They looked at the painting for some more time, in more silence. Some other people came, looked at it briefly and went away.
“What did you mean, anyone could believe this? Believe what?”
“That’s she’s already been chosen by God. Without her there’s no Incarnation, no revelation of the Trinity to the world, no sacrifice on the cross, no Resurrection, no Christianity. It’s just as we were saying the other night… The adding of all that to Jewish belief, through God’s choice of this Jewish child. This picture is of the very beginning of the new story.”
—from Lucy Beckett’s A Postcard from the Volcano, 288
Titian’s Presentation of the Virgin provoked this conversation. It shows a strange event. A very little girl, dressed in blue, climbs great steps toward a place of bloody sacrifice, toward ancient priests decked in ceremonial robes. She moves perfectly quiet and determined. She draws some attention from the surrounding crowds. She draws our eyes too. But we won’t see deeply if we just give her a brief look and go away. We need more time, more silence to understand the mystery she conveys.
The painting and the novel quoted above beautifully disclose one aspect of her mystery. This little girl, Mary, was already chosen by God. Even before the Resurrection, before the Cross, before the Annunciation, even before her Immaculate Conception, Mary was chosen. She was chosen because her people, Israel, was chosen.
Mary is a daughter of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. She inherited the promises God made them, the Law he gave to Moses, and the Word he spoke to his prophets. She crowned the line of “such holy women as Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Judith and Esther [who] kept alive the hope of Israel’s salvation” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 64). In fact, “She stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently hope for and receive salvation from Him. With her, the exalted Daughter of Sion, and after a long expectation of the promise, the times are fulfilled and the new Economy established, when the Son of God took a human nature from her, that He might in the mysteries of His flesh free man from sin” (Lumen Gentium, 55). Mary is the person in whom all of Israel’s expectations meet their fulfillment. For she was chosen to bring forth the long-awaited Messiah.
Today, the memorial of Mary’s Presentation, we remember the beginning of the new story, the true story of our salvation. And we do well to remember that its roots are in Israel.
“The Church keeps ever in mind the words of the Apostle about his kinsmen: ‘theirs is the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the law and the worship and the promises; theirs are the fathers and from them is the Christ according to the flesh’ (Rom. 9:4-5), the Son of the Virgin Mary” (Nostra Aetate, 4).
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Image: Titian, The Presentation of the Virgin
