"Hortus Conclusus Est" - The Norbertines of St. Michael's Abbey

-Visit https://www.theabbotscircle.com for more Sacred Music and to experience the ever-growing digital library of St Michael's Abbey's virtual monastery.

Hortus conclusus es, Dei Genetrix: hortus conclusus, fons signatus: surge, propera, amica mea.

“Thou art an enclosed garden, Mother of God: an enclosed garden, a fountain sealed up: rise, make haste, my beloved.”

This antiphon comes from the Divine Office of the Immaculate Conception. We chant these words to the Blessed Virgin, addressing her as hortus conclusus, an “enclosed garden.” This phrase originally comes from the Scriptures, namely from the Song of Songs. The Church has taken these sacred words and applied to the Blessed Virgin. Why is this so?

The Song of Songs is on the surface a love poem between a man and woman who are smitten with one another. These lovers, the bride and the bridedgroom, alternate in declarations of their infatuation and descriptions of each other’s beauty replete with exotic comparisons to cypress trees, vineyards, spikenard, gazelles, and similar exotic imagery (e.g. Thy cheeks are as a piece of a pomegranate; Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim). But, being a divinely inspired book of the scriptures, there is hidden beneath the surface of these vivid images a profound revelation: that of God’s unfathomable love. Many saints and other masterly commentators on this divine love poem have recognized three mystical relations being described: the relation between Christ and the Church; between Christ and the soul; and specifically between Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

God has love for all his creation, but it is especially occupied with the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is most clear from the fact that he chose her from among all women to be his own mother. He prepared her for this unique role by preserving her from all stain of sin, by bestowing on her the grace to be immaculately conceived. Hence the words from the Song of Songs, "Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee," are aptly applied to the Holy Virgin; no spot of sin ever blighted the all-fair Virgin. Likewise, to return to the antiphon above, Our Lady is fittingly described as a hortus conclusus, an enclosed garden, because of the special divine graces she received.

Mary is an enclosed garden because of her perpetual virginity. When she was told that she would conceive the Son of God in her womb Mary responded to the archangel Gabriel, "How can this be since I do not know man?" The archangel revealed that the Holy Spirit himself would overshadow the Virgin and marvelously conceive Jesus Christ. The garden of Mary’s womb was thus only accessible by Almighty God and was closed off to all others. Mary is a paradisiacal garden—a new sort of Eden—reserved for God alone, and the fruit of her womb—a new sort of Tree of Life—is the incarnate Son of God himself. And thus in wonder and admiration, and in the very expressions of love uttered by God himself in the Song of Songs, we chant the praises of the hortus conclusus, the enclosed garden of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

#stmichaelsabbey #catholic #sacredmusic