The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: S. Luke
3. The most obvious interpretation is that Simeon is alluding to Isa. viii. 18, “ Behold I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel.” The wondrous, strange, and hitherto unheard of birth of Christ from a virgin is here called a “sign” or “wonder,” and His Divine teaching, life, death, resurrection, and miracles, by which He clearly showed Himself to be the Messiah, the Saviour of the world. Against this “ sign ” of Christ not only do Jews and heathens speak with the tongue, but bad Christians also by their wicked lives. So Origen and Jansenius. S. Basil, commenting on “ Behold a virgin shall conceive ” (Isa. vii.), favours this view. Tertullian also (De Carne Christi) makes the allusion to Isa. vii., “Therefore, the Lord himself shall give you a sign : Behold a virgin shall conceive, and shall bear a son. We recognise, then, the contradictory sign, the conception and child-bearing of the Virgin Mary, of which these academicians say she bore a child and bore no child, she was a virgin and no virgin.” And these cavillers he answers, “ She bore a child in that she did so of her own flesh ; and she did not bear, in that she bore not of the seed of man. And she was a virgin for man, not a virgin for childbirth.”
Symbolically, Cajetan says, “Christ was the sign of the reconciliation of the human race with God.” And Dionysius, “The sign of the covenant between God and man, that the flood was no more to be brought upon the earth.” Others take “ sign ” as that with which God’s sheep are marked : Christians are to be marked with the faith of Christ, His baptism, and His character as a sign, that they may be distinguished from infidels. Barradius thinks that the allusion is to the brazen serpent which Moses set up, for a sign, that those who looked at it might be cured of the serpent’s bite, Num. xxi.
Ver. 35. — Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also , that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. “Sword” in the Arabic version, lance; the Greek means both sword and lance or dart.
What is this sword ?
1. Some understand doubt in her faith ; that the Blessed Virgin, when she saw Christ suffering so fearfully from the violence of the Jews, and dying on the Cross, doubted as to whether He would rise again, as He had foretold. In this sense speak Origen (Hom. xvii.), Titus, Theophylact, and others. This, however, is an error, for such a feeling were unworthy of the Deipara, and that she experienced it is counter to the common sense of the Church. For so the Blessed Virgin would have sinned by unbelief. Indeed, the authors cited are sometimes explained as meaning by “doubt,” admiration, mental perturbation, and inward questionings.
2. S. Eucherius of Lyons (Hom. in Dominicam), understands the sword of the Spirit — the word of God, i.e., the spirit of prophecy, as who should say, The sword of the prophetic spirit shall pass through thy soul, O Mary, to reveal to thee the secrets of Holy Scripture and the hidden thoughts of men, as in Cana of Galilee when thou shalt say, “ Whatsoever He telleth you, do it,” knowing that Christ will command them to draw the water which He is to turn into wine. So it is that the Apostle says in Heb. iv. 12, “The word of the Lord is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” And S. Ambrose understands it of the prudence of the Virgin, who was not without knowledge of heavenly secrets.
3. It has been supposed by some, as Amphilochius (Hom. De Occurs . Dom.) bears witness, that the Blessed Virgin really received the crown of martyrdom by the sword, but this is contrary to all belief in history.
4. The true interpretation of “sword” here is with reference to the sufferings inflicted on Christ, or rather contradiction spoken of a little before; for the contradiction of the tongue is spoken of in Scripture as a sword, as in Ps. lvii. 4, “ The sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword;” and Ps. lxiv. 3, “Who whet their tongues like a sword ; ” and Ps. cv. 18, “The sword hath passed through His soul” (Vulg.) This sword, then, is twofold, (1.) The sword of the tongue. For the Blessed Virgin, hearing the insults, calumnies, and blasphemies with which Christ was assailed by the Jews, even when He was crucified, suffered intense tortures, just as though a sword had been struck through her soul. (2.) The sword of iron — the nails and other torments which not only pierced the body and soul of Christ, but also pierced the soul of the Virgin. Just as when a man stabs with a sword at two persons who are next each other so as to kill the one and pierce and wound the other. Such is the interpretation of S. Augustine (Ep. 59, ad Paulinum), Sophronius (Hom. de Assumptione), Francis Lucas, Jansenius, Toletus, Barradius, and others.
How great was the torture inflicted by this sword we may gather, with Toletus, First, from the fact that it was her Son Who suffered, whom the Mother of God loved more than herself, so that she would far rather have suffered and been crucified herself. Love is the measure of sorrow. Secondly , from the severity of Christ’s torments and the wideness of their extent; for He suffered the most fearful agonies in all His senses and all His members, and all this the Blessed Virgin endured also by her sympathy with Him. Thirdly , the dignity of the Personage who suffered ; for the Blessed Virgin pondered deeply the fact that this was the True God, the Messiah, and Saviour of the World. Fourthly , the long duration of His sufferings ; for Christ suffered all His life long, until He breathed forth His Soul on the Cross. Fifthly, His loneliness; for He suffered alone, deserted by His Apostles and all His friends, by the angels, and by God Himself, so that He cried aloud, “ My God ! why hast Thou forsaken Me ? ” For, though the Blessed Virgin stood by Him and suffered with Him, yet did the Mother’s anguish but add a new pang to the Son’s torments, and this grief again had its echo in the Mother’s soul.
So it is that S. John of Damascus (de Fide, lib. iv. cap. xv.) remarks, “The pains she had escaped in childbirth she bore at the time of His Passion, so that she felt her bosom torn asunder by reason of the depth of her maternal love.” It is for this reason that the doctors teach that the Blessed Virgin was a martyr, and more than a martyr. As Christ, in His Passion, was tormented more than all the martyrs, so too was the Blessed Virgin by her sympathy with Him ; and by this torment she would have been overcome and would have died had not God preserved her life by His special support. As, therefore, S. John the evangelist, who was put into the vessel of boiling oil, is a martyr, because this suffering would, in the natural course, have resulted in his death, if God had not preserved his life by a miracle, so also is the Blessed Virgin.
It may be objected to this that the Jews did not wish to torture or kill the Blessed Virgin, but only Christ. But, in torturing Christ, they tortured His Virgin Mother, just as he who tortures the body tortures the soul, for she was more closely joined to Christ in feeling than the body to the soul. Besides, the Jews persecuted all the relatives of Christ, as they did His apostles and disciples, out of hatred of Him. S. Bridget (Serm. Angelic . cc. xvii., xviii.) gives a pathetic account of the strength of this sword of the Virgin’s sorrow.
Symbolically, S. Bernard (Serm. xxix.) interprets this sword or dart as love : for where there is sorrow there too is love ; in love there is no living without sorrow, nor in sorrow without love. “The chosen arrow,” he says, “is the love of Christ, which not only pierced, but pierced through and through, the soul of Mary, so that it left in her virginal breast not the smallest part void of love, but with all her heart, and all her soul, and all her strength, she loved. And truly, again, it penetrated through her to come to us, that of that fulness we might all receive, and she might be the Mother of that love whose father is the love of God. . . . And in her whole self did she receive the vast sweet wound of love. Happy shall I think myself if sometimes I may feel pricked with but the very tip of that sword’s point, that my soul too may say, I am wounded with love.”
That the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed . An obscure sentence, and difficult of interpretation.
1. S. Hilary, who by “ sword ” understands the Day of Judgment, easily settles the difficulty. The sword, he interprets, shall dissect and lay open the hearts of men — even of the Blessed Virgin. This is the force of the words of the Apocalypse about Christ, “And from His mouth there went forth a sharp two-edged sword.”
2. Eucherius, taking “ sword ” as the spirit of prophecy, interprets that this sword was given to the Blessed Virgin that she might know the secret thoughts of men.
3. Euthymius — Many, seeing the miracles and the wisdom of Jesus, thought within themselves that He had descended from Heaven, and was not the son of Mary ; but, when they saw her at the cross of Christ, mourning and in such tribulation, they abandoned this idea, believing that she who felt His sorrows so deeply must be His mother indeed.