But the results of a large-scale survey of academics across all disciplines in every UK university, and a parallel survey of all sectors of UK business, tell a very different story. We only need to take her hand when things go dark and she will guide us to the joy and light of Easter.When people think about how academia links with external organisations they often think in terms of commercialisation of research. She holds the line for us as she did that Black Saturday. We look the Mary as our model in times of hopelessness. This is why we dedicate Saturdays to the Blessed Virgin Mary. She was the buoy that kept the Church afloat when hope sank hers was the light that led the Church as it groped in darkness on Black Saturday. She was the bridge between Good Friday and Easter Sunday that kept the faith when the faith of Peter and the others failed that weekend. So, Mary is a Tower of Ivory because her resolve was as tough as ivory when she stood beneath the cross of Christ when his other apostles and disciples cowered in some dark corner in fear of getting arrested. It is tough on the outside, and white on the inside. What does that mean? Ivory has identical properties as teeth. Mary, then, is the neck of the Church but she isn’t just any neck, but a neck like ivory. It is also why we call her the Mediatrix of all Graces. (Iucunda Semper, 1894) Pope Pius X concurred with this when he said Mary is, “the neck of our head, by which all spiritual gifts are communicated to his mystical body.” (Ad Diem Illum 1904.) This is why one of Mary’s titles is Neck of the Mystical Body. Pope Leo XIII explained that every grace takes a threefold course that is dispensed from God to Christ the head, from Christ to Mary the neck, and from Mary to the rest of the body of the Church. If the Church is the mystical body of Christ, what is the “neck like a tower of ivory?” The answer is Mary. Another way we express this inseparability is to say the Church is the mystical body of Christ the head.
So, just as Eve is bride and “one flesh” with Adam, so is the Church bride and “one flesh” with Christ.
The next verses tell us how this is the model every husband and bride follow when they become “one flesh.” When Christ closed his eyes in death, the Church Fathers saw the blood and water from this side as the symbolic formation of the Church because Christ woke “wake up” from a “deep sleep” three days later.
In Genesis, we read how God put Adam in a deep sleep, opened his side, and from a rib taken out of it, fashioned Eve. The Church is the bride of Christ because it is inseparable from him. In the New Testament perspective, these are words we can put in the lips of Christ that he makes in reference to his bride, the Church. The phrase is only used once in the Bible in the Song of Songs where a bridegroom expresses how beautiful his bride is when he tells her, “ Your neck is like a tower of ivory.” The book, despite its allusion to a sensual encounter, is part of the canon of Scripture because, in the right context, it is an analogy of how God, as a husband, loves his bride, Israel. In the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we invoke her as a Tower of Ivory when we ask her to pray for us.
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