Where would you go?

A book to which I keep returning is The Black Virgin by the French philosopher and theologian Jean Hani. Since I read that work a couple of years ago, I have dreamed of one day travelling to our Lady’s shrine at Rocamadour in France, a holy place that was very close to Hani’s heart. There at Rocamadour, the blessed Virgin is enthroned as the embodiment of creation, who offered all in the world that was to be redeemed to the Eternal Logos at the Annunciation. She sits in the mountainside at that ancient shrine, enfolded in the earth itself, concurrently raising up the whole cosmos to God in nuptial longing. Of course, the result of her unique, spousal union with God was the person of Jesus Christ. His uncreated divinity descended from heaven, and His soul was made by God, but His body – all that makes Him incarnate – was assumed exclusively from the Blessed Mother. Thus, at Rocamadour, she holds Him on her lap – becoming herself the throne of the Incarnation – and she offers Him to us. Many say that the veil between our time and the aevum (to use the technical term) of the saints and angels is extremely thin at Rocamadour. Undoubtedly, it is a place enveloped in mystery.