Liturgy and Lectio: Hortus Conclusus Chant

Antiphon for the Immaculate Conception, cf. Song of Songs 4:12

You are a garden enclosed, O Mother of God, a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed: Arise, make haste, my beloved, and come.

A Sister shares her reflections:

This antiphon puts before my gaze the spotless Virgin Mary, but also my own vocation as a bride of Christ. The enclosed garden and sealed fountain bespeak the extraordinary prevenient grace granted to Mary in her Immaculate Conception as the one chosen and beloved of God par excellence, and her absolute fidelity in keeping herself for God, corresponding to all the many subsequent graces of her life. But God has also chosen and loved me, especially in my Baptism and in the grace of a cloistered vocation by which He has called me to live an enclosed life and to let Him seal my love and my life in His Heart, and He passionately desires my fidelity also.

This is clear from the second part of the antiphon, which is a verse from another passage of the Song of Songs. For me it was a long-standing inspiration to seek the cloistered life. Hark, my Lover!... Here He stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattices. My Lover speaks:… Arise my beloved, my beautiful one, and come! I always thought, “If living behind a wall and lattices can make me that lovable to Jesus, that is where I want to be.” This is still where I want to be—enclosed behind our cloister wall, with Jesus gazing at me through the latticed grille from His Eucharistic throne. And mystically, I can be enclosed in the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the new garden of paradise of the New Adam, sharing as another Mary in the graces of both her election and her fidelity.