Higher
than the Cherubim
Fr.
Tony’s Midweek Message
August
15, 2018
The
Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin, Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ
“Neither are we unmindful to bless thee, for the most holy, pure, highly blessed, Mother of God, Mary the eternal Virgin, with all the saints” (part of a prayer by Lancelot Andrewes, 16th century Anglican Divine, Bishop, and one of the principal translators of the King James Bible).
A
favorite hymn among Episcopalians is the majestic “Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones”
(The [1982] Hymnal, 618), an anthem describing the throngs of the blessed
surrounding the throne of God gazing upon the beatific vision. It begins with a list of the various orders
of angels, called by ancient and strange names mentioned in scripture and the
apocrypha, all singing and praising God: watchers, holy ones, seraphs, cherubim,
thrones, dominions, princedoms, powers, virtues, archangels, and choirs. The second verse continues:
“O higher than the cherubim,More glorious than the seraphim,Lead their praises, Alleluia!Thou bearer of the eternal Word,Most gracious, magnify the Lord.”
This
is addressed to the Blessed Virgin Mary, seen as leading all the angelic choirs
and the army of martyrs and saints in verse three and the church gathered in
prayer in verse four. It uses ancient titles
and honorifics for Mary, mainly from the Eastern tradition: Higher than the Cherubim and Seraphim,
God-Bearer, Full of Grace. It sees her
great song of praise in Luke 1, the Magnificat (“My soul doth magnify the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God, my savior”), as setting the tune and harmony for all
the angelic and saintly choirs.
Today
is the feast day commemorating the end of Mary’s earthly life: the Eastern Orthodox see it as the “falling
asleep” (peaceful death) of the Blessed Virgin; Roman Catholics, as the bodily
assumption of the Virgin into heaven, without tasting death. Anglicans and Lutherans have generally
accepted either view, without requiring such belief. Most Christians over the ages have agreed
that honoring the Mother of our Lord through devotions is fit and right,
keeping with the biblical teaching that “all generations will call [her]
blessed.” We do not see such devotion as worship or idolatrous. We have taken to heart the scene in John’s
Gospel where Jesus on the Cross looks out to his Mother and the idealized
Christian believer, the Beloved Disciple, and says, “behold your son,” and “behold
your mother.” Most of us have believed that asking Mary to
pray for us is an edifying and uplifting practice; some of us call her “our
Lady” just as we call her Son “our Lord.”
Martin
Luther said the Hail Mary throughout his life, though in later years he omitted
the specific line asking our Lady to pray for us, since this line alone in that
prayer did not come directly out of the Bible.
Jean Calvin himself honored the Virgin, though later Calvinists and radical
reformers stripped away Marian devotions from their spirituality because they
mistakenly saw them as “Popish idolatry.”
Again, such devotion was shared by all ancient forms of Christianity,
not just Rome. The leaders and
theologians of the Church of England under Charles I and II (the so-called
Caroline Divines), fighting the abuses of a Calvinism run amok even as they
steered clear of adopting what the Prayer Book called “the enormities” of the
Bishop of Rome, were intentional in their devout devotion to the Blessed
Virgin, since they rightly saw it as part and parcel of their faith in Christ,
God made fully human.
Grace
and Peace,
Fr.
Tony+
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