In 1965 I was married to a lady whose first name is Lovelace. The solitary pronoun I changed to we. All the old courtly language came alive for me: “my lady,” “my gracious lady,” and even the word “courtesy” itself. Suddenly these quaint notions and phrases were no longer merely quaint. Since my “field” was English language and letters, I knew and liked the quaint phrases. But scholarship could only preserve them, the way lovely artifacts and relics are kept intact in museums and reliquaries. It could not vivify them and make them leap into vibrant life.

Marriage did this for me. Gradually, I found that lovely things that had heretofore existed as truths to be admired and defended were alive. More than that, they were alive with life in the way we mortals, as opposed to the angels, encounter it, namely, in real flesh and blood.

We may say that marriage is a spiritual union. Some marriages, because of an extraordinary mutual vocation or because of some involuntary debility, exist only as spiritual unions; they are not the pattern. They are not what we mortals imagine when we speak of marriage, much less when we enter into marriage. The “spiritual” union of these two selves, with all that this entails of personalities, capacities, inclinations, potentialities, and everything else, is sealed and given shape, nay, is effected, by being physical. The physical union is more than simply the expression of love. It assists the continuous creation of that love. It is the mode under which that love is known.

The very routines of domestic living become the bearers of significance, not as though there is now some added meaning in common activities like washing dishes, shopping, and drinking tea; but that simply by being themselves, these activities mediate the mystery to us, as it were. We are married. What does that mean? Where does the transaction exist? What is this “holy estate”? Where do our ordinary selves touch the mystery of holy matrimony?

Wherever the mystery may lodge—in my heart and Lovelace’s, or in heaven, or in “the nature of things”—it takes on present actuality for us in tangible forms. The inner, spiritual bond is there, but it takes on shape and substance in physical forms. We discover this the minute we find we must be away from one another. We are just as married, spiritually, when we are a thousand miles apart. But spiritual union is not enough. We are not angels. Being near to each other matters. Touch matters. Our union exists in more than the world of thoughts.

The cups of tea together, the conversations, the coming and going that our different responsibilities ask of us, and our sleeping together all express the inner bond that is there, but they also give a human shape to that bond. We may say even more: these outward things turn out to have been transfigured—transubstantiated, so to speak—by the inner reality of sacred marriage. Now it is a cup of tea with my spouse. Now it is my work and hers, constituting one life.

Sexuality itself is hallowed by the sacred bond, whereas, without that bond it is profane. The same act is called by different names according to whether the inner reality is absent or present: fornication or union, charade or a reality, desecration or a holy thing.

All of us, from the peasants to the philosophers, know these things from ordinary human experience. The greater the significance of something, the more difficult it becomes to divide the inner from the outer. Put the other way around, the more profound our experience, the more we discover the seamlessness that recalls Eden to us and anticipates Paradise.

A husband and wife do not have two relationships, one on the spiritual level and another on the physical. The more perfect a marriage grows, the more these two become indistinguishable. If, because of infirmity, age, or necessity of one sort or another, they are driven apart physically, they then experience something of the division between spirit and flesh that fractures all of mortal life. Marriage has been rightly perceived by all religions and cultures to be in some sense hallowed. In this strange bond we come close to that perfect wholeness for which we were made and into which we ourselves introduced division.

Christians believe, however, that God has done more about that tragic division than merely leave us with reminders, like marriage, of the oneness of spirit and flesh that marked the original Creation. They believe that in the Incarnation that oneness was restored to human life.

Other religions have their ways of coping with the division. Most of them, one way or another, set the unseen realm over against the seen and end up denigrating the latter. For them, release, or salvation, comes when we are set free from the prison of this flesh and fly away into the Aether, or the Oversoul, or the All.

Christianity, on the other hand, throws up roadblocks to any such itinerary. It is heavy with physical, and even clinical, details. For thousands of years of human history, according to Christianity, the way was prepared for our salvation, not by the Lord God’s weaning men away from their physical life and teaching them to be spiritual, as the Buddha and Plato and other sages have urged. Rather, the way He laid out was crowded with altars of stone, and bloody pelts, and entrails and great haunches of lamb and beef, and gold and incense and fine-twined linen, and immense golden bulls holding up the brazen sea in the Temple. Doves, heifers, bullocks, rams—it was very crowded.

But that was all primitive. Surely something spiritual would emerge from those elementary lessons. Surely thoughtful men might anticipate the day when all of this would be put behind and be replaced with elevated thoughts and spirituality.

Indeed it was all put behind. There came an end to those gory altars and all that slaughter. But it was not a tissue of elevated thoughts that replaced them. Rather, an angel appeared to a woman and said, “Hail!” What we now had, far from the summons away from the physical realm that highminded men might have wished, was gynecology, obstetrics, and a birth. Whatever we may imagine about the spiritual rhapsody that might have attended this angelic visitation to the Virgin, the one thing we know to have occurred was a conception. The Virgin’s womb teemed.

It was embarrassing to the religious mind. It proved a scandal. The whole ensuing story bothered and even enraged religious men, and it has continued to do so. Christian history is littered not only with the bones of martyrs who have died at the hands of enemies who hated this story but also with the confused and heretical attempts of Christians themselves to skirt it. Seizing on Saint Paul’s vocabulary and wrenching it about, they have tried to pit the spiritual against the physical and have tried to make Christianity like Buddhism, a religion that summons us away from earthly, earthy life.

It has not only been Christianity’s enemies and its heretics who have done this. Some of its stalwarts, defending with all zeal the gospel that tells of Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Circumcision, Purification, Temptation, Last Supper, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension have by some unwitting alchemy managed to leave with the faithful the idea that Christian worship and devotion exist in a realm detached from the physical.

Some modes of Christian worship, for example, in reaction to the riot of superstition that bedeviled the latter Middle Ages, went to the extreme of jettisoning altogether the ancient liturgy of the Church and substituted for that liturgy a meeting or a “worship service.” Gone now was the ceremonial enactment of the great events of the gospel, which kept before the eyes of the faithful, day by day, century after century, that whole drama in which the Word took on our flesh and lived our human life. Gone now was the yearly round that marked the events of His life—that sequence of Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Circumcision, and the rest, all so physical.

In its place came the verbal iteration of the titantic abstractions of theology, election, sovereignty, predestination, atonement, justification. Gone, in the name of an abstract grace, was the Holy Sacrament to which mortal creatures had come in faith for so many centuries to make the offering of themselves, their prayers, their adoration, and their sufferings one with the only perfect self-offering and sacrifice ever offered to the Most High, namely, that of the Lamb of God at the cross.

In the storm and stress of reform, a division had entered once again. Faith was pitted against works. The Word was pitted against Sacrament. Inner devotion was pitted against enactment. Even the Bible was pitted against the Church. Sola Scriptura! rang out, as though the Incarnation were a footnote to revelation and the Church itself an afterthought.

The interior was pitted against the exterior. The Christians who stressed election and atonement and justification—those thunderous mysteries of Redemption—expunged from their public observances almost all ceremonial recognition of the actual physical events to which those thunderous mysteries are always anchored. The new piety seemed to forget that revelation and redemption had not come to us only in a book.

The God who had given the Book on Sinai had, in the last times, spoken, not merely through evangelists and apostles, but in a Son, born of a virgin, circumcised, presented in the temple, tempted, slain, risen, ascended, and now offering his Body and Blood to us for our food. Our mortal life, with all of its routines, its physical conditions, its triumphs and its sufferings, was borne by this Son. He spoke to us in His teaching to be sure, but all that He said was clothed in flesh and enacted for us in His life, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension.

For some Christians it came to seem that Pauline theology constituted the nub of revelation and that the drama of the Incarnation was a mere necessary preliminary mechanism for getting the thing done and ushering in the era of theology and spirituality. For them it became difficult to see that in the events of the gospel itself the entire drama of revelation was played out and that to keep those events always before the eyes of the faithful was the unceasing task of the Church.

I have spoken of the “ceremonial recognition” of the actual physical events of the gospel, events that in their very simplicity are freighted with rich mystery for us. I have mentioned the yearly round that marks and celebrates those events. Almost all Christians, with the exception of a few groups who refrain for conscience’ sake, mark the Nativity and the Resurrection with great joy. Christmas and Easter remain as a sort of skeletal Christian year throughout Christendom.

When Lovelace and I settled in New York, our parish church was one that maintained the ancient ceremonial worship of the Church and observed the whole Christian year with great joy. The church itself was dedicated to Saint Mary the Virgin.

In some Christian traditions churches are named after a street: Park Street, Lake Avenue, or Wealthy Street. In others, polity is honored: First Baptist, Tenth Presbyterian. In still others, a man is honoree: Moody Church, Judson Church, the Lutheran Church. In still others, some aspect of the Faith is taken as a sort of banner for the church: Calvary Church, The Bible Church, Grace Chapel. Sometimes friendliness is sought: The Church by the Side of the Road or The Church of the Open Door. Sometimes a special biblical word is taken for a name: Berachah, Bethany, Maranatha, Zion.

Most of these names would stem from comparatively recent tradition in Church history. But if we go back many centuries, we will find very much the same idea at work—that is, that it is a worthy thing to stress some aspect of the Faith or to honor some exemplary Christian in the naming of a local parish. The idea has never been that the name of the church in question excludes other aspects of the Faith, as though in Grace Chapel one never hears about good works, or in Calvary Church one never hears about the Resurrection, or in Moody Church greater honor is paid to D. L. Moody than to God. All churches belong to God and none other, but in naming their parishes, Christians have often sought some modest reminder of one aspect of the gospel.

In the ancient churches the tendency was to name the parish after something or someone important to the Faith. The cathedral in Norwich, England, for example, is named The Cathedral of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. This does not mean that it stands somehow closer to the center of things than, say, Westminster Abbey, which is dedicated to Saint Peter, even though everyone would agree that the Trinity is indeed the center. Both places would claim to teach and celebrate the whole Faith. But since we are limited mortals and cannot maintain our grasp very well on everything at once, we find that it is worth choosing a foothold, so to speak, in the immense massif of the Faith.

Some churches in the ancient tradition are named after gospel events: The Church of the Incarnation, The Nativity, The Transfiguration, The Ascension, and so forth. Some are named after apostles rather than more recent dignitaries: Saint Paul, Saint John, Saint Thomas. Some are named after figures exemplary of the Christian life, either by virtue of martyrdom or of extraordinary sanctity: Saint Polycarp, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Saint Francis, Saint Bridget.

Many of the ancient churches were dedicated to Mary. As in the case of churches dedicated to Moody or Judson, the idea here was not to pay honor to a mortal instead of God who alone may be worshiped but, rather, to have the church stand as a perpetual witness to the Faith itself, with Mary remembered and honored as the central human figure of the Faith.

If we are speaking of the great train of all who have gone before us in the Faith—patriarchs, prophets, kings, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, fathers, doctors, confessors, bishops, virgins, widows, and infants—then Mary unquestionably stands in the place of preeminence by virtue of her unique role in the drama of Redemption. Whereas all these others bore witness to the Word, she bore the Word. In no other mortal figure do we see the mystery of Redemption so richly revealed. God took up His abode in her flesh. Nay, we may say more: God the Word received His human flesh from the gift of the Virgin. Mystery of mysteries: this divine humility that will, as Creator, receive Its very flesh from Its creature. Pattern of all charity, that will place Itself in debt to Its debtors; the Everlasting Son content to call this woman Mother, who herself was hailed by Dante as figlia del tuo figlio, daughter of your Son.

The Virgin is the great archetype of what God looks for when He comes to us. “Be it unto me according to thy word,” she said;12 whereas, our first parents said in effect, “Be it unto me according my word.” Her humility and her obedience—“Behold the handmaid of the Lord!”—are synonymous with her exaltation. “Hail!” said the angel Gabriel. “Highly favored! Blessed art thou among women.”13 Her cousin Elisabeth hailed her with a similar courtesy, awestruck that the mother of the Lord should deign to visit her.

Why all these courtesies? Was the angel inaugurating a greatly mistaken piety? Was Elisabeth overzealous? Would these greetings not seem to deflect our attention from God, who alone is to receive our worship? Has not that angelic greeting proved to be the fountainhead of a whole cult that has supplanted the worship of Christ Himself?

Millions of Christians who honor this most highly favored Lady do seem to hold her Son in an almost paralytic awe, as though He were a sultan or khan whose name must hardly be uttered, from sheer fear. Their prayers and devotions imply that she is, somehow, more gracious, more understanding, more bountiful, and more lovely than her Son. To the extent that this is true, devotion has gone awry.

The antidote has impoverished millions of other Christians. A parsimonious notion of God’s glory has been one result of the revulsion felt by so many over the honor paid to Mary, as though to say, If God alone is all-glorious, then no one else is glorious at all. No exaltation may be admitted for any other creature, since this would endanger the exclusive prerogative of God.

But this is to imagine a paltry court. What king surrounds himself with warped, dwarfish, worthless creatures? The more glorious the king, the more glorious are the titles and honors he bestows. The plumes, cockades, coronets, diadems, mantles, and rosettes that deck his retinue testify to one thing alone, his own majesty and munificence. He is a very great king, to have figures of such immense dignity in his train, or even better, to have raised them to such dignity. These great lords and ladies, mantled and crowned with the highest possible honor and rank are, precisely, his vassals. This glittering array is his court! All glory to him and, in him, glory and honor to these others.

We know all of this from reading about the courts of great kings in our own history. We also know it of God, who is attended by creatures of such burning splendor that we can scarcely imagine them: angels, archangels, virtues, thrones, dominations, princedoms, powers, and then the terrible cherubim, and finally the seraphim themselves. Who knows what all of this is? It is the host of immortals.

This does not exhaust the court of the Lord, however. In this throng are creatures who, beyond imagination, bear a dignity excelling that of the immortals. These are the ones of whom alone it is said that they were made in God’s image. This is not said even of the seraphim. What it might mean no one knows yet, but it is a dignity mantling them alone.

Even beyond this, the mantle of their flesh is the mantle taken by God Himself at His Incarnation. Most glorious mantle—no ermine, no purple, no cloth of gold, no robe of angelic light can match it.

And not only this, we are taught by the apostle Paul that these creatures, redeemed from their own fall into wretchedness, are now crowned and made to reign with Christ Himself. Glory piled upon glory. What songs will celebrate the glory of this multitude? What acclamations will answer to its splendor? Figures of immense dignity appear among them: Adam, Eve, Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Deborah, Elijah, and countless others.

There is one whose dignity is shared by no other. She is a woman, the humblest of them all. No empress, prophetess, or conqueror she, only the handmaid of the Lord. But in her exaltation we see the divine magnanimity, which has regarded the lowliness of His handmaiden and has exalted the humble and meek. In her we learn of God who brings to nothing the pride of the great and sends the rich away empty. “Magnificat!” she sings, and “Hail!” we answer, in the joyful courtesies of heaven.

The Christian piety that has been afraid almost to name, much less to hail, the Virgin and to join the angel Gabriel and Elisabeth in according blessing and exaltation to her is a piety that has impoverished itself. Stalwart for the glory of God alone, it has been afraid to see the amplitude of that glory, which brims and overflows and splashes outward in a surging golden tide, gilding everything that it touches. Saint Francis had an eye for this and exulted in everything made by God, hailing even the sun and the moon and the fire as brothers and sisters, in a poetic overflow of charity. In contrast to this, the punctilious insistence that nothing be exalted and glorified except God alone begins to seem parsimonious.

We are taught by Scripture that nothing may be worshiped but God alone. The ancient Church has always taught this, reserving for God alone the honor known as latria. But, below this worship paid to the Most High, there is a whole scale of exultation and exaltation that rejoices in the plenitude of the divine glory and leaps to hail every creature in Whom that glory is seen.

A Christian devotion afraid to join the angel of God in hailing the Virgin as highly exalted is a devotion cramped either by ignorance or fear.