Rainbows

Tomorrow, Feast of our Blessed Lady of Lourdes, affords one of those liturgical coincidences with which the Compiler of the Celestial ORDO delights to delight us. If the day had been a feria, the Mattins reading from Genesis would have been about YHWH setting his Bow in the heavens as a sign to Noah of His Covenant. But it isn't. Yet in the Mattins which the Old Rite gives us of our Lady's Appearance, we find this elegant piece of typology: "R Like a bow shining among the clouds, and like the blossom of roses in days of spring, and like lilies in the places that water passes through,* Thus shines the Virgin Immaculate. V I shall set my bow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of my Covenant with you. Thus ..."

Did Leo XIII's liturgists dream this up, or is the typology from one of the Fathers? Anyway, a pretty 'organic' piece of liturgical development, sez I . (Perhaps you gather from this that I have just started reading for review Laszlo Dobszay's The Restoration and Organic Development of the Roman Rite.)

I like the feast, and texts, of our Lady of Lourdes, anyway. They suggest that spring might come soon.

Unless, of course, you're Oz.