“Birth of The Virgin”.
Artist: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682).
Date: 1660.
Current location: Louvre Museum, Paris, France.
Source/Photographer: Web Gallery of Art
(Wikimedia Commons)
The Birth Of The Blessed Virgin Mary.
Available On YouTube
Text from “The Liturgical Year”.
By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 14.
Time After Pentecost.
Book V.
“Dimitte me, jam enim ascendit aurora”; let me go for it is break of day;” [Genesis xxx, 26.] such were the words which put an end to the struggle between the Angel and the Patriarch on the banks of the torrent.
Blessed dawn which triumphed over God Himself ! How long had been that night, during which the human race had been struggling by its supplications and tears !
Ever since the Fall, the Angel of Justice had been guarding the entrance to the true land of promise; at every turn, he was to be found, resisting in his inexorable vengeance poor, wandering, outcast man.
How is it, then, that the inflexible has now yielded ? That Spiritual being, so superior to our weak, halting, nature, why is he the first to speak of closing the struggle, and to own himself vanquished ?
It is because, as with God so with the Angel, light is strength. Now our Earth, hitherto buried in deepest night, has suddenly reflected back to Heaven brighter splendours than ever Cherubim shed down upon the Dominations and Virtues and Powers and Principalities, beside whom, a while ago, man was so very little.
It is because at length in the glimmering dawn, which already subdues him, the Angel of Justice foresees the Sun Himself, the Sun of Justice, who, rising from the bosom of the human race, is to make Himself answerable for it.
Man is no longer a pariah compared with the Angel; he is Israel, “the strong against God.” To come to terms with him is no longer derogatory to the Angelic dignity; to yield to him is no humiliation: The day is breaking.
Blessed be thou, whose radiant innocence thus raised up to the throne of God our proscribed race. With the Angels for allies instead of adversaries, we are henceforth one great army, of which thou art the Queen.
