Julius Caesar was a general, an empire-builder, the consort of Cleopatra, and a man who died a bloody death at the hands of political enemies. Mary was a teenager and a virgin, who spoke with the angel and gave birth to God Incarnate.
To say the two had little in common seems a gross understatement. But here they are casually compared side-by-side in these lines of Dante’s Purgatorio:
Blessed Mary sought with haste
The hilly region. Caesar to subdue
Ilerda, darted in Marseilles his sting,
And flew to Spain (Book 18).
Those lines are shouted out by penitents whose sin of sloth is being reversed in Purgatory, where they are seen racing around the corner, past Dante and his guide, the Latin poet Virgil. Mary and Caesar are both hailed as exemplars of the virtue opposite of sloth, which is diligence (sometimes also identified with solicitude).
Is diligence really the opposite of sloth? Usually, today we think of diligence in terms of persistence in the pursuit of something. The emphasis there is more on sticking with it than with doing it quickly. But diligence originally had a sense of haste or quick action in the pursuit of some good and, in this older sense, we can think of it as the opposite of sloth.
Now back to Mary and Caesar. While the two are different in so many ways, both had in common quick action for some good (real in the case of Mary, questionable for Caesar).
Caesar’s speed in taking Spain from his enemies in the civil war is likened to a bolt of lightning by the Roman historian Lucan:
As parts the clouds a bolt by winds compelled,
With crack of riven air and crash of worlds,
And veils the light of day, and on mankind,
Blasting their vision with its flames oblique,
Sheds deadly fright; then turning to its home,
Nought but the air opposing, through its path
Spreads havoc, and collects its scattered fires.
In the gospel account of the Visitation, Mary too acted with haste: “During those days Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah” (Luke 1:39).
But do the parallels stop there? Caesar, as we know, was laying the foundations for what became the Roman Empire. What about Mary? In the Visitation, she took some of the first steps towards what the gospels refer to as the kingdom of God.
In the Visitation, Mary is received in language that recalls the ark of the covenant in the Old Testament, as Catholic biblical scholar Rene Laurentin showed so well. In his book, The Truth of Christmas, Laurentin lists at least nine such parallels. A few examples: David ‘arose’ and ‘went’ to Judah to bring back the ark of the covenant (2 Samuel 6:2). So also, Mary ‘arose’ and ‘went’ to Judah (Luke 1:39). David expresses amazement when the ark comes to his house as does Elizabeth when Mary arrives. Compare the two texts (translations from Laurentin):
■ How can the Ark of the Lord comes to me! (2 Samuel 6:9)
■ And why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should to me? (Luke 1:43)
Luke’s identification of Mary with the ark is immensely significant. In the Old Testament, the ark indicated the presence of God. It was even conceived as a mystical footstool: God reigning in heaven had deigned to let his feet touch earth. If the kingdom of God is understood to be His presence in the person of Jesus, Mary was most certainly spreading the kingdom of God in the Visitation.
It’s also interesting, in this context, to remember that, for David, the movement of the ark to Jerusalem was part of his program of establishing his kingdom. In 2 Samuel 5 we have David being anointed as king and forming a covenant with the elders of Israel. Next, that chapter recounts the capture of Zion and the rout of the Philistines. Then we get the story of David and the ark at the beginning of 2 Samuel 6.
How fitting, then, that the story of the new king of Israel, Jesus, we also have an account of the ark (that is Mary) on the move to Judah.
We Catholics are comfortable ascribing royal privileges to Mary. After all, we venerate her as the Queen of Heaven, a role she has by virtue of being the queen mother of the new king, Jesus. The Bible lends explicit support to this veneration: in Revelation12 we see the woman crowned with stars, who is confronted by a dragon and gives birth to a son who ascends to God. (Incredibly, this spectacular vision is preceded in Revelation 11 by an appearance of the ark of the covenant in heaven!)
But back to Luke 1. Is it appropriate to think of Mary as a queen in this infancy narrative? Indeed it is.
In fact, the entire chapter begins with an affirmation of Mary’s royalty—and this comes even before the angel declares that she has been completely filled with grace. Here are the first words of the angel again: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Hail was more than just a simple ‘hello.’ It was a royal greeting. As in the phrase, Hail Caesar, which is a phrase actually recorded by Roman historian Suetonius in his books, The Twelve Caesars. (Click here to read the text, where the phrase is translated as ‘Hail Emperor,’ a synonym for ‘Caesar.’)
Hail as a royal title is retained in the gospels. Three times it is applied to Jesus to affirm his divine kingship, sometimes unwittingly by his enemies. In the first, Judas uses it to greet him in the Garden of Gethsemane. In the Synoptic gospels the Roman soldiers cry out, “All Hail King of the Jews.” They meant it mockingly, but we know, of course, that Jesus was—and is—a true king.
Finally, Jesus Himself uses it in a positive sense after His resurrection. In Matthew 28, He tells the women who found the open tomb to ‘Hail’ Him. This sequence makes sense to us: while His kingship might have been veiled before the resurrection, afterwards we would expect it to be declared openly.
So, it’s hard not to see ‘Hail Mary’ as a royal greeting to the Mother of God. Just as she shares in so much else of His life—most notably her sharing in His suffering on the cross—so also Mary participates in His royalty. It only stands to reason that the kingdom of God that we hear so much about later in the gospels gets its start with Mary in the infancy narratives.
Mary and Julius Caesar? No doubt, the two remain quite different figures. But they are not as different as we think.
image: Vlada Z / Shutterstock.com