COMMENT:
Access to the article of Fr. Jack Mahoney was rather elusive in the Websites.
Even the Footnote references add to the trail ...
... IN the Fairford window, the forefront shows the risen Christ with his wounds and, traditionally, holding a tiny cross, to show that he had overcome it, with his hand raised to indicate he is speaking. Looking at him in wonder is his mother, an elderly, frail figure robed in traditional blue and joining her hands in awe. Behind her one can identify what appear to be the entrance to a bedroom with a glimpse of the bed, and a space which could be an oratory with a lectern and book facing the window.
What I find fascinating in the window is the scroll which comes from the mouth of the risen Christ containing the salutation, Salve, Sancta parens – ‘Hail, holy mother’. These words, which open the traditional Introit verse of the Common Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary, put beyond any possible doubt the fact that Jesus is here appearing to his mother, despite the silence on this in the gospels (and Ignatius tells us to use our common sense here[17]). In addition, the greeting of the risen Jesus in Fairford, ‘Salve, sancta parens’, actually repeats the one in the Jerusalem church as recorded by the chaplain to Sir Richard Guylforde, mentioned above. Is it fanciful to conjecture that our wealthy Cotswold wool merchant who endowed the splendid Fairford church brought back the scene and this detail from his own pilgrimage to Jerusalem, even a pilgrimage possibly imposed as part of his penance for the remission of his sins?
The Risen Jesus
and His Mother
Posted
on: 29 Dec 2011 at 00:00 |
Author:
Jack Mahoney SJ
 |
| The Risen Jesus Stained glass window in the parish church of Saint Mary Fairford, Gloucestershire |
The
Church’s celebration of Christmas continues with the Feast of the Holy Family,
which this year falls on 30 December. Jack Mahoney marks the occasion by
contemplating the relationship between Jesus and his mother as it is expressed
in an intriguing yet non-biblical tradition, a tradition which also has an
important place in the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. Might Our Lady have
been the first person to see Christ after his resurrection?
Some
weeks ago I was in the Cotswolds attending the funeral of an old friend and as
I was driving back to London I decided to call in at Fairford, a lovely village
in Gloucestershire which has a famous fifteenth-century church. As well as
being a fine, late Perpendicular specimen of the ‘wool’ church, one built by a
wealthy wool merchant to ensure his eternal salvation, the Fairford church of
Saint Mary contains the finest set of original stained glass windows in
England, dating from the late Middle Ages.
I had
last visited it some fifty years ago as a Jesuit student and an enthusiast of
pre-reformation churches, when I had been delighted to find in a heavenly
orchestra which was spread across the tops of several windows the figure of an
angel playing the bagpipes. As a Scot, I was so taken with this celestial sign
of good taste that I wrote a letter to Fr James Moffat SJ, editor of the now
defunct, Edinburgh-based Mercat Cross, drawing his readers’
attention to the heavenly piper at Fairford, although I could not refrain from
adding as a comment on his music, with Keats, that, ‘heard melodies are sweet,
but those unheard are sweeter’!
A surprising appearance
On this
return to Fairford, as I browsed around the church’s windows I was astonished
to come across one showing the risen Christ appearing to his mother. This is a
theme with which I am now very familiar from my experience of St
Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, in which he makes Jesus’s
appearance to his mother his first after the resurrection, but it was an event
to which I certainly had not expected to find mediaeval testimony.[1] The
Fairford church’s windows, like those of many other mediaeval churches, served
an unlettered laity as ‘the people’s illustrated bible’, educating them in
their faith, from the creation of Adam and Eve through to the threatening west
‘doom’ window of the Last Judgement. This particular window, then, showing
Jesus’s appearance to his mother after his resurrection, was evidence of a
well-established tradition of the event, even though it does not appear
anywhere in the New Testament descriptions of the appearances of the risen
Jesus. I was interested to note that this window did not appear in the Lady
Chapel on the north side of the chancel, which depicted Our Lady’s life and
assumption, but in the southern, Corpus Christi chapel, among the mysteries
surrounding the life and death of her son. Perhaps it was given further special
significance by being depicted in this church which is specifically dedicated
to his mother, Saint Mary. In my usual way, I thereupon started on a quest to
find the history of this discovery, which I had found so surprising. There was
quite a bit of evidence to unearth, although it took some ferreting out!
