29 December 2021

A GIRL FULL OF GOD

In a patristic reading offered (remarkably) both by the Roman Breviary and by the Liturgy of the Hours, S Ambrose reminds us that the first thing our blessed Lady did after the Annunciation was to hurry into the hill country to visit Elizabeth; and asks, rhetorically, 'For whither, now Full of God [plena Deo], should she hurry if not to higher places?'

The greatest of the Roman poets was Publius Ovidius Naso, whose rococo imagination and baroque syntax would have made him a most wonderfully Counter Reformation Catholic, had he lived a millennium and a half later. It is purely and simply the Spirit of Ovid that animates the exuberant baroque statuary in the fountains and squares of renaissance Rome. In his youth, the dear old boy appears to have written a tragedy, the Medea, of which only two fragments remain as citations in later rhetorical treatises ... yes ... a sad fate ...

One of these fragments gives a few words of Medea, the Colchian Witch, a liberated feminist girl who engagingly terminated her children in order to irritate her husband; a wench quite worthy to be adopted as their tutelary deity by the crazed half-naked demonstrators plenae Diabolo [full of Satan] who riot for Abortion; the Choroi whose spondaic-dactylic-spondaic-dactylic incantation orders us "keep your rosaries off our ovaries". Apparently, in her frenzy, Medea cried out in Ovid's play feror huc illuc, ut plena deo [I am carried this way, that way, as full of (a) God].

In Roman literature, it is not unnatural for one in the grip of madness or, indeed, merely alcohol, to be called 'Full of (a) God', because Roman deities were so often personifications of dangerous or even disastrous things. So, after your Christmas celebrations, you might be (but I trust you will not be) said to be full of Bacchus. Medea was, I'm afraid, merely demented, poor thing.

I wonder whether S Ambrose, as an exercise in what we Classicists call Creative Intertextuality or imitatio cum variatione [copying something but with a significant change] but which lesser mortals mistake for Plagiarism, has consciously transposed this witty topos from the demented, noisy and bloody mythological figure of Medea, to the reality and hesychia [quietness] of a particular Jewish Girl who, quite literally, carried God Eternal and Incarnate an inch or two south of her fallopian tubes and is now Queen of Heaven. If so, he certainly put his finger on the Culture War, the essential enmity, between the Theotokos and today's maddened Satanic perversions of her icon.

But her heel will tread down the Serpent's head; and the Immaculate Heart of our Lady of Fatima will prevail.


14 comments:

Josephus Muris Saliensis said...

What a delightful, insightful, meditation upon which to close the year. Much richness there upon which to ponder, along with Her who is plena Deo, and plena gratia. Thank you for keeping us sane throughout the year in the world of madness.

A very happy New Year!

Paul Hellyer said...

"a particular Jewish Girl who, quite literally, carried God Eternal and Incarnate an inch or two south of her fallopian tubes and is now Queen of Heaven" .
Is that the way to speak of your Mother? It is disrespectful.

Paul Hellyer said...

"an inch or two south of her fallopian tubes"
You show by this disgusting sentence your total disrespect for women and our Blessed Lady.

Paul Hellyer said...

"an inch or two south of her fallopian tubes"
You show by this disgusting sentence your total disrespect for women and our Blessed Lady.

Paul Hellyer said...

I don't consider it much richness to mention the fallopian tubes of Our Blessed Lady. I consider it bad taste at least oreven blasphemous.

Paul Hellyer said...

I don't consider it much richness to mention the fallopian tubes of Our Blessed Lady. I consider it bad taste at least oreven blasphemous.

Josephus Muris Saliensis said...

Tuo gremio contulisti. Ex utero ante luciferum. Fructus ventris tui. And then the French - Le fruit de vos entrails.

This is the whole mystery of the Incarnation; it is carnal, and chosen thus by God, and not at all dainty. We cannot be twee about it, but face the shock of the reality, for is a thing of wonder and glory, ever-new, absurd and incomprehensible without the eyes of faith.

John Patrick said...

I don't find what Father said to be disrespectful. After all we Catholics do not have a problem referring to physical reality even when it relates to childbirth, for example the often read Gospel passage "Blessed be the womb that bore thee and the paps that gave thee suck" (Luke Chap. 11).

David Paterson said...

“a particular Jewish Girl who, quite literally, carried God Eternal and Incarnate an inch or two south of her fallopian tubes and is now Queen of Heaven" .

Mary Immaculate, Our Queen and Mother, did carry the Son of God within Herself. She lent him her body and He grew within her. She was a fully human and fully functional Jewish Girl and therefore the description is anatomically accurate and not at all disrespectful in my opinion. I even find it quite wonderful as it highlights truths about her unflawed but total humanity, anatomy the same as living women but without sin.

Her breasts fed Him, as the art of the Middle Ages so beautifully attests. Nothing disrespectful about that either.

John said...

Oh, my. If fallopian tubes are a problem, whatever you do, don't mention the feast of the Circumcision.

Albrecht von Brandenburg said...

Paul, you're probably offended by paintings of Maria Lactans. This puritanism is of the devil.

AvB.

PM said...

There is a strain of self-professed pietism which is deeply dualistic and, if followed to its logical conclusion, would end up denying the Incarnation. Fr Hunwicke is not being blasphemous at all. Our Lord was indeed consubstantial with the Father in His divinty but also born of a woman (was St Paul blaspheming?) and thus, as Chalcedon affirmed, consubstantial with us in His humanity - soul and body. There is nothing sinful or evil about wombs and fallopian tubes, unless one is a Manichean.

Paul Hellyer said...

Albrecht, PM, Hunwicke etc . .etc . . .
You just don't get it do you?
There is no more to be said by me on this subject.
So long, Farewell etc . .

P

Banshee said...

Speaking as a woman, I don't think it's at all disrespectful. It's not even indelicately phrased.

What is scandalous is that God took His throne inside a human woman's body, inside His Creation and His creature, and taking flesh from that creature. The angels haven't gotten over that shock, even yet -- that eternal-life-giving shock.