the 1955 reform of the vigils. The Theology and Doctrine path takes up the predestination of Mary with the Incarnation in one decree, as taught in Ineffabilis Deus, and the Fathers’ teaching on Mary as type of the Church. The Church History path tells how the Pantheon became Sancta Maria ad Martyres and how the Feast of All Saints came to the universal Church. The Spiritual Practices path offers the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, lectio divina in the spirit of Luke 2:19, and the traditional devotions of the first days of November.
Sources. Scripture is cited from the Douay-Rheims, with the Vulgate. The Fathers are given in paraphrase with their loci: St. Augustine, De sancta virginitate 3, Sermo 72A (Denis 25), 7, and Sermo 215, 4; St. Bede, In Lucæ Evangelium expositio IV, on Luke 11:27-28; St. Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto II.5 and Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam II.7; St. Jerome, Commentarii in Isaiam IV, on Is. 11:1; and Tertullian, De carne Christi 21. Hymnody: Sedulius, Carmen paschale II (the source of the Introit Salve, sancta Parens). Magisterial text: Bl. Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus (8 December 1854). Liturgical history: Alcuin’s votive Masses; the dedication of the Pantheon under St. Boniface IV; the decree Cum nostra hac ætate (23 March 1955) on the simplification of the rubrics.
Beati qui audiunt verbum Dei, et custodiunt illud.