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| 'The Assumption of the Virgin Mary,' Guido Reni, 1638-9, Munich. Wikimedia Commons. |
The ancient Ark of the Covenant that accompanied the
Israelites during the Exodus of Egypt until the Babylonian conquest, has long
been understood in the mind of the Church as a symbolic type of the Blessed Virgin
Mary. Made of wood and gilded in gold, the ancient Ark of the Old Covenant bore
the Presence of God in spirit, while in a far more excellent manner, Mary as
the Ark of the New Covenant bore within her womb the very Presence of God made
flesh in the Person of Jesus the Word Incarnate. This is saying nothing of the
extraordinary dwelling which God had made in Mary’s soul which was “full of
grace”.
A Central Theme
It is no wonder then, why for the Solemnity of the
Assumption of Our Lady, a holy day of obligation, both first readings concern the Ark of the Covenant. The
vigil Mass, taken from I Chronicles 15, and Mass during the day, from the Book
of Revelation (chps. 11 and 12).
The first reading for the Vigil Mass concerns the
historical occasion when for the first time David brought the Ark of the
Covenant into the city of Jerusalem. The same occasion is described in 2 Samuel
6, painting a broader picture of this festive occasion. We’ll direct our focus to this.
Take 1: Bringing Up the Ark
King David has conquered Jerusalem and has arranged the
Levites (the priestly tribe) to process into Jerusalem from the house Abinidab,
amidst great jubilation, with the Ark at this stage of the journey being
carried along on a “new cart” by a set of oxen. In the words of the Scripture:
“And David and all the house of Israel were making merry before the LORD with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.” (2 Sam 6:5).
Along the way, the oxen stumble, and Abinidab’s son, named
Uzzah, stretches out his hand to stop the Ark falling, and as a consequence of
breaking a divine command meets his untimely end with a little aid (okay… more
than a little aid) from above. There’s no time to go into that now, as that’s
an article of its own. Yet feel free to see the relevant footnote.[1]
Anyway… the party kind of dies at this point. Well…
sudden deaths as a result of divine smack-downs do tend to have this affect.
Hence David gets upset at God—he probably liked the guy ... he maybe even had
dinner plans that evening with the fella. Oh well. So feeling like God’s
being a bit of a kill-joy, he names the place “Perez-uzzah”, meaning “to break…”
or “to burst out against Uzzah,” and being fearful of God and His Ark, David
decides to hit stall on the procession, choosing to keep the Ark outside of
Jerusalem at the House of Obededom.
Obededom’s Place
The Ark remains at the House of
Obededom for three months—paralleling the three months the pregnant Virgin Mary
stayed at her cousin Elizabeth’s house. When the word reaches David that “The
LORD has blessed the household of Obededom and all that belongs to him, because
of the ark of God.” (2 Sam 6:12a), he decides to fetch the Ark and bring it
into Jerusalem. He is reminded of God’s merciful goodness and doesn’t want to
miss out on God’s blessings!
Take 2: Bringing Up the Ark
“So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obededom to the city of David with rejoicing” (2 Sam 6:12b).
The key word is the Hebrew word וַיַּעַל
(vay-ya-al)[2] which the RSV translates as “[he] brought up”—with the root
word עָלָה (alah) itself
meaning “to go up, ascend, climb”.
Allegory Alert!
Much like Spider Man’s spider-sense
our Catholic ‘spiritual-sense’ should be tingling at this moment. We have the
imagery of the Ark and the language of ‘bringing up’ and ‘ascending’. Here then
is an allegorical allusion to Mary’s Assumption. For it was Jesus, the Son of
David by royal lineage, and the New and Eternal David in the sense of being the
King of heaven and the entire universe, who by His divine power “brought up”
the New Ark of the Covenant—the most sacred body and soul of Mary—into the
heavenly Jerusalem (Rev 21:2) to be at His side forever. Doing so with the
greatest rejoicing—not only Jesus, but all of heaven, the angels and saints,
who like the Levites with their cymbals and tambourines, made festivity as this
New Ark was assumed into heaven.
David Busts-Some-Moves
The
narrative continues to describe how before the Lord present in the Ark, David
danced “with all his might” girded with nothing but “a linen ephod”—so that he
was nearly naked. With the phrase “danced… with all his might” one can
almost imagine David’s dancing as being nothing short of ecstatic. Such was
David’s intense feeling of liberated freedom, a stark (pun intended) contrast
with the fear he had before that stopped him from bringing the Ark into
Jerusalem. This serves as a type of the soul in Christ, whose servile fear of
God is washed away by the Spirit of God, and who in turn has become a liberated
child of God, free in the Spirit, and confident to the point of crying “Abba!
Father!” (Rom 8:15).
The
role of the Ark in facilitating David’s ecstatic response cannot be stressed
enough, since the Lord’s Presence, in the context of the Ark’s ascent towards
Jerusalem forms the focal point of the whole narrative. This highlights the
important role which Mary plays in the life of the Christian. It is only Mary
who can truly bring the confident freedom of the children of God to its full
maturation. For she is after all the Mother of Jesus, and thus of God, and in
turn of us—the children of God.
Michal—She No Like David’s Groove
Continuing
the narrative, we read:
“As the ark of the LORD came into the city of David, Michal the daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD; and she despised him in her heart.” (2 Sam 6:16).
Later
on in the story we are told how Michal, one of the wives of David, never bore a
child until the day of her death. Not all infertility is a literal curse brought
about by personal sin by any means! But in this case it was. She was cursed by barrenness,
and we are to understand from the Scripture that this happened as a consequence
of judging David for his jubilant act of praising God. For in her eyes, this
wild dancing went against the civility of David’s royal dignity and offended
her own sensibilities, and thus undermined her respect for her husband.
Without True Devotion to Mary: Spiritual Barrenness
The
barrenness suffered by Michal, besides illustrating the spiritual consequence
of judging others and attributing evil to what is good, serves to demonstrate
the spiritual repercussions a lack of Marian devotion and a refusal to honour and welcome Mary and the mystery of the Assumption into our lives can have. Michal
wasn’t struck dead, nor was she exiled from the Kingdom of Israel—she was made
to be barren. Sure, she was made barren because she judged wrongly, but
this only occurred because she wasn’t focused on the Lord and His Presence
which was coming into Jerusalem, and this in turn was a result of her failure
to reverence and failure to recognise the worth of the Ark of the
Covenant. Instead, being hardly captivated by the Ark, she lost sight of God’s
Presence, and so came to nit-pick on her husband.
Likewise,
a failure to reverence the true Ark of God, Mary the Mother of God—not to
worship, but to honour as did Jesus, and as did David in type—may or may not
lead one into becoming a terribly judgemental Christian, but it certainly will
lead to a relative spiritual barrenness. That is, a barrenness which is not absolute,
but relative in the sense of limiting ‘what could be’ compared to if we were devoted
to Mary. Such relative spiritual barrenness is an automatic spiritual
consequence of failing to welcome with loving fervour the Ark of the New
Covenant into one’s life, by way of devotion to Mary.
To
put it more simply and in the positive sense, a true devotion to Mary can only
make one’s spiritual life more fruitful. In the words of St. Louis De Montfort:
When the Holy Spirit, [Mary’s] spouse, finds Mary in a soul, he hastens there and enters fully into it. He gives himself generously to that soul according to the place it has given to his spouse. One of the main reasons why the Holy Spirit does not work striking wonders in souls is that he fails to find in them a sufficiently close union with his faithful and inseparable spouse.[3]
With True Devotion to Mary: Spiritual Fruitfulness
On
this festive occasion of the Solemnity the ancient example of David spurs us
on to increase our love and appreciation of Mary, by which means we can only
ever grow deeper in union with God, sinking deeper into His Presence. A
Presence which is Fruitfulness Itself, and which actualises through Mary the
Ark of God. For she was chosen to bring forth the fruit of God’s Son in the
flesh, and likewise, with the Holy Spirit, Mary’s role extends itself to spiritually
bringing forth the fruits of grace within our souls.
Bringing Up the Ark
Just as Jesus brought up Mary to heaven, assuming her body and soul into the
New Jerusalem, may we too, by uniting ourselves by faith with this living
reality of the Assumption, the light and hope of every Christian, allow our
Lord to bring up this Sacred Ark into the Jerusalem of our souls, households,
communities and parishes. For then like Obededom, our exterior homes,
but more importantly our interior homes will be blessed, along with all our
words and deeds—sanctified by God’s Presence working powerfully through Mary;
and like David we will be compelled to interiorly dance in the joyful
confidence that we are children of God called to share in the splendour of the
Risen Christ which shines most brilliantly in Mary herself.
“So David and all the house of Israel”—Jesus literally in the Assumption, and His Church figuratively in devotion on this Feast Day— “brought up the ark of the LORD”—the Blessed Virgin Mary— “with shouting, and with the sound of the horn.” (2 Sam 6:15).
[1]
It may seem harsh, and it clashes with our middle-class “nice” conception of
God, however Uzzah simply reaped the automatic consequence of going against the
law which forbid anyone except the chosen Levites from handling the Ark. In the
same manner, one who goes against the law of aerodynamics in faultily repairing
an aeroplane will inevitably lead to the crashing of the aeroplane. God is no
more to blame for the latter, than he is for the former. After all, God is good
and merciful, and is incapable of doing anything evil, even if by our limited
human perspective, it seems to be the contrary. Besides, if—and God only knows—Uzzah
did so out of good-will and without really thinking about God’s command, there
is no reason to doubt his salvation.
[2]
With conjunction “and” included.
[3]
Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary, Part I, 36.
