In Exitu Israel de Aegypto

For many years, I have had an enduring affection for Marian Feasts. I have written in past years regarding this period of time sometimes referred to as “Our Lady’s Pasch”, when we liturgically commemorate the ‘Passover’ of Our Lady from this mortal world into eternal life. Every year, there is always something to draw out of the Church’s Liturgy in order to inspire us to yearn for heaven, our truest home.

I referred in previous years to the magnificent Misteri d’Elx, the mystery play of Elx/Elche, Spain, which has been held for centuries on the Vigil and Feast Day proper of the Assumption of Mary. Elx is a small town south of Valencia, Spain, which has hosted this celebration in its cathedral. It’s worth checking out, if you have the chance. The music of the celebration, which is worth several articles on its own, has been graced with the artistic genius of several Spanish Renaissance masters, adroitly interwoven with traditional chant.

In my research on the event, what most impressed me, over and above the bespoke melodies which make up the dialogues between the Blessed Virgin, the angels, and the assembled Apostles, is the repeated use of Psalm 113 (114/115), In Exitu Israel de Aegypto. This Psalm is sung in traditional chant, but also in stirring polyphonic arrangements such as those by Pere Oriola. Although this same Psalm appears in the Roman Breviary for the Solemnity of the Assumption, for several years I had trouble understanding the use of it, especially when there are far more ‘on the nose’ Psalms for the Feast, such as the Audi, Filia, “Listen, O Daughter”, which is used for the Mass of the Day.

Medium truly is the message, and what opened my mind to this beautiful spiritual connection was precisely the melodies of the Misteri d’Elx. I recall distinctly hearing the In Exitu in a subway with my headphones on, and hearing the Psalm’s melody with a steady drumbeat in the background, as more and more voices added to the swelling lines of the Psalm, like an army gathering on a battlefield (please allow me to translate the Latin more literally):

When Israel went out from Egypt, Jacob from a barbarous people; Judah became his [God’s] sanctification, Israel, his power.

In analyzing the spiritual meaning of this text, it is first helpful to remember that Mary represents on multiple fronts the typology of the people of Israel. She is the perfect reflection of the aspirations of Priests, Prophets, and Kings. If the Protoevangelion of James is to be believed, and I think there is strong evidence to lend it belief, Mary was the daughter of a Priest, and of the Kingly Davidic Line. Her connection to prophecy, in my mind, is that she is the truly perfect ‘Daughter Israel’, which unlike the declamations of the Prophet Amos, was truly a Virgin, both in body and in soul. Her soul knew no God but God, as her body knew no man.

This Psalm is supposed to be literally about the crossing of the people of Israel over the Jordan River, as they were just leaving their forty year wandering in the desert, and their centuries of slavery. This particular moment recalls the moment when the Jordan River parted for the Ark of the Covenant, an event which obviously recalls the parting of the Red Sea. The crossing of the Chosen People into the Promised Land was a much anticipated event, and was a milestone in the fulfillment of the promises God had made the Patriarchs. We ought to remember as well that the Patriarch Joseph also likely crossed that river, which is a powerful type in its own way.

From the very first verse, then, proclaiming this Psalm in tandem with the Assumption places our Liturgical Commemoration in a similarly festive mood. Mary, the New Ark of the Covenant, passes at the forefront of the Chosen People into the true land of promise, our heavenly home. There is a note of begrudged relief here, as the sinless Virgin leaves a sinful world: it cannot have been easy for such a being to live among wicked humanity. The waters part for the Ark, as the clouds part for the glorified humanity of the Virgin. In this, God’s ‘sanctification’, in the truest sense, is accomplished: that work of grace which was the Immaculate Conception and birth of Our Lady, now comes to full flowering in glory. God is glorified in his saints, and as St. Augustine once reminded us, when God crowns his saints, he crowns his own gifts. In so doing, he demonstrates that ‘sanctification’ and that ‘potestas’; a total and absolute victory over the forces of death and sin.

But it gets better. Not only is the river Jordan parted, it is said to turn back on its course. Water throughout the Old Testament is almost always an ambiguous symbol, a reminder of that primordial chaos that existed “in the beginning”. The glorification of Mary is a complete reversal of the progress of entropy, the dissolution of the physical world. God reverses time in Mary like God reverses the river that bars entry from the Promised Land. But like the New Heaven and the New Earth will have no light from the sun, now, we glimpse, just for a moment, how the New Heaven will have as little need for a calendar as it will for a clock. Now we behold Our Lady in the perfect splendor of eternal youth.

Theologians have debated for centuries about the nature of the glorified body, and even at what “age” Our Lord will resurrect us. The general answer has been the age of 33, and I understand why this is said, but I politely disagree. I believe that the participation of our bodies in heavenly glory will both make us appear ever-youthful but also ever-wise and mature. I base that opinion on the visions found in the Shepherd of Hermas, but also in how glorified beings do tend to appear to us: they have truly transcended time, and so are now beyond its ravages. Yet at the same time they possess a purified intellect transformed by the Beatific Vision, and so they have access to a wisdom which much make their bearing like unto God. Beauty “ever ancient, ever new”, indeed!

Simultaneous with the turning back of the Jordan is the ‘skipping’ of the mountains and hills. Apart from the obvious notes of joy that the verbiage conveys, I think we can also see a fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah, that we hear proclaimed every Advent: that God will exalt every valley, and lay low every mountain. Nature poetically mirrors the exaltation of God’s most lowly servant; all the created order seems to join in a cosmic Magnificat. I find it interesting that the Psalmist asks the question, “Why did you leap, O Mountains? Why did you skip like rams?” Yet the question is never answered in the Psalm itself. One may certainly interpret this as a rhetorical question, but I believe it may be providentially more than that. It was because the world had not yet seen the fullness of the answer to that question. Now, with Mary’s Assumption, we at last know why the hills can be said to dance.

The Psalm shifts from this reflection of the literal transit of the Ark of the Covenant to a reflection on the vanity of idols. It proclaims, “they are silver and gold, the work of human hands.” Of course, in the Jewish context, the problem is all too real, because God in nature is spirit, and all idols by their nature can never capture truly who and what God is. But if we read this now in the context of the Incarnation, the whole equation shifts. We already know from St. Paul that Christ is the “icon” of the Father, and so, as St. John of Damascus famously argued, we can ‘circumscribe’ Christ in gold as much as we can in words, for God has made himself visible by taking a human nature. If we take this into account, the Psalm evokes even more powerful, even earthy, human imagery. Unlike idols, which have “ears but cannot hear, mouths but cannot speak”, God of course has the benefit of actually existing. But there is something more to this: in Christ, God took human ears, a human mouth, a human heart. In Mary’s glorification, the downfall of idolatry is even more pronounced, because she is the ‘stuff’, the prime matter, from which the Incarnation took place. In Christ’s Ascension, the union of glorified humanity and divinity for our salvation literally and spiritually reached its apex. In Mary’s Assumption, the first fruits are now gathered in God’s great harvest. Our Lady procured for humanity Christ’s first miracle of turning water into wine, but it was from Mary’s exquisite nature that the fruit of the earth was turned into the new wine, the true life of the world.

God did not destroy the reign of idolatry by smashing idols. God destroyed the reign of idolatry by restoring his own image. Mary, as the New Eve, is the most splendid emblem of this, precisely because she is not God. I believe it was Saint Alphonsus Ligouri who once reflected that it requires a particular malice on the part of a Christian to shun the Blessed Virgin, even more so than to blaspheme Christ himself. The reasoning was that in Mary, we find someone only like ourselves. Christ is Divine and Human, and so is both Our Judge and Our Advocate with the Father. Mary is only human, and so is only the latter, and that superlatively. It makes a certain sense that a person being judged should have a certain trepidation in dealing with the judge. But in Mary, there is only tenderness, only mercy. And the justice of Mary, while awesome, as St. John Henry Newman reflected, is not wielded to judge us, but to reflect the holiness of the one who fashioned her.

There is so much more I could write about this Psalm in the context of the Assumption, but I would like to conclude with the final lines of the Psalm, which are appropriate to us who celebrate the Feast. “The dead shall not praise you, Lord, nor those who go down into the pit. But we who live, we bless the Lord, from now unto forever.” The Assumption of Mary is fitting, because the perpetual glorification of God was her life’s sole aim: and just as God’s glory will never be extinguished, so it is right that the only merely human lips ever to proclaim God’s praise flawlessly, should also never be silenced by the grave. No other human has been so perfectly crafted for the adoration of the Undivided Trinity. The Church, the New Israel, rejoices with her forerunner, and we gather under her mantle in order to receive what blessings fall in her wake.

May God grant each of us who love Our Mother the profound joy of knowing her patronage, so that we may at length enjoy the same canticle of praise which eternally delights God, angels, and men.