Mary: Refuge of Sinners

                                        The Story of Ruth- Thomas Matthews Rooke

 Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.
John 4:35

And Ruth the Moabitess said unto Naomi, Let me now go to the field, and glean ears of corn after him in whose sight I shall find grace.
Ruth 2:2

The gulf of incomprehension between Catholics and Christians from the ecclesial communities of the 'Reformation' (Protestants for short) on the subject of devotion to Mary is fuelled in part by the radically different ways the two traditions read the Old Testament scriptures. The man who inspired the 'Reformation' Martin Luther said "The Christian reader should make it his first task to seek out the literal sense, as they call it. For it alone is the whole substance of faith and Christian theology" This means that what appears on the surface of the written words is sufficient in itself to convey all that we need to know about God. Catholicism, by contrast sees four levels or senses of Scripture. The literal is the foundation of all the others but it does not exhaust the content of Divine revelation, so if we rest in it alone then we miss out on all that the Lord intends to convey to us via the medium of the sacred texts.

For example, we can believe that the crossing of the Red Sea was both an historical event and a pre-figuring of baptism. Protestants will accept this because St Paul said so (1 Corinthians 10:1-2) They are reluctant however to apply the same kind of approach to those scriptures where there is no explicit scriptural mandate to do so. Catholics are not so timid. An allegorical reading of a passage which does not deny or contradict the literal sense, which is consonant with the faith received from the Apostles and which helps us to better understand and more deeply love God is a perfectly acceptable approach to studying scripture. By using it Catholicism arrives at the idea that the New Testament is hidden within the Old, that is, concealed under persons and events, and so the New reveals the meaning of the Old. Christians and Jews therefore will read these Scriptures in radically different ways unless the Christians adopt the Lutheran approach which bring them close to the Jewish methodology.

And so we come to Mary. Catholics understand many OT passages to refer to the Mother of Jesus, her life, her personality and her role in the history of salvation. Since Protestants see nothing more in these passages than the events, persons or places described in them they simply don't 'get' what Catholics are on about when discussing our Lady and so accuse them of importing extra-biblical ideas and practices. In this blog, as my contribution to ecumenism, I propose to look at the eponymous heroine of the Book of Ruth and see in what way she prefigures Mary as refuge of sinners.

                                                      Our Lady of Ransom

In my earlier blog Mary & Eternal Life I looked at a number of the ways in which Ruth acted as a type or figure of our Lady here I will look at some others. By 'type' is meant that what is done in part and imperfectly in the OT is brought to fulfilment and perfection in the Gospel and forms part of the economy of salvation. So, Ruth sets out to glean the ears of corn which the reapers leave behind in order to be able to feed Naomi her mother-in-law and herself. When, in the Gospels, Jesus speaks of harvesting He usually means gathering in souls to the kingdom of heaven. Since He speaks through the Old Testament as well as the New it is worth considering the possibility that references to the same subject in the one will have the same purpose as in the other. When to this harvest is added the figure of Ruth following 'after him in whose sight I shall find grace' we are irresistibly reminded of the words of St Gabriel 'Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God.' (Luke 1:30) It seems then legitimate to read this passage as an allusion to the role played by the Mother of God in bringing into the kingdom those who escape from the hands of the reapers.

What Mary gleans are those who have heard the Good News about Jesus but have not benefited by it. They lie on the earth having missed salvation but not yet consigned to destruction. It seems likely to me that these are not necessarily greater sinners than the saved but they are guilty of the sin of despair. They feel themselves to be so wicked or to have committed such terrible acts that there is no possibility of them being forgiven and so they fear greatly to come into the presence of our Lord never doubting that condemnation will be the only outcome of that encounter. The Protestant approach is basically to say 'pull yourself together, Jesus will forgive you if you repent.' This is perfectly true of course but nonetheless it is a psychological fact that many people find themselves unable to overcome that fear of the Just Judge. So either we consign them (by them I mean of course me) to the flames or we offer them another route by which they can come without fear into the presence of the Saviour. The Church asks 'if you fear the Son do you also fear the mother?' And who can fear Mary? The despairing can turn to her and she will raise them from the earth, gather them in her arms and present them to her Divine Son who can refuse nothing from the hands of His most beloved mother. To the accusation that Catholics, through the cult of Mary, add an unnecessary barrier between Christians and Jesus we can reply that on the contrary Marian devotion give us a bridge that bring those who would otherwise be furthest from Him straight into His Sacred Heart.

The labours of Ruth are described thus: 'This is the Moabitess who came with Noemi, from the land of Moab, And she desired leave to glean the ears of corn that remain, following the steps of the reapers: and she hath been in the field from morning till now, and hath not gone home for one moment.' (Ruth 2:6-7) This sounds like Mary who went 'with haste' to support St Elizabeth (Luke 1:39) who stood unflinching at the foot of the Cross (John 19:25) and who constantly prayed at the heart of the Church (Acts 1:14) Her personality has not undergone a change for the worse since she was raised to heaven. If she worked tirelessly for the kingdom of her Son then how much more she does so now. The sinner, fallen from a state of grace and despairing of entering into it again will not call to her in vain. The field in which she works is filled precisely with the lost, the furthest from God, the ones guilty of the most gross sins. Those whose desire to be reconciled is finely balanced with their expectation of damnation will through Mary receive the grace and strength which they need to make that decisive choice, to be transformed through repentance leaving a life wholly given over to darkness behind them, entering the kingdom of light and themselves performing acts of light.

Space does not permit me to say all I could on this subject. So as homework I will leave you to ponder on how much this prayer offered for Ruth was fulfilled in Mary 'The Lord make this woman who cometh into thy house, like Rachel, and Lia, who built up the house of Israel: that she may be an example of virtue in Ephrata, and may have a famous name in Bethlehem' (Ruth 4:11) To the separated brethren of the Protestant traditions I say do not close your eyes to the treasures hidden in Scripture, the whole substance of faith and theology consists in more than a description of events, persons and places. And to those who fear to be excluded from the company of Jesus because they know themselves to be so hardened in wickedness I say put you hand into Mary's hand, she will lead you into His presence and He will have only smiles and love to offer to anyone who accompanies His mother. Mary, refuge of sinners, pray for us.


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                                         Madonna under the Fir Tree- Lucas Cranach the Elder

Mary & Eternal Life

                                     Christ's Farewell to His Apostles- Maesta Duccio

 And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent
John 17:3

Ruth said, “Entreat me not to leave you or to return from following you; for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God; where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if even death parts me from you.”
Ruth 1:16-17


There are degrees of knowledge, particularly knowledge of persons. The longer we know them and the more intimately then the better we know them. In a life beyond the veil of death when we shall encounter Divinity face to face then, certainly we shall know Him far better than we can today. Nonetheless eternity starts now, that is, eternity enters into us and we into it to precisely the extent that we know God. Every moment where we meet Jesus, in the Gospels, in the sacraments, in prayer, in our neighbours is an occasion where time expands into timelessness. There can be no doubt that the human who entered most fully into this intense relationship with the Father, through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit was Mary His mother. In the Old Testament Book of Ruth we can see a type or figure of this relationship.

Ruth is one of these Very Small Books of the Bible that I referred to in my blog Sense & Sensuality. It is a curious work to be incorporated into the Jewish scriptures and there is no obvious reason to account for its presence. It is a lovely story certainly but the Jews had many lovely stories that didn't make the canonical cut. In the context of Jewish historical narrative it does tell us who King David's great-grandmother was but since, as it turns out, she was not only not a Hebrew but, worse than that, she came from their hated neighbours the Moabites, against marrying whom there were strict regulations in much of Old Testament times, you might think that the Jews would be inclined to downplay this fact rather than canonise it. The author of Ruth and the compilers of the canon probably saw in the story not simply an historical account but one which was also profoundly symbolic.

The pivot around which the action revolves is the steadfast love of Ruth, a widow, for Naomi her Israelite mother-in-law who is also a widow and, worse still, has been bereaved of her sons. Ruth follows the advice of the psalmist
Listen, my daughter, and understand;
    pay me careful heed.
Forget your people and your father’s house
Psalm 45:11
She accompanies Naomi who returns to Bethlehem in Israel, in doing so Ruth has to leave behind her own nation and national religion to go to a strange land made up of her hereditary enemies. Her sole reason for doing this is the love she bears for Naomi who, old, widowed and bereaved will need the support of her daughter in law to be able to live. In these two figures we can see Naomi/Israel acting as a light of attraction to Ruth/Gentiles, that is, that the foundation for drawing Ruth into a knowledge and love of God was the power of the way Naomi lived her life as wife, mother, mother-in-law and worshipper of the Lord God of Israel and by extension if all Israel became a nation of Naomi's then the Gentiles could become a world of Ruth's. In Bethlehem the two live humbly and in poverty. The love that Ruth has shown to her mother-in-law wins her the sympathy of Boaz, a local landowner, who allows the Moabite woman to glean from his fields what the harvesters leave behind. And, to make a short story shorter, Boaz marries Ruth who has a son, Obed, whom Naomi raises.

                                              The Visitation- Lucca Della Robbia

So what has this got to do with our Lady and experiencing eternity in the present moment? In the Angelic Salutation St Gabriel said to Mary The Lord is with you but he might equally have said you are with the Lord since he was talking about the close relationship which existed between the Virgin and God. Mary conceived Jesus in her heart before she did so in her womb and one could go further and suggest that before she conceived Him she knew Him. During His mission our Lord stated 'The Father and I are one' (John 10:30) and since Mary from childhood intimately knew the Father it follows that she must have known also the Son. In the relationship between Ruth and Naomi we can see a figure of that between our Lady and the religion of Israel. Ruth clung closely to her out of a selfless love, a love which both eliminated her concern for merely material things, she left behind all that she knew or could have hoped to have in order to follow her mother-in-law, and expressed itself in purely practical ways, she gleaned barley to help feed Naomi. That is, a union was effected between eternal imperishable love and the temporal need of the present moment.

We see in figure too our Lady committing herself to virginity. In seeking to persuade her daughters-in-law to stay in Moab Naomi says 'Go back, my daughters. Why come with me? Have I other sons in my womb who could become your husbands?' (Ruth 1:11) Orpah, Ruth's sister-in-law does go back but Ruth persists thus, so far as she knew, abandoning her chance to become a mother in order to serve Naomi as Mary would later, so far as she knew, abandon her chance of becoming a mother in order to serve the God of Israel with all her mind, strength, spirit and body. By wholly committing everything about herself to the Lord our Lady lived and moved and had her being in the Eternal One while she yet fulfilled her temporal duties.

For Ruth as for Mary events took a surprising turn. When she learns that Boaz has the right to marry her she says to him 'Spread the wing of your cloak over your servant, for you are a redeemer (Ruth 3:9) To which he replies 'May the Lord bless you, my daughter! You have been even more loyal now than before.' (Ruth 3:10) The relationship with Naomi opens up the possibility of a further and deeper relationship with Boaz who has the power to redeem Ruth from poverty and childlessness. Even so Mary's devotion to the religion and God of Israel draws her into a relationship with the Son of the Father.

When Naomi receives her grandson the women of Bethlehem say to her 'his mother is the daughter-in-law who loves you. She is worth more to you than seven sons!' (Ruth 4:15) Here we see a figure of the relationship between Mary and Israel. Through her child (which is also a descendant of Ruth) she brings redemption but also, and crucially, she is valued for herself, for the love and self-sacrifice she brings to all her relationships. All that she does is fruitful and is made tenfold more fruitful through the fruit of her womb Jesus.

In all of Mary's life we see an interweaving of the things of time, her practical works of virtue and love, and the things of eternity. These are not parallel experiences but through her Son and her knowledge of Him, beginning before she conceived Him, they are an invasion of eternity into time and an uplifting of time into eternity. The story of Ruth lays before us a clear example of how this kind of life is to be lived. It is for us, through the grace of God, to follow in the path blazed by these holy women.

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