Blessed Virgin Mary

As with all babes told of their beginning, we are reminded of our parents, the Blessed Virgin Mary, betrothed to a man in the line of David. The words “virgin” and “betrothed” present the innocence of unknowing. A thirteen-year-old girl on the threshold of an abyss. She is already experiencing the strangeness of the physical changes of puberty and now she is betrothed to marry. What will her marriage look like? What will her future hold? Who will she become? Up to this point in the story, the answer to these questions is profound silence. Until, a voice speaks from the void, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.” Whether the angel Gabriel was a bright light with wings, a terrifying angelic creature as artists depict, or if perhaps he appeared as a man, though not human, I do not know. What terrified Mary, however, was not the sight of the angel but “what sort of greeting this might be.” This greeting had never been addressed to a man or a woman in all Scripture. She alone is first given the title, “full of grace.” We are not told of her mighty works, accomplishments, or the character traits that place her in a poised position of divine favor; only that she “has found favor with God.” This is not a favor earned but a favor gifted. So too are the angelic words a gift to the Blessed Virgin, for as St Augustine says, “Her nearness as a Mother would have been of no profit to Mary, had she not borne Christ in her heart after a more blessed manner than in her flesh.”[i] And here the stooping of God is met with the meekness of a child. There is no force, / only a divine invitation.

 I can only imagine how the following words of the messenger Gabriel would have struck her burning ears. The promise given to David long ago passed down from generation to generation as the message of hope, has found its resting place in the womb of Mary. The seed of David is to be planted in the fertile ground of the virginal womb. And the Blessed Virgin shall become the dwelling place of the Son of the Most High; the tabernacle where God shall meet his people; and the Ark of the Covenant containing the fulfillment of the promises of the awaited Messiah. For God has made a house for himself in the womb of the Virgin, so that He might take on our flesh and unite us with Himself forever. This was the message of the angel; that the womb of Mary might contain the uncontainable God, and bring salvation to the world. At these words, God did not manipulate, command, or force his way. Instead, the invitation of God stood before the child, and God waited. [ii]

      Did Mary understand all the implications of what the angel said to her? Could she have known that her consent would put her at the foot of the cross, watching her son being crucified through her bloodshot eyes, with her vision obscured by tears? Yet, she consented, and "it was this consent that illumined her." [iii] Of course, she had questions, / “How can this be, since I have no husband?” However, as one writer notes, “Acceptance of reality is not the same as full knowledge or even understanding of reality, and that is okay.”[iv] Mary’s questions did not stop here but would continue throughout her life when she and Joseph could not find the young Jesus, only to discover him teaching at the temple, she would ask, “How can this be?” When the wedding at Canna ran out of wine, she would imply to our Lord, “How can this be?” And at the foot of the cross as she watched her Sondying, the one who was to “reign over the house of Jacob forever,” I can only imagine that she asked, “How can this be?” And yet, as the French monk Jean Pierre de Caussade remarks, “Her answer to the angel when she said: ‘Let it be unto me according to thy word’: contained all the mystic theology of her ancestors to whom everything was reduced, as it is now, to the purest, simplest submission of the soul to the will of God, under whatever form it presents itself. This beautiful and exalted state, which was the basis of the spiritual life of Mary, shines conspicuously in these simple words, ‘Let it be unto me.’”[v]  

      We call Mary Theotokos—the God-bearer—for she bore the image of Christ in body and heart. So too, we are offered to follow in her footsteps and bear the person of Christ in our life, giving our fiat to the moments where God meets us, “let it be.” But this invitation to bear Christ is found first in the stooping of God to us, in the incarnation, then again and again throughout our life. May we always respond with the words first uttered in childlike simplicity: Let it be; for it is in these moments we will bear Christ in our life. 

         The Annunciation by Denise Levertov

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,

almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.

       Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.

       The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.

         God waited.

She was free

to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.
                  ____________________

Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?

         Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.

More often
those moments
      when roads of light and storm
      open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from

in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
                                 God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

                  ____________________

She had been a child who played, ate, slept
like any other child–but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed
in joy not triumph.
Compassion and intelligence
fused in her, indivisible.

Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,

  only asked

a simple, ‘How can this be?’
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power–
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.

                     Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love–

but who was God.

This was the moment no one speaks of,

when she could still refuse.

A breath unbreathed,

                                Spirit,

                                          suspended,

                                                            waiting.

                  ____________________

She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’

Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’

She did not submit with gritted teeth,

                                                       raging, coerced.

Bravest of all humans,

                                  consent illumined her.

The room filled with its light,

the lily glowed in it,

                               and the iridescent wings.

Consent,

              courage unparalleled,

opened her utterly.

[i] St. Augustine, De Sancta Virgin, iii, as quoted in Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 30,1, a.

[ii] Denise Levertov, “The Annunciation”

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Laura Jansson, Fertile Ground, 24

[v] Jean Pierre de Caussade, Abandonment and Divine Providence, 10.