No ... this is not yet another article advising folk to say the Rosary differently. It is not even a commendation of Different Mysteries which I will urge people to adopt ... since the Rosary, as the Lay Person's Psalter, should have 150 Aves ... no more; no less ...to represent the 150 psalms of the psalter. (So I was a little disquieted when S John Paul II added some more.)
No; I wish simply to suggest a fresh tiny shade of meaning to the final Mystery: the Coronation of our Blessed Lady.
I have no complaints about the thirteenth-century iconography, which so often shows the Mother of God sitting beside her Divine Son, who is placing a a Crown upon her head. But I am mindful of a phrase in the old Western Secret in the Vigil Mass of the Assumption, which claims to give a concise and precise account of why Mary was Assumed. Idcirco, it explains to God, you transferred her from the present Age so that she may pray faithfully to intercede for our sins: de praesenti saeculo transtulist, ut pro peccatis nostris apud te fiducialiter intercedat. Idcirco means "for this very reason".
And my heart does rather warm when I find East and West concurring in the same sentiments. So, when I read some words of S Gregory Palamas, Doctor eximius Marianus, my heart uttered a pious Heureka!!
Kanteuthen kai nun dia thanatou pros athanasian khoresasa, kai dikaios apo ges eis ouranon metastasa ... tais akoimetois pros auton presbeiais touton pros pantas hileoumene ...
Palamas referred to our Lady as the Boundary (methorion) of created and uncreated nature, so that nobody could come to God except through her ... she is the Treasury (tamieion) and President (Prytanis) of the Wealth of the Godhead. ... Thou didst become the Steward and Full Encompassment of Graces ...
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