Vigils Reading – Queenship of Mary

A reading from

ST BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX

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It is the time for all flesh to speak when the Mother of the Incarnate Word

is taken up into heaven, nor ought human mortality cease to give praise when

the nature of man is in the Virgin exalted above the immortal spirits. But neither

does our devotion allow us to be silent, nor can our sterile thought conceive, nor

our unlearned speech give forth, anything worthy concerning her glory. Hence it

is that those princes of the heavenly court in the consideration of such an

unheard-of thing cry out with admiration: “Who is she who ascends from the

desert abounding with delights?”

As though they said more manifestly: “How great is she, or whence is she,

ascending indeed from the desert, so abounding in delights?” For delights are

not found equal in us whom the impetus of the river rejoices in the City of the

Lord, who are given to drink by the countenance of your glory from the torrent

of pleasure. Who is she who ascends from under the sun, where there is nothing

but suffering and sadness and affliction of spirit, abounding in spiritual

delights? Why should I not call delights the glory of virginity with the gift of

fecundity, and ensign of humility distilling the honeycomb of charity, the

bowels of mercy, the plenitude of grace, the prerogative of a singular glory?

Ascending, therefore, from the desert the Queen of the world, as the

Church sings, was made beautiful even to the holy angels and sweet in her

delights. But let them cease to wonder at the delights of this desert, for the Lord

has given goodness and our earth has yielded its fruit. Why do they wonder that

Mary ascends from the desert of the earth abounding with delights? Let them

wonder rather at Christ, being poor, descending from the plenitude of the

heavenly Kingdom, for it seems by far a greater miracle that the Son of God

deigned to be made a little less than the angels than that the Mother of God

should be exalted above the angels. Indeed, his humiliation has been made our

exaltation; his miseries are the delights of the world. Finally, being rich, he was

made poor on account of us, that he might enrich us by his poverty.