There are always at least two ways to read sacred scripture. The first is the literal, and the second, the spiritual. Of the two, the spiritual is always the more important. Today, we are offered plenty of opportunities to read the lectionary spiritually to reflect on the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God.
Our Lord himself teaches us how to read scripture spiritually. Recollect the many times when Our Lord referred to His Mother indirectly. For instance, His reference to His Mother when he rhetorically asked “Who is my mother?” and responded that “whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Mt 12:46-50). Or the episode in the Gospel according to Luke, where when a woman praises “the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you,” Our Lord responded, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!” (Lk 11: 27-28). In both these cases, Our Lord was not rejecting His mother, but further esteeming Her, indicating that She did the will of His Father, and heard the word of God and obeyed it.
And so, we know He is referring to Himself, and His blessed Mother when we hear the following words of Our Lord in the Gospel today:
A good tree does not bear rotten
fruit,
nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.
For every tree is known by its own fruit.
We know that Our Lady is the good tree that has borne, not rotten, but good fruit. Recollect, dear brothers and sisters, that we routinely refer to Our Lady as having borne good fruit. At least once a day, devout Catholics throughout the world, pray “and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.”
We could also refer to the first reading today, from the book of Sirach, where we read:
The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had
Indeed, we know that Our Lord, was the fruit of a tree that received special graces from God the Father, who preserved Our Lady from the stain of original sin so that she could be the pure vessel that bore His Son.
The arboreal references do not stop at the fruit alone. The verses 13-14 from psalm 92 read:
The just one shall flourish like
the palm tree,
like a cedar
of Lebanon shall he grow.
They that are planted in the house of the LORD
shall
flourish in the courts of our God.
These verses from the psalm have also found their way into Marian imagery, both these trees used as allusions to Our Lady, and sometimes found in traditional depictions of Her.
This reference to pictorial depictions of Our Lady allows us to read some of the verses from the second reading, St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, in an interesting manner. In this letter, St. Paul says:
When this which is corruptible
clothes itself with incorruptibility
and this which is mortal clothes itself with immortality,
then the word that is written shall come about
There is an image of the sacred hearts of Our Lady and Our Lord which is commonly found in many households in Goa, and across the Catholic world. This image features an image of Our Lady wearing a red tunic and a blue cloak, while Our Lord wears a blue tunic and a red cloak. The use of these colours, and their inversion, is not simply some random artistic choice but the result of deep iconographic reflection. Red represents the colour of the earth, of mud, and thus corruptible humanity; while blue is the colour of the sky, and thus heaven. For this reason, Our Lady, who though born of, and with, corruptible human flesh, was clothed with incorruptibility, and assumed into Heaven by Her Son, is represented as having a red tunic and cloaked with blue, the colour of immortality (as is the case in the image by Jacopo Palma that I have used above). Our Lord, on the other hand, was of heaven, and hence had a blue tunic, and humbled himself to take on our mortality, which is represented by the red colour of his cloak.
The verses from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians that I just referred to, go on to quote the famous lines, which refer to the bodily Resurrection of Our Lord:
Death is swallowed up in
victory.
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?
The sting of death is sin,
These words, however, apply just as much to Our Lady, who, because she was sinless, was assumed into heaven, and now enjoys the privileges of heaven in her glorified body. And this is the true fruit that we must be grateful for, the privilege of having the possibility to be united with our bodies after death and be in the presence of God. Our Lady, as the ideal human, was the first to enjoy this fruit, born from the Tree of the Cross, and Her assumption into heaven is assurance that this is an opportunity available to us all.
This is an opportunity available to us all because Our Lady was sinless, not only because of the special grace that had been given to Her by God the Father, but because She added to this grace through Her own actions. Listen to the words from Sirach:
Praise no one before he speaks,
for it is then that people are tested.
It also says:
As the test of what the potter
molds is in the furnace,
so in tribulation is the test of the just.
Our Lady is worthy of praise, because when faced with a choice presented to Her by the angel Gabriel, rather than think of the tribulations She would face, She responded with a wholehearted yes! As to why, and how, She responded with a wholehearted yes, once again we can refer to Our Lord’s words in today’s Gospel:
A good person out of the store of
goodness in his heart produces good,
but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil;
for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”
And where did this goodness come from? We can turn once more to art for our answer. Our Lady is commonly depicted as being in prayer when She was approached by the angel Gabriel, and once again the words of the psalm we read today can be used to understand the discipline she followed so that Her heart was a store of goodness:
It is good to give thanks to the
LORD,
to sing
praise to your name, Most High,
To proclaim your kindness at dawn
and your
faithfulness throughout the night.
Life does not always deal us fairly, my dear brothers and sisters, and this is the result of the operation of sin in the world. However, we have the option to take those proverbial lemons and convert them to lemonade through the simple process of trusting in and thanking God for every trial that comes in the nighttimes of our lives (and remember, the night is always darkest just before dawn). This was the way of Our Lady and this is why we sing Her praise today.
(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the parish of Our Lady of the Rosary, Fatorda on 2 March 2025.)
(Image reference: Detail of “The Assumption of the Virgin,” Jacopo Palma (Il Vechio), 1513, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice.)
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