Tea at Trianon: Depicting a Sacrifice of Tears

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, April 15, 2022

Depicting a Sacrifice of Tears

From Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs:

St. Cyprian writes that the water represents the faithful who are united indissolubly to Christ. In the ancient Roman Rite, the accompanying prayer associates the water with human nature and the wine with the divine nature: “da nobis per hujus aquae et vini mysterium, ejus divinitatis esse consortes, qui humanitatis nostrae fieri dignatus est particeps—grant that by the mystery of this water and wine, we may be made partakers of His divinity who vouchsafed to become partaker of our humanity.” The water’s absorption by the wine thus at once recalls the Word’s assumption of human nature and symbolizes man’s divine adoption and sanctification. In a few moments, the water made wine will become the divine Blood of the Godman. It is no surprise, then, that St. Thomas Aquinas, among others, cites the Patristic association of the water and wine with the water and blood that flowed from the side of Christ (Jn 19:34).
Reflection on Our Lady’s role in her Son’s sacrifice suggests another, complementary interpretation of the ritual of the Offertory water. At the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, Simeon had prophesied to Mary that “thy own soul a sword shall pierce” (Lk 2:35). For a suffering “longer and greater than all the martyrs,” she is known as Queen of Martyrs, and the liturgy solemnizes the veneration of Seven Dolours of Our Lady especially in two feasts intimately linked to Our Lord’s Passion: on the Friday before Good Friday and on the day following the Exaltation of the Cross. Dom Guéranger, in his entry from the Liturgical Year for the Feast of the Seven Dolours on the Friday of Passion Week, writes that on the Cross, “an ineffable union is made to exist between the two offerings, that of the Incarnate Word, and that of Mary; the Blood of the divine Victim, and the tears of the Mother, flow together for the redemption of mankind.” Our Lord offers His Blood; Our Lady offers her tears. The two offerings flow together, but because of the intimate union between Our Lord and His Mother, their source too is in a certain sense one. In her apparition to St. Brigid of Sweden, Our Lady recalls that “when He looked down at me from the Cross, and I looked up at Him, tears streamed from my eyes like blood from veins. . . Therefore I boldly assert that His suffering became my suffering, because His Heart was mine.” From the one Sacred and Immaculate Heart flow tears and blood. Perhaps the mixing of water into the Offertory wine recalls this mystery of Our Lady’s com-passion.

The mystical union between Our Lady’s sacrifice of tears and Our Lord’s sacrifice of blood is the subject of a new painting of Our Lady of Sorrows by sacred artist Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs. (Read more.)