By JAMES MONTI
When in His infinite wisdom and love God fashioned man in His image and likeness, He imparted to the human body a remarkable and matching pair of members specifically crafted to imitate the Creator in His work of creation — the hands.
And when in the fullness of time Our Lord refashioned the world by His great work of redemption, He imparted to the human hand new powers even more remarkable than what had already been given. For now the hand became an efficacious instrument of grace, an instrument for conferring, confecting, celebrating, and solemnizing the sacraments.
The hands of a priest, conformed by Ordination to those of Christ Himself, were given the unimaginable power of bringing God Incarnate down upon the altar in the Holy Eucharist. Those ordained hands too were given the privilege of preparing man to see God in eternal bliss through the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick.
The hands of the laity were given a new splendor in their own right, for the joining of the hands and the placement of rings upon them became universal expressions of the sacrament that is uniquely the laity’s own, the Sacrament of Matrimony.
The human hand is exquisitely expressive, embodying as it does the strength of a man’s masculinity and the refinement of a woman’s femininity. With his hands a man provides for his family; with her hands a woman cares for her family. The hands also partake in a most intimate manner in one’s posture of prayer.
Glorious above all others are the hands of the New Adam and the New Eve, the hands of Our Lord and Our Lady.
In a meditation upon the Fifth Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary, the Jesuit priest Gaspar de Loarte (+1578) says of Christ’s hands:
“Behold those most powerful hands, with which He fashioned Heaven and earth, and with which He wrought so many miracles, and how, pierced on the Cross, they would drip the most precious liquid of His most sacred Blood, sufficient for healing the spiritual infirmities of all who are willing to unite themselves to Him; this indeed is the salubrious and choicest myrrh, as the Spouse says in Canticles, which dripped from His hands and fingers” (cf. Song 5:5) (Piae meditationes in quindecim mysteria Rosarii Beatissimae Virginis Mariae Dominae nostrae, Mainz, 1598, p. 88).
Beginning in Bethlehem, Our Lady lovingly ministered to Our Lord with her virginal hands, cradling Him, feeding Him, sewing for Him, and clothing Him with her hands. And countless artists have visualized on canvas and in stone the pious belief that after the death of Our Lord on the cross, the hands of Mary received His lifeless body.
But it was also on Calvary that the hands of Our Lady solemnly received a new mission when before He died Our Lord enjoined her, “Woman, behold, your son!” (John 19:26). With these words Christ entrusted us all to the maternal hands of Mary.
Those lovely hands of hers have been very busy ever since. For her hands are ceaselessly occupied with the holy “commerce” between Heaven and Earth, taking our petitions here below directly to her divine Son and conveying back to us His gifts and His replies to our supplications.
Drawing upon a verse from the description of a virtuous wife in the Book of Proverbs, “She opens her hand to the poor, and reaches out her hands to the needy” (Prov. 31:20), the French theologian Richard of Saint-Laurent (+c. 1250) observes that Our Lady dispenses very abundantly and generously spiritual gifts from her divine Son (De Laudibus Beatae Mariae Virginis, Douai, France, 1625, book 2, part 2, column 109).
The rays of light pouring down from Our Lady’s hands that St. Catherine Labouré saw in the 1830 vision of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal attest to the teaching that Mary is the Mediatrix of all graces from God.
But in addition to dispensing graces, Our Lady takes into her hands our good works to present them to God, as the thirteenth-century Franciscan Conrad of Saxony (+1279) explains:
“Mary is the mistress of men in the world; of this mistress in the Psalm [123:2] it is said: ‘as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress. . . .’ The handmaid of the mistress Mary is any faithful soul, yes indeed also the universal Church. The eyes of this handmaid ought always to be upon the hands of her mistress, for the eyes of the Church, the eyes of all of us, ought always to look toward the hands of Mary, that through her hands we may receive every good thing, and through her hands we may offer to the Lord whatever good we do. For by the hands of this mistress we have every good thing we possess….It is well for us, dearest [brethren], it is well for us that we have such a mistress, who has hands so generous to us, and is so mighty before the Lord concerning us, that all of us can be safe fleeing to her” (Speculum Beatae Mariae Virginis, Quaracchi, Italy, 1904, pp. 40-41).
In keeping with the longstanding tradition that Our Lady as the archetype of perfect womanhood and perfect femininity was endowed not only interiorly but even exteriorly with perfect beauty, Richard of Saint-Laurent describes the loveliness of Mary’s hands as symbolic of her virtues:
“The beauty of the hands also consists much in the conjunction of the fingers, or their joints, for the finger, as it were, is said to be joined becomingly, and they are these fingers, which designate distinct works, straight by intention, flexible by obedience, graceful by mortification, white by innocence, long by perseverance, articulately distinct by discretion, well-rounded by the desire of eternity, and fortified with oils by final endurance of adversities” (De Laudibus Beatae Mariae Virginis, book 5, column 372).
Artists have variously depicted the hands of Our Lady, often folded in prayer, the ultimate visual expression of her ceaseless intercession for us. Indeed it was with folded hands that she revealed herself in the apparitions of Lourdes and Fatima and on the miraculous tilma of Guadalupe.
The Persistent Widow
But Our Lady’s hands have also been depicted in an open gesture expressing the total surrender and offering of herself to God, saying with her hands what she said to the Angel Gabriel, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord” (Luke 1:38). Among the finest portrayals of this is one of Francisco de Zurbaran’s later works celebrating the Immaculate Conception, painted in the 1640s (The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, collection of Placido Arango).
Our Lady appears as a very young teenager, clothed in a broad white dress resembling a wedding gown, her face gazing upward. What is most striking about the picture is her hands, exquisitely rendered by the artist, gracefully turned almost completely upward, as if she were holding her spotless soul in them to offer it to God.
For me personally, the painting not only expresses Our Lady’s total donation of herself to God, but also seems to invite us to imagine our petitions securely resting in those beautiful hands of hers. It is in her hands that our lowly supplications are made fragrant with her holiness, rendering them very agreeable to Our Lord.
Imagine, if you will, kneeling at the feet of Our Lady and reverently placing into her lovely hands your petition as she looks earnestly and intently into your eyes, listening attentively to your supplication. Think of her then rising and hastening to the throne of her divine Son. Picture her clutching your petition in her hands as she presents it to Him, lovingly remonstrating with Him that He might grant your request. Imagine her then hurrying back to you, eager to bring you the good news of His reply.
Our Lady absolutely loves us to “pester” her with our requests, for she loves to “pester” her divine Son with them, as He invited us all to do with His parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8). A book about the Litany of Loreto expresses this quite well: “. . . if our prayers be not heard instantly, reiterate them. If the door be not opened after knocking once, knock again, and knock louder, and, most certainly, it will eventually be opened” (The Illustrated Litany of Loretto in Fifty-six Titles, Dublin, 1878, sig. Fv).
In Franco Zeffirelli’s classic 1977 movie Jesus of Nazareth, a brief but exquisite scene depicts one of the Disciples of Christ visiting Our Lady in Nazareth; as he bends down to kiss with veneration the hem of her gown she tenderly places her hand upon his head. Only in the next life will we come to know in full the enormity of Mary’s maternal love with which she responds to even the smallest expressions of love from us.
And in the age to come, when at the end of time our bodies are restored to us, surely we will seek to kiss the hands of her who so tenderly ministered to us from above during our earthly pilgrimage to the Heavenly Jerusalem.
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