Christ Slept Here

"In like manner I rested in the sanctified city" (Ecclesiasticus 24:15).

"When someone travels outside of his own country and then returns home, his friends ask him where he stayed. And so, when Christ ascended into heaven, he was asked where he stayed, to which he responded: 'In the sanctified city,' as if to say, not in the city where there is iniquity and contradiction, usury and pain, but 'in the sanctified city,' that is, in the Blessed Virgin, who is called the city of God and the city of the sun. There are three reasons that the Blessed Virgin is called a city. A city is a place of defense, a place of abundance, and a place of peace and concord. This is appropriate to the Blessed Virgin, because she was a city fortified against demons; she was a place of abundance because in her there was wine for good cheer, oil for consolation, and grain for making one strong; and she was a place of peace and concord, because in her there was no war between the spirit and the flesh. And again a city is a place--that is, it ought to be a place--of wisdom and justice."

--Fra Nicola da Milano, O.P., Collation for Wednesday, July 3, 1286, Congregation of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Imola, ed. M. Michèle Mulchahey, Collationes de beata virgine: A Cycle of Preaching in the Dominican Congregation of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Imola, 1286-1287, ed. from Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS. Conv. soppr. G.7.1464, Toronto Medieval Latin Texts 24 (Toronto: Centre for Mediaeval Studies, 1997), p. 37.

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