Fr. Z's Blog

Today on Twitter I ran across an image HERE made by a Cistercian Trappist Sister of Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey   They have an online store for the support of their community HERE which includes prints of the image and assortments of caramels and chocolates – great Christmas gift ideas – as well as fruit cake.  They wouldn’t be Trappists otherwise, I think, without fruitcake.

The site where I found the image has some theological reflection about the image, which is good.  However, I have a different idea founded on my Patristic background.

Initial thoughts before I get to the real point.

One thing I noticed right away is the shape of the leaves and the fruit.  These are not apples, they are figs.    The forbidden fruit of the Garden, was the fig, not the apple (even though that is what Eve is holding… and it has a bite mark).   I note, however, that the fruits in the image look rather like pears, which makes me think of Augustine’s youthful sin in Confessions 2:

We carried off a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them ourselves. Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden. Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart–which thou didst pity even in that bottomless pit. Behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself.

Eve’s choice and Adam’s failure echoing through the ages.

The way the figs leaves surround the two figures is reminiscent of the hortus conclusus theme of medieval paintings of the Blessed Virgin.

The hortus conclusus, the enclosed garden, is drawn from the Song of Songs 4:12, “hortus conclusus, soror mea, sponsa; hortus conclusus, fons signatus”.  The Fathers and medieval exegetes took this as a prophetic figure of the Virgin Mary: wholly belonging to God, inviolate, fruitful through divine grace. In paintings from the late Middle Ages through the Renaissance, the enclosed garden becomes the setting for the Annunciation or the Madonna and Child. Artists often fill the space with carefully chosen symbolic flora whose meanings echo Marian titles such as the lily for purity, the rose for charity, the columbine for sorrows.     Theologically the hortus conclusus signifies not only Mary’s perpetual virginity but also the interior sanctuary where God’s Word takes root. Mary is the “garden sealed” because the Incarnation is entirely God’s initiative. She is at once receptive and protected, a new Garden of Eden in whom the divine presence dwells without corruption. Ildefonso Schuster notes that Marian iconography often renders this garden as both earthly and paradisal, suggesting that in Mary humanity begins again. The hortus conclusus thus is visual catechesis, a proclamation of Mary as pure, fruitful, and uniquely prepared to receive and bear the Savior.

We must give due attention to the serpent.

Old Scratch entangles the feet of Eve, only to have its head crushed by the foot of Mary.

How heavy that foot upon the deceiver!

I am minded that the Latin word for pregnancy is graviditas from gravis, meaning “heavy”.  Graviditas was a rich theological metaphor.  Patristic authors use terms of physical generation to illuminate the mystery of the Incarnation, and graviditas is especially apt for describing the pleroma, the fullness of divine life, present in Mary and, by extension, in the Church.   The phrase graviditas Virginis appears in early Latin homiletic traditions to highlight the paradoxical union of virginity and fecundity. Mary’s graviditas signals her interior plenitude of grace. Augustine speaks of Mary conceiving Christ in her heart before conceiving Him in her womb… in mente prius quam in ventre (s. 215.4).  In this sense her graviditas is the fullness of faith, obedience, and charity that makes her not just hortus conclusus but also the living ark of the covenant.  The Church Fathers describe the Church as gravis or gravida with the faithful, using maternal imagery to articulate the Church’s role in bringing forth new life through baptism and catechesis. Thus graviditas Ecclesiae expresses the community’s fertile receptivity to the Word and its mission to “bear” Christ into the world.  In fact, the newly baptized were called “infantes“.  Medieval writers extend the metaphor to the soul. A believer “gravidus verbo… pregnant with the Word” is one who has allowed divine wisdom to take root and grow, producing virtuous action. Here graviditas indicates interior transformation, a heaviness not of burden but of divine presence.   Thus, graviditas is theological shorthand for fruitful receptivity to God, a symbol of how grace fills, shapes, and brings to birth the life of Christ within persons, Mary above all.

And now, after those tangents, to my point.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem in his Catechesis 12 wrote (I’ll give you some context):

Hear, O man, the mystery:
how the Creator of all is born of a Virgin,
how He who holds the world in His hands is wrapped in the swaddling-clothes of an infant.
Today there is joy for the heavenly ones and peace for those on earth;
today the tears of Eve have been dried through the Virgin;
today the curse has been undone and the blessing has sprung forth;
today death has vanished, and life has reigned.
Today Adam is called back to his inheritance, and Eve has found her liberty;
through the Virgin the bond of condemnation has been loosed;
through the Virgin immortality has entered among men;
through the Virgin salvation has poured forth like an unfailing fountain.

Cyril stands squarely in the patristic tradition that sees Mary as the New Eve, a title rooted deeply in second-century theology. His phrase “Eve’s tears are dried through the Virgin” is a precis of salvation history.

We can take Eve’s tears to represent, the sorrow of the fall (Gen 3:16), humanity’s exile and mortality, and the rupture between God and man. Tears symbolize the broken inheritance of the human race.

Cyril’s litany-like “Through the Virgin” produces what?  The tears cease, the curse dissolves, immortality returns, salvation is poured out.  Mary is the instrument chosen for the Incarnation, the hinge of the world’s re-creation.

Where Eve listened to the serpent, Mary listens to the angel.
Where Eve’s act led to exile, Mary’s fiat brings restoration.
Where Eve’s act introduced death, Mary’s obedience introduces Life Himself.

For Cyril, Mary’s divine maternity is the turning point of history: creation begins again in her womb.

BTW… Even apart from her perfectly united will at Calvary, does this all sound like Co-Redemptrix to you?

Lastly, do visit the store of the Trappist Sisters.  HERE