“Yes, we will love thee, Mother dear”

There is a striking hymn in honour of Our Lady beginning with the words, “Shall we not love thee, Mother dear,” which is to be found in Hymns Ancient and Modern, but not in the English Hymnal. Since it was written by the editor of A and M it is probable that it never will be found in the English Hymnal. But it will serve us very well as a kind of text upon which to hang our meditations this evening.

Let us take it verse by verse:

“Shall we not love thee, Mother dear
Whom Jesus loves so well;
And to His glory year by year,
Thy joy and honour tell.”

To begin with, let us note three things:
First, we are speaking to a Person; a real, living being. It is not just a rhetorical or poetical question, for the whole hymn (except the last verse), is addressed to the blessed Mother of Christ, who is not a dead character of past history, not a figure of fiction, but alive for evermore with her Son in heaven.

Secondly, we address her as “Mother dear.” She is not a foster-mother but our own true mother; for we are members of Christ, limbs of His Body, born into the Church by baptism. And so she who was the mother of his physical body is also mother of his mystical body, the Church, and therefore is mother of all Christian people, whether we realise it or no.

Thirdly, we note that we are to tell, year by year, the joy and honour of Blessed Mary; not for her own sake alone, but for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ:

“And to His glory, year by year,
Thy joy and honour tell.”

There are many people who fear that if we honour Mary we shall somehow defraud Jesus. Yet, surely a little reflection ought to show us that this is not really true. It cannot be pleasing to our Lord that we should treat his Mother with irreverence. What do you think of people who are rude to your mother? When friends were kind to my mother in her last hours on earth, and so many were, I felt a deep sense of gratitude towards them. So too, our divine Lord who so loved his Mother, must surely appreciate any love and honour that we may show to her for his sake. One thing is quite certain: if we could devote our whole life to Mary, we could not love her more than Jesus did, for his love was perfect and absolute.

We will take the next two verses of the hymn together:

“Bound with the curse of sin and shame,
We helpless sinners lay,
Until in tender love he came
To bear the curse away.
And thee he chose from whom to take
True flesh his flesh to be;
In it to suffer for our sake,
By it to make us free.”

There in two simple verses you have the whole gospel story. Man, bound by sin, crying out for redemption, “mourning and weeping in this vale of tears,” until God decreed to send the Redeemer to offer his perfect sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of mankind, upon the cross. And of all women upon the earth, He chose Mary of Nazareth to be his Mother. There had been plenty of good women before her time: Sarah, Rachel, Judith, Esther, Ruth the Moabitess; and there have been many since: St Monica, St Catherine of Siena, St Clare, St Elizabeth of Hungary, the two St Teresas; or great women like Florence Nightingale, Mary Slessor of Calabar, Mary Sumner, Josephine Butler and many more. But none of these was good enough. God could see them all in his simultaneous vision, for past, present and future are all eternally present to Him. No; He could only focus his divine purpose on the greatest of all women, the finest blossom of womanhood that this world has ever seen: Mary the maid of the village of Nazareth in Galilee.

“And thee he chose of whom to take
True flesh his flesh to be.”

So for ever now, this Maiden is related to God in an absolutely different way from any other human creature, for she is a blood-relation of God incarnate: she gave him her flesh and her blood that He might have a perfect human nature wherein to redeem mankind.

We continue with our hymn:

“Thy Babe He lay upon thy breast,
To thee he cried for food,
Thy gentle nursing soothed to rest
The incarnate Son of God.”

Blessed Mary did not fail in her vocation. Not only was she the honoured Mother of God, not only was she privileged above all women, but she was above all the handmaid of the Lord, the bond-slave of the Lord; and, as he own Son later testified, she heard the word of God and kept it. That was her greatest “joy and honour” and this we pledge ourselves to proclaim to the glory of her dear Son. The worship that we give to Jesus and the honour that we accord to Mary are of quite a different kind. Jesus is God and we worship Him with the supreme adoration that would be idolatry if given to any merely human being, even to the purest of creatures. But there is another kind of honour, the lesser honour of which St Paul speaks when he says: “Render honour to whom honour is due.” And to whom is it due more superlatively than to our Blessed Lady?

“O wondrous depth of grace divine,
That He should bend so low,
And Mary O what joy t’was Thine,
In his dear love to know.”

You and I tend to take this “wondrous depth of grace divine” in so matter-of-fact a way! And yet it is so tremendous, so inconceivable. Can we imagine the infinite gulf that separates God and man, eternity and time: and can we imagine a bridge across that gulf linking up the two? Jesus Christ is that bridge, spanning the chasm; and this Bridge rests upon two piers which support it at either side. At the Heavenly end it rests upon the Most Holy Trinity, at the earthly end upon the Blessed Virgin Mary. Take away either of the piers and the Bridge collapses. Deny that Jesus is indeed the Second Person of the Godhead and you make nonsense of the gospel itself; you turn it into a tragedy, a grim story of a Hero who lost his life trying to serve God. Deny, on the other hand, that Mary is the ever-virgin Mother of God and you, ipso facto, deny the reality of our redemption. For it is essential that we believe her to be the doorway through which he entered into this world, and from whom he took true flesh his flesh to be; that she held in her arms, suckled and nursed a Baby who was truly God and perfectly human also.

“Joy to the Mother of the Lord,
And thine the truer bliss,
In every thought and deed and word,
To be for ever his.
And as He loves thee Mother dear,
We too will love thee well;
And to His glory year by years,
Thy joy and honour tell.”

During the last century, as we well know, there has been a great revival of devotion in honour of the Mother of Christ. At first it met with great prejudice, but thanks to the work of the Catholic movement it is gradually melting away. When I was curate of Oakham stories were being told of a noble peer who beckoned to a churchwarden and asked him “Jones, that figure in the window over the Lord’s table in the Trinity Chapel. Is that supposed to be the Virgin?” “Yes, my lord,” was the reply. At which the nobleman seized his hat and left the church forever.

How different things are today you can see for yourself by attending a diocesan Mothers’ Union Festival and counting the very many gorgeous banners bearing the image of Our Lady. The MU has done great work in wearing away ignorant prejudice about Our Lady, and we must in no way despise this contribution to Marian devotion even if it doesn’t succeed in reaching the “Walsingham standard.”

Quite the most phenomenal movement in our Church has been the wonderful revival of this Walsingham pilgrimage. As long as Walsingham exists Our Lady will never be absolutely ignored or forgotten in the Church of England. She who is the Ark of the New Covenant is enthroned here. In ancient times that gold chest, the Ark, was the symbol of the abiding presence of God with his people. In that Ark were the stone tables containing the Commandments, the rod of Aaron (token of the true priesthood), and the pot of manna, the bread from heaven. In Mary, Ark of the New Covenant, there abode Christ the final Lawgiver, the great High Priest, and the Living Bread. She opened up her Treasure to the world and gave Him to mankind. So that every good gift and every perfect gift brought to us by the Incarnation comes to us through Mary. That is just undeniable fact.

“Thou wast the gate of Heaven’s high Lord,
The door through which the light has poured;
Christians rejoice for through a maid
To all mankind is life conveyed.”

Did God use her in that way once long ago and then discard her for evermore? Is that God’s way? Certainly not! “Though hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things.” Every Christian who does his job well is to have vastly increased responsibilities in the life to come. What then of our Blessed Lady? If that mighty treasury of blessings which we call the Incarnation came through her in the first instance, has she any lesser function now in the Heavens?

No, I firmly believe that still today she is intimately associated, by her powers of intercession, with every good gift and every perfect gift that comes from the Most Holy Trinity.

Whether people like it or not, whether they love Mary or not, she loves every one of us; she is praying for all, she is working with her divine Son in the unseen spheres to fashion each one of us into His likeness. One day those who have denied her love, or blasphemed her holy name, will awaken to the fact that they have spurned the gracious fondling of their most lovely Mother. And how terrible will their remorse then be!

God has given to his Mother great privileges and a mighty power of intercession. No one need fear that she will misuse her gifts or her power. She will not attempt to divert us from God: she will not scheme to attract us to the worship of anything less than the Most Holy Trinity; she will not jealously capture our devotion and hug it to her own self; she will not eclipse or obscure the streaming light of the divine Christ; she will do nothing to detract from His supreme godhead or His perfect manhood. Her one and only wish is to remain the handmaid of the Lord, and that all things shall be according to his word. Her one desire for us is that we should be like her, and thereby like him, in hearing the work of God and keeping it, her one command to men is: “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.”

There she sits enthroned at his right hand; a glorious suppliant Queen beside her Lord and King. Yet what a suppliant! So near to God, so understanding of his mind, so ready to cooperate with His will. Remember that the Christian must see the universe as a great fellowship of co-workers: all working together with God. It has pleased Him to delegate much of his work; some to the holy angels, some to the saints, and some even to us sinners here below. And in our devotional life the perspective will be distorted (to say the least) if we do not give Our Lady ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, it is only when we realise that upon the King’s right hand stands the Queen in vesture of gold, and that around them is the court of Heaven numbering ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, it is only when we make contact with that glorious array that our minds are really opened to the full grandeur of God, who reigns not as a solitary tyrant in a lonely state, but as the loving Parent of that most wonderful of families, from which every family on earth is named – the family of the Holy Catholic Church which is also the Communion of Saints.

“Yes we will love thee Mother dear,
Whom Jesus loves so well.”

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