Alma Redemptoris Mater
The Alma Redemptoris Mater is one of the four Marian hymns sung at the end of the hour of Compline. This hymn, used throughout the Advent and Christmas seasons, links the wonder of the Incarnation and the Blessed Virgin’s role in this mysterious task. It is from her that He willed to receive His bodily nature.
St. Athanasius best describes this mystery in the following words:
“But He comes in condescension to show loving-kindness upon us, and to visit us…seeing…how all men were under penalty of death: He took pity on our race, and had mercy on our infirmity, and condescended to our corruption, and, unable to bear that death should have the mastery — lest the creature should perish, and His Father's handiwork in men be spent for nought — He takes unto Himself a body, and that of no different sort from ours. For He did not simply will to become embodied, or will merely to appear. For if He willed merely to appear, He was able to effect His divine appearance by some other and higher means as well. But He takes a body of our kind, and not merely so, but from a spotless and stainless virgin, knowing not a man, a body clean…For being Himself mighty, and Artificer of everything, He prepares the body in the Virgin as a temple unto Himself, and makes it His very own as an instrument, in it manifested, and in it dwelling. And thus taking from our bodies one of like nature, because all were under penalty of the corruption of death He gave it over to death in the stead of all, and offered it to the Father — doing this, moreover, of His loving-kindness.”1
A Merry and Blessed Christmas to you all!
Lyrics
MOTHER of Christ, hear thou thy people's cry
Star of the deep and Portal of the sky!
Mother of Him who thee made from nothing made.
Sinking we strive and call to thee for aid:
Oh, by what joy which Gabriel brought to thee,
Thou Virgin first and last, let us thy mercy see.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word, 8.