SCHOENSTATT SCOTLAND – CROWNING OF THE STATUE OF OUR LADY: OCTOBER 23rd 2016
His Grace rendered a marvelously well-received homily, which was commented on by so many of the pilgrims attending our last pilgrimage of the year, and spent time talking with pilgrims over tea in reception after the pilgrimage.
Pope St. Gregory the Great, addressing the faithful in one of his homilies, said: “Dear brothers, our Lord and Saviour has a lesson for us sometimes in what he says, but also sometimes in what he does. For his deeds are in themselves commandments since, when he does something without saying anything about it, he is then giving us to understand what we ought to do”. (Homily 17)
The Pope then gave the example: “He sends out his disciples to preach two by two, because two is the number of the precepts of charity, to love God and to love our neighbour”.
Whether or not we are persuaded by this example – which led Pope Gregory into the theme he was addressing, namely love of God and love of neighbour, and how these are companions on the road of life; whether or not we take this example as self evident, we would readily agree that “actions speak lauder then words” often, as the saying goes!
And so what we do today, at the end of this Mass, in processing to the shrine in the gardens of this lovely place, “Schoenstatt”, and there recrowning the icon of Our Lady, hardly needs any explanation. It is evident that it is a sign of admiration, “three times over”, of love and filial devotion towards the Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
I do not need to give you reasons for such admiration, love and filial devotion; it is as natural to us as the love we have for our own mothers, and was she not given to us at the foot of the cross as our Mother also?
I think it must be also without need for explanation that the way we express our love is by putting a crown on her head, be it of flowers in May, or of gold and silver. – particularly in the West, for if we were Orthodox Christians, with less of a tradition of crowns, we would be placing stars about her head or above her brow. There is something almost instinctive about our action.
While still a boy in primary school I was given a statue of Our Lady I asked for. I added a band of diamanti about her head and placed them like stars on her halo. I took it to Blairs with me and a kindly member of staff fixed a conch on the wooden wall of my cubicle to support it. That statue is still with me.
We had in Blairs College a beautiful copy of the only known surviving statue of Our Lady from the pre-Reformation Church in Scotland. There is a copy of the statue in a beautiful shrine in St. Peter’s Church in Aberdeen, one of the earliest post-Reformation Catholic chapels, in a country that once was full of shrines and altars to Our Lady. The original was safely conveyed from Aberdeen to the Low countries and is still to be seen and honoured in the Church of Notre Dame du Finisterre in Bruxelles. There it is entitled Notre Dame du Bon Success, and is magnificently crowned, as is the child she carries on her right arm. In recent years further copies have been made and are being carried in procession by members of the New Dawn devotional movement which prays for the conversion of our country; “renew the faith in Scotland, Our Lady of Aberdeen” is the refrain to a well loved Hymn which speaks of a “brighter dawn breaking” which is true in respect of the devotion to Our Lady gradually re-emerging among some of our separated brethren.
Also in recent years the Commemoration of Our Lady under the title of Good Succour (or of Good Success) has moved in the National Calendar from an Optional Memorial to that of a Feast. It is observed throughout the country on July 9th.
As any traveller will know the Continent of Europe is full of shrines to Our Lady, from grand basilicas to household niches. There are important pilgrimages centres in places where the Mother of Our Lord has appeared to the lowly, to children, to the marginalised, with messages of comfort and of warning, none more outstanding than Lourdes and Fatima. While in neither of these apparitions did Our Lady appear crowned, her image as now created bears a crown in each; in Lourdes it is at the Crowned Virgin that processions to the Grotto are often convened.
On his return from foreign journeys our present Holy Father has made it his habit to go the shrine of Our Lady, Salus Populi Romani, in the first church in the West dedicated to her honour, and there to pray and leave a bouquet of flowers. Does not his example prove what his illustrious predecessor, Pope St. Gregory the Great, said about example carrying its own message.
One of the most memorable experiences in respect of devotion to Our Lady in Rome occurs each Feast of the Immaculate Conception when a fireman representing his troop climbs up a turntable ladder to place a garland of flowers round the neck of her statue high on a pillar near the famous Spanish Steps, and in front of what was once the Missionary College of the Universal Church, Collegio di Propaganda Fide, the College for the Propagation of the Faith, and in the presence of the Pope.
While we speak of Our Lady, and claim her for ourselves throughout the world, the Italians are even more possessive, for in that language Our Lady is the Madonna, literally “My Lady”, but of course the title is simply honorific, and she belongs to us all, Our Heavenly Mother. And so today, under the lovely title of Our Lady three times Admirable, greatly greatly greatly to be admired, we honour her as custom now determines, by crowning her anew, here at Schoenstatt, her lovely place. And may devotion to her flourish here, for when it does our love for her beloved Son grows in like measure, for it is on His account that she has become ours.
