In Advent, the Church moves from singing the seasonal Marian Antiphon of the Salve Regina to the Alma Redemptoris Mater for the weeks leading up to and following Christmas.
We use the words alma mater so often in educational settings that most people likely never stop to ponder its significance. “Alma Mater” literally means something akin to “nourishing mother” and gets applied to institutions of learning that “feed” us in our quest for knowledge.
An English approximation of the Latin text of the hymn can be translated as something like: “Nourishing Mother of the Redeemer, who remains the accessible Gateway to Heaven and the Star of the Sea, Give aid to a falling people, who strive to rise. You who gave birth to your own holy Creator, while all nature marveled, Virgin both before and after; You who received that joyful greeting from the mouth of Gabriel, have mercy on us poor sinners.”
Like other antiphons, it is usually chanted after Night Prayer, or what was once called Compline in monastic communities, at the “completion” of the day. Lay faithful, however, often encounter it primarily at the end of Mass in the appropriate season, which in this case runs from the first Sunday of Advent until the traditional ending of the holiday season on Feb. 2, the Feast of the Purification of Mary, or Candlemas, when the devoutly Jewish Mary fulfilled the Hebrew ritual to re-integrate herself into the community after giving birth.
I emphasize the connection with Judaism for a particular reason, as unfortunately the Alma Redemptoris Mater became intimately connected with a famous anti-Semitic passage in Chaucer’s “Prioress’s Tale,” part of his famous collection of stories recounted by fictionalized pilgrims on the way to the very real Canterbury. In the text, he wrote a child singing the hymn in a Jewish neighborhood and “Oure firste foo, the serpent Sathanas, that hath in Jues herte his waspes nest, up swal … An homycide therto han they hyred …This cursed Jew hym hente, and heeld hym faste, and kitte his throte, and in a pit hym caste.”
This disturbing and despicable vilification was unfortunately all too common in many Christian places, besmirching precisely the very honor of the Jewish Lady who had nourished the Christ-child, and the entire world with her fiat, “Let it be done to me according to thy word.”
In the tale, the boy continues to sing the Alma Redemptoris Mater, despite the gaping wound in his neck, because Our Lady places a grain on his tongue, miraculously enabling him to continue his praise, a rather obvious allusion to the Eucharist. Vile as the anti-Semitic construct was, perhaps we can take solace and inspiration in this one redeeming element of the narrative: that Mary, as always, loves and soothes the innocent. This role is an ancient idea, as some of the earliest images of Mary bring this pacifying quality to light. The catacombs, for instance, frequently depict the Madonna del Latte (Maria Lactans), where she nurses her vulnerable and defenseless child.
Finally, the pluralist background of the hymn is worth mentioning. The song is believed to have been composed by the monk Hermannus Contractus, who died in his early 40s because of either spina bifida or perhaps ALS. But he drew from various early Christian theologians, including Fulgentius (from Tunisia), Epiphanius (from Cyprus) and Irenaeus (originally from Turkey, though usually associated with Lyon).
One can see that by the time Hermannus was writing on the cusp between the first and second millennium of Christianity, devotion to Mary under such themes was widespread across the many civilizations and cultures surrounding the Mediterranean world.
It wouldn’t be too much longer before her veneration was brought to these shores by Viking, Spanish, French and other European ships.
Preaching on the global significance of Mary under the title of the Alma Redemptoris Mater, Pope Saint John Paul II once said, “The Virgin is also invoked as Mother of the Mystical Body, that is of the whole Church. Referring to the patristic tradition as it was expressed by St. Augustine … she is clearly the mother of the members of Christ … since she has, by her charity, joined in bringing about the birth of believers in the Church, who are members of its head. Mary’s whole life was very closely connected to that of Jesus. At Christmas, it was she who offered Jesus to humanity. On the Cross, at the supreme moment of the accomplishment of his redeeming mission, it was Jesus who bequeathed to everyone his own Mother as a precious legacy of the Redemption.” (General Audience, Jan. 7, 2004)
An alumnus of Camden Catholic High School, Cherry Hill, Michael M. Canaris, Ph.D., teaches at Loyola University, Chicago.
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