Salve, Regina, Mater Misericordiae.
May the Lord Jesus give you His peace.
May the Lord Jesus give you His peace.
And also the gospel about stones and stones being cast down.
And the stone is Christ.
It gets at the mystery of covenant.
And there was a stone for sure in the first covenant.
It's the tables of stone that Moses went up the mountain.
This is from Deuteronomy 10.
When the second time after Moses had come down
and was infuriated at the idolatry,
of the people and broke the tables of stone,
then he was back up the mountain and the Lord spoke to him
and he was obedient and he made an arc of boards
of incorruptible wood, first thing.
And then he says, I hewed tables of stone like the first
and I went up the mountain and the two tables were in my hand.
So these tables of stone were fashioned,
hewn at least by Moses.
And...
And...
So these are elements that we're going to see in the first reading as well
in terms of a stone that is not
caught by human hand.
And that's important because although the commandments of God
are written by the finger of the living God,
this is something that gets at the mystery of the covenant.
It's by way of allegory that Galatians 4 will talk to us about
the mountains.
This is Mount Sinai, of course,
where the law,
the old law,
the Mosaic law came
and the Ten Commandments
and St. Paul in Galatians will talk about
two mountains
and these are by way of Isaac
and by way of Ishmael.
And there is,
he writes this in Galatians 4,
these things are said by way of allegory
for these are two testaments,
the one from Mount Sinai
engendering unto bondage,
which is Hagar.
For Sinai is a mountain in Arabia,
which hath affinity to that Jerusalem,
which now is,
the Jerusalem that is now
and is in bondage with their children.
And he goes on to speak of the free woman,
Mount Sion,
which in fact is a figure of the new
and that new covenant is working out,
of course,
in this present age and every age
where that kind of demolition work of Christ,
both in society and also in the interior of man
is coming to fruition.
So those two covenants
are kind of encapsulated in this first reading.
We could also,
in its fulfillment,
read in the light of Isaiah 2.
For in the last days,
the mountain of the Lord shall be glorious,
right?
This stone not cut by human hand,
smashing into pieces this great statue
and then a mountain rising up
in the midst of it filling the whole world.
This is Isaiah 2 now.
For in the last days,
the mountain of the Lord shall be glorious
in the house of God,
on the top of the mountains,
and it shall be exalted above the hills
and all nations shall come to it.
And many nations shall go and say,
come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord
into the house of the God of Jacob.
And he will tell us on his way
and we will walk in it.
For out of Zion shall go forth the law
and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem.
So this is the new law.
This is the new law that is,
will be fulfilled gloriously,
which we also see in the book of the apocalypse
with the heavenly Jerusalem coming.
As St. John has been taken up a high mountain
and sees the glory of the church.
It's also the glory of the blessed Virgin Mary
in a sense in the Navarre Bible commentary
we'll talk about that.
This is a Christological interpretation.
The stone is Christ.
Some fathers interpret the mountain
from which this stone comes
as being the blessed Virgin Mary.
It's a natural segue
as the stone cut off by no human hand
is an image of the conception of Jesus.
Jesus is in the Virgin's womb
without the involvement of men.
And so you can also see it
if we go back to Galatians 4
with the end of the Canticle of the Magnificat
after we have really a birth according to the promise
by virtue of the word of the blessed Virgin Mary.
St. John the Baptist leaps in the womb of St. Elizabeth.
This is really the birth from the free woman
and the last words of the Magnificat,
the promise made to Abraham and his children forever.
And that's kind of synthesizing
what we've learned from Galatians
in terms of this new covenant
and the role Our Lady has in it.
Other scriptural facets we can kind of look at
is with this notion of mountain
and the presence of Our Lady
is from Psalm 78,
the mountain of a sanctuary,
this mountain which his right hand has purchased.
And the preservative redemption
of the Immaculate Virgin Mary
by means of the Immaculate Conception.
Other things we might be able to speculate on there too.
But lastly would be this,
and this is where perhaps St. Leonard of Port Maurice
can help us,
that just as in a social sense
the four tiers of metals
represent four kingdoms historically,
so too in the interior of man
these can be attributed to
kind of the idolatry of self.
And we say that because of what happens later,
that the head of gold,
which is King Nebuchadnezzar,
he makes, he sets up a statue of gold
and he commands others to worship it,
which of course is idolatry
and Daniel and his companions do not.
And of course they're thrown into the fiery furnace.
But given that,
it gets at the interior state fallen of man,
the image of Christ,
the image of Christ, the image of Christ,
the image of Christ, the image of Christ,
the image of Christ, the image of Christ,
you are the icon.
This is what Daniel says to Nebuchadnezzar.
You are the image,
you are the head of gold.
And that image is what we bear in ourselves.
And it,
but at the bottom of the statue are the feet
at mixture of both iron,
which is very, very strong, and clay.
And it gets at the alliance of both basically the will,
which is akin to the feet because it moves up,
which is akin to the feet because it moves up,
and the disordered passions,
which are based in the flesh,
in which there is not a happy union.
In fact, there's a disordered union there.
And that's the likeness.
And it's the divine likeness that has been tarnished by,
and restored consequently.
But St. Leonard of Port Maurice will talk
about great Franciscan mission preacher
on the way of the cross
and how we have to smash basically this,
and how we have to smash basically this,
idolatry of self that fallen man will do,
will inevitably do without baptism.
And that's another thing that this new covenant
that St. Paul will write about this circumcision
without hands, just like that stone is cut without hands.
There's a new circumcision without hands
and that's baptism, of course.
And it is important that this really kind of the object
of our dialogue with folks in society
is always the sacraments.
So that really the new king,
it can be set up in the interior,
in the heart of man as well.
Lastly is this, two cities, St. Augustine will talk about,
and here we have a kind of split screen of two mountains.
Matthew 4, 8.
Again, the devil took him up into a very high mountain,
took Christ up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world
and the glory of them.
That's the danger of fallen man,
of seeing, looking down from a great height of pride
and then desiring disordered fashion.
Verses this, the last chapter of revelation,
and he took me up Saint John to a great height
and high mountain.
He showed me the holy city Jerusalem
coming down out of heaven from God.
And so our eyes fixed now on things above
on the glory of the church.
May our lady who has the perfect fulfillment of this
and the model and mother of Holy Mother Church
direct our gaze toward heaven
and with all the holy angels, prophets, saints
that we may fulfill.
fill our role in the mystical body of Christ.
Thank you.