Mary of the Annunciation

For God alone my soul in silence waits; 
from him comes my salvation
Psalm 62 (Book of Common Prayer)

And the angel said to her: Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God
Luke 1:30

For centuries artists have loved to depict our Lady at prayer when Gabriel appears to her. Although there is nothing in the text to justify this choice it is an artistic intuition which reveals a profound truth. From girlhood to dormition Mary was a person of deep, reflective prayer. This was central to her becoming and being the Mother of God.

It is not that she was drawn close to the Father at the time of the Annunciation in order that she might be made the Mother, rather she became the Mother because she was already so close to the Father. It was (and is) an intimacy of pure and perfect love. The twofold vehicle through which Mary expressed and lived out this love was charitable action and rapt contemplation.

The psalmist, I think, gives us a clue to how this prayer life of the Blessed Virgin worked out in her daily practice. St Luke tells us 'Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart' (Luke 2:19) She would have held in her heart the gifts of God and offered them silently to the Divine Giver. It is not by busy thought or by many words that we can understand His purposes towards us but by the gentle infusion of His Grace. In silence Mary simply held out what was dark to her until such times as the Father through the action of the Spirit illumined them. In His light only did she wish to see. And so it was that she merited to become the mother of the Light of the World. 

In this, as in so many other things, our Lady is a model for us to follow. Reason is an excellent tool and we have been given our intelligence in order to use it. One of its uses is the realisation of its limitations. When it reaches the point beyond which it cannot go it must resist the temptation to speculate, to theorise, to make up self-serving stories. We must, in those specific circumstances, suspend thought and offer our shadows to the merciful Lord who can transform them into purest light. In faith and hope we can silently wait until, in love, God makes our salvation really and truly present within ourselves.

The picture is The Annunciation by Fra Angelico  

Mary and the Word of God

The word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do
Isaiah 55:11

And Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word
Luke 1:38

When the Solemnity of the Annunciation coincides with Eastertide it invites us to consider the great mysteries together. Pre-eminently the Word of the Father is the Son. That Son went forth from the mouth of the Father and became clothed in flesh the moment our Lady gave her glad consent. Before, at the Ascension, He returned to His source the Word experienced the flight into Egypt, the hidden life in Nazareth, the mission in Galilee, the betrayal, abandonment, torture and death of the Passion and the Easter resurrection. All of which constituted, as Isaiah foresaw, a carrying out of the will of the Father, voluntarily undertaken, and an achievement of His purposes using the weapons of humility and seeming defeat.

This all was the work of the Triune God Himself. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are each involved essentially in everything that makes for Man's liberation from the dominion of darkness. It has never been, however, God's way with His free creatures, Men and Angels, to act alone, without their participation in their own emancipation. Before the Son, as Man, could begin to do the will of the Father on earth Mary, as Woman and as our representative, had first to make that precise same choice- voluntary obedience to the Father's will.

The glorious triumph of Easter, then, is radically dependent on the quiet faithfulness of Mary. The work of the Word on earth, in the person of Jesus, is God's will in action. This is an exercise of power which is not imposed upon humans but which comes about through His co-operation with them. It is, to be sure, not a relationship of equals, the distance between God and Man is always infinite except in the God Man Jesus. Nonetheless it is a necessity for the God who *is* Love to act in ways which are true to His essential nature and that includes respecting the freedom of those whom He has created to be free. In Measure for Measure Isabella says-
O, it is excellent
To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant. 
The Lord God is no tyrant therefore He uses His strength with restraint and as a Father not like the pagan gods who were understood to be capricious, deceitful and without restraint of any kind save that imposed by other gods.

It is because God's nature makes human co-operation a necessity for human redemption to be achieved that we can speak of the particular human, Mary, whose co-operation was most necessary as a co-redeemer with Jesus. There is of course only one redeemer, Jesus, and one redemption, through His crucifixion and death, yet without Mary's fiat mihi there would have been no flight into Egypt, no hidden years in Jerusalem and, above all, no Passion, Death and Resurrection. The Father's Word went forth and returned successful not only because it was spoken by Him but also, and crucially, because it was heard and listened to by the Blessed Virgin Mary.

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The painting is from The Life of the Virgin-The Annunciation by Vittore Carpaccio 

Haiku for the Annunciation

Like a thief in the
Night joy breaks into the world.
Hidden in Mary

The Nativity- A Universal Story

                                 Detail from The Census at Bethlehem by Breugel the Elder

Joseph consoled and encouraged the Holy Virgin. He was so good: he suffered so much because the journey was so painful to her. He spoke to her about the good lodgings which he expected to procure at Bethlehem: he knew of a house belonging to some very honest people, where they could be well accommodated at reasonable expense. He praised Bethlehem in general, and said anything he could to console her. This gave me anxiety, as I knew things would turn out otherwise.
The Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ by Anne Catherine Emmerich

As we draw closer to the day when we celebrate The Greatest Story Ever Told (the Nativity, of course, as opposed to the Downton Abbey Christmas special), let us meditate upon the importance of narrative truth. Can we please bring back “the journey”? Or at least some semblance of any actual reality? 
Reality TV badly needs a dose of reality by Viv Groskop

This idea, published in the aggressively secularist Guardian newspaper, that the Nativity story is in some ways the model for an account of "the journey" set me thinking about why this might be so,or regarded as so by many. One of the appealing features (apparently) of Reality TV is that ordinary people go on an "incredible journey" from humble obscurity to fame (or at least celebrity) and fortune (or at least enough money to buy a tastelessly decorated house and some bling). An arc which takes our hero from a log cabin to a pink house. This basic plot line has appeared in thousands of format throughout history from the Hobbit to that saying of Napoleon which goes- Every private in the French army carries a field-marshal's baton in his knapsack.

All of this seems a long way from Joseph and Mary setting out from Nazareth to Bethlehem until we look at the core elements of the story. Our Lady is heavily pregnant and the terrain they must cover is not easy. Thus the journey is a difficult one but they are filled with hope, the child of promise will be born to them when they reach their destination. At journey's end there is disappointment since they cannot find a suitable place to stay. They end up in the poor shelter of a grotto. And then, into the midst of this rejection and poverty a new life is born, angels rejoice, shepherds and wise men celebrate all is life and light, joy and hope. It might be argued that our need to hear this story is so great that imagination has added in details which are not warranted by the extant texts. Without going into the argument about the relative priority of Tradition and Text I propose to look at why each of us feels need to hear the story of "the journey" and why it appears in so many different contexts.

In some ways its obvious that the external elements of the tale are something to which most of us can relate. Very often our lives can be characterised as journeying in hope, facing disappointment and/or rejection and then surmounting those difficulties if not in our own person then through our proxies be these our children, our sports team, our political party or whatever. But then any old quest story would do, and goodness knows we have plenty to choose from, so there is something particular about the Nativity which speaks to us beyond the simple externals of it. The specifically Christian element obviously speaks to Christians and to some extent those culturally influenced by Christianity. That is, we recognise something special in that mother and in that child. They somehow embody both an Everywoman/Everyman quality as well as an emblematic one, standing as signs of goodness and virtue. That is they are paradoxically inspirational figures encouraging us to change ourselves and mirrors of our better selves. Yet even these two combined, the external facts and the Christian content would do not serve to make the story as universal as it is.

There are, I think, two chief elements which combine to universalise the appeal of the Nativity narrative and they are both centered on the figure of Mary. Firstly and necessarily she is pregnant. There are relatively few "journey" stories which feature pregnant women for reasons too numerous to list. One factor would be that pregnancy itself is a journey. Whether our Lady travelled to Bethlehem or not a child would have been born to her, her life would have been transformed. The external details of the trip are simply a reflection in the outer world of a development which in any event was taking place in her inner world. The drama of pregnancy and childbirth is one in which all of us have been involved in, sometimes in more than one capacity. So, insofar as the Nativity describes not only an historical (or quasi-historical for non-believers) event but also an intimate and personal one to each person who hears it then it is a universal story.

                                   Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem- Hugo van der Goes

Again, though, pregnancy is so universal that you might think that any old story would meet our need to encounter this tale, to reflect upon it and celebrate it. Another element is required and this is to be found in Mary's virginity. The appeal extends beyond those who will accept this virginity as a dogmatic truth (as I emphatically do) and includes all those who suspend disbelief for the sake of the inner logic of the story with which they are interacting. There is a Catholic axiom that at the Annunciation our Lady conceived Jesus in her heart before she conceived Him in her virginal womb. Her joyful consent to the plans of God was the foundation to everything that followed and has an essential part in the whole economy of salvation. From the narrative point of view this means that the new hope which Mary carries within her has the force of an Idea. That is to say that she is not simply heavy with child but that she is also filled with everything that that child represents and all of this does not depart from her at the birth of our Lord but remains with her and imbues all that she does not only in relation to Him but in relation to all whom she encounters and all that she does.

This axiom universalises the story because it recasts pregnancy and the journey of pregnancy into a form which everyone, male and female, young and old, can personally identify with. Each of us carry within ourselves ideas, plans, dreams, hopes. We constantly seek to bring them out of our head and hearts and into the world. Our journey through life is an attempt to reach our Bethlehem, to give birth to our child of promise, to share it with a rejoicing world. One of the effects of the doctrine of the Incarnation is that embodies abstract ideas into material realities, it draws together two worlds which often seem far apart. This speaks to a real human need which is why, for example, Protestant denominations which resolutely resist the idea of candles and icons, statues and incense because they think physical objects detract from spiritual worship of the spiritual God will annually re-enact or represent the Nativity. For humans ideas are not enough we need to see them inhabit physical space at least once a year for them to remain real and vital to us.        

The universality of the Nativity narrative is a mixed blessing for the Church. Whilst it ensures that the annual outing of the story is guaranteed a huge audience it contains within itself a seed of temptation. The more the universal is emphasised the bigger and more responsive the audience becomes. However, the evangelical purpose of the Church is to convert lives, to change them, not simply to affirm them, to suggest that everything that people do now is just fine. Always the shadow of the Cross over the crib is to be remembered. Mary is not just a representative figure for all those who carry ideas and hopes towards fruition. She carries a specific Idea, a single Word one whose coming is necessitated by our own fallen and broken state, our propensity to selfishness and sin. Jesus comes into the world to heal the breach that we ourselves have created and the reconciliation is effected by His Passion and death at Easter. Sin is as universal as hope and it hovers over the Nativity story as one of its effective causes (the other being God's infinite causeless love for us). In their efforts to broaden their appeal by the use of an archetypal story which is their peculiar possession Christian's must resist the temptation to dilute its message by focussing exclusively on hearts and flowers to the detriment of thorns and broken life's. As perceptive readers will already have noticed the English word universal has the same meaning as the Greek derived word catholic. In its retelling of the Nativity the Church must always aim to recount it as a Catholic story in every sense of the term.


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Bride of Heaven

A Love Song

Listen, daughter, consider, and turn your ear.
    Forget your own people, and also your father’s house.
11     So the king will desire your beauty
Psalm 45(44):10-11

Many of the psalms have Superscriptions or Headers at their beginning before getting into the actual psalm itself. Most of these are technical or musical notations referring to types of instruments or tunes. Some refer to particular episodes in biblical history to which the psalm supposedly relates; the most famous of these being Psalm 50(51)  A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bath-sheba which explains why David is so repentant in that song. Psalm 45 (confusingly numbered 44 in some Bibles) is unusual in that in addition to the technical part the superscription adds "a love song"  or as one version beguilingly puts it A canticle for the Beloved. It is also unusual in that most Christians agree that its literal meaning is of secondary importance to its spiritual one. Naturally, Christians being what they, there is a bit of a falling out as to what that meaning actually is but we shall come to that by and by.

On the face of it the psalmist seems to be primarily concerned with celebrating a Royal Wedding. Specifically the marriage in Jerusalem of one of the kings descended from David and Solomon to a foreign wife. Perhaps, indeed, that was all that the author consciously intended  to do. There is though a constant motif that runs all the way through the Old Testament in which the relationship between the Almighty and His People Israel is compared to that between husband and wife. It was natural enough then in light of that to incorporate this psalm into that motif. Christianity took that theme up and saw in the bridegroom the figure of Christ and in the bride an image of the Church. And as in the larger so in the lesser it could also be seen as a portrayal of the relationship between the individual believer as lover and Jesus as the Beloved. A further, more controversial, layer of meaning will be referred to later.

What is interesting in the verses I have highlighted here is that they contain a fairly detailed programme of action condensed into a very few words. Poetry has the ability to do this and the psalmist in this case was no mean poet. The Bride is advised to-

• Listen
• Consider
• Turn towards
• Forget i.e. turn away from.

When she has done this and as a result of having done this she will become beautiful (or more beautiful) in the eyes of the King and, therefore, He will desire her. In the context of a Jewish wedding what follows from that will have been in the minds of those who first heard the psalm Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh (Genesis2:24) Where the bride is a human and the groom is God incarnate then what we have here is a prescription for achieving Divine Union where the bride enters by participation into the very being of the Blessed Trinity.

A prescription is only of use if it is possible to fulfil its requirements. So, can we, could the bride, do what the psalmist proposed? The first injunction is 'Listen.' We live in an age where people walk around the streets or sit on public transport listening to personal stereos or mobile phones. When not doing this they listen to TV's, radios, DVD's, movies and even, occasionally, each other. When not listening they are usually talking. People even sleep with TV's turned on. The problem you might think is not that there is too much listening but that there is too little silence. In fact, from a spiritual point of view, there is too little listening because there is too little silence. God speaks to us it is true but in a still small voice (1 Kings 19:12) To hear Him we must listen attentively for Him alone, be still, and know that I am God as another psalm puts it. (Psalm 46:10) To listen to Him requires an effort on our part, a desire to hear Him.

Specifically there are several ways that Christian tradition recommends to us as methods through which we might hear the voice of the Bridegroom. Reading the Scriptures is one, or actually two at least since there is more than one way to read them. We can take a passage or a chapter or a book in the Bible, begin at the beginning and work our way right through to the end. Then we can think about what it means and, if we are wise, we can consult the opinion of others by reading commentaries on the text and see what better minds than ours have made of it. That is one method and the Gospels in particular are well suited to be used in this fashion. Another approach would be the practice known as lectio divina where after prayer we take a very short passage of Scripture read it slowly and/or repeatedly and then  let it slowly sink into us. Not so much thinking analytically about it as holding it in our minds and waiting to see what fruits will spring from the seed within us. As I have already hinted there is the practice of prayer to help our listening too. In this context it cannot consist of a list of demands that we want God to action but rather of an upward motion of our heart inviting a downward motion of His Spirit into us. In my series about Christian Meditation I outline a number of ways to do this.

God also acts at times through human agents. We can hear Him if we pay close attention to the lives of the Saints. The Christians of the Reformation traditions (often called Protestants) tend to restrict themselves to the examples given us by outstanding biblical characters, and indeed there is a rich treasury of such to be found within the pages of the Bible. Catholic and Orthodox Christians look additionally to the many examples of Christian living which the past two thousand years have given us. Throughout the world and throughout the ages Saints of widely varied characters in all sorts of settings have shone like good deeds in a naughty world (Merchant of Venice Act 5 Scene 1) Whatever our own personality type or circumstances might be we will be sure to find a Saint whose life, words or deeds will speak the voice of God to our own condition whether that be the wisdom of a St Therese, the gentle patience of a St Bernadette or the outspoken counsel and visionary insights of a St Catherine of Siena. Nor indeed need we confine ourselves to the past. It is well known in the West that the spiritual traditions of the East call for spiritual seekers to look for wisdom at the feet of gurus. What seems to be a well kept secret is that the West too has a long tradition of Spiritual Directors, male and female, who are steeped in the various contemplative and prayerful spiritualities of Christianity and have the wisdom and experience to guide others.

So, we the Brides can, if we wish, listen to our Lord speaking to us through all these channels and others besides. Then what does the psalmist counsel? 'Consider.' This seems fairly straightforward. Reflect on what we have heard, consider it from various aspects, impact our options. Except that we are not considering a business transaction or a career change neither has our listening been of a conventional kind. With Jesus 'to listen' means 'to encounter.' He is our potential bridegroom, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health. It is not enough just to weigh up with our minds the pros and cons of His proposal to us, though we could certainly do that on the Pascal's Wager principal. We need to respond to Him with our whole selves, body, mind and spirit, because we will be living with Him with our whole selves both in time and in eternity if we accept His offer of marriage. If His call awakens something within us then we need to consider what it is we shall lose if we accept Him as well as what it is we shall have to gain. He may call upon us to sacrifice material things or established relationships upon which we have so far relied and depend instead entirely upon Him and upon Him alone.

Having considered we must turn to Him decisively. We turned aside from our way to listen to Him. We paused to consider what we had heard. Now He becomes our way, He is the route we travel and the destination at which we arrive. He nourishes us, He sustains us, He loves us and unites Himself to us and we allow ourselves to be united. The foreign bride of the psalm is urged to forget her own people, meaning her nation, and her fathers house, meaning I suppose both her family and her national religion. At a literal level this is a sacrifice which Jesus later put in these terms Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:26) It is a radical gamble, to cast yourself into His arms and let everything else slip away from you. And indeed this forgetting of what lies behind is partly a conscious effort of casting aside all impediments. More than that though it is a becoming absorbed in new interests. Very often the close friends of a new bride expect their friendship to continues much as before, the bride herself may expect so too. But gradually as time passes, perhaps as children arrive, the things which concern her, which she cares about, which she is willing to sacrifice for become more and more different from those things which a single girl about town has on her mind. The forgetting then is less a casting of of the old and more a putting on of the new.        

There is a more than literal meaning though to this command to forget. God does not hate families or expect us to do so either. Except for those few people called to live out their Divine Matrimony in monasteries or hermitages most Christians will experience the companionship of the Bridegroom in the context of their own domestic setting, their earthly spouses, children, parents, siblings, friends, communities, Churches. There Jesus is to be an inseparable companion, His friendship and example enriching the way that we give of ourselves to those dear to us, the way that we love and are loved. The turning to Him, the forgetting of earthly chains becomes not a negation of these relationship but a raising up of them to a higher level, a spiritualisation of them. If the Saints have acted as agents of God to us then we must act as agents of God to our neighbours for if we are one flesh with Him how could we do otherwise? There is one important proviso in all that we do however, Every Christian must be a potential martyr. The commitment we have made is one that overrides all others. Given a choice between suffering or even death on the one hand or repudiating our faith, by word or deed, on the other then we must be willing to suffer and dies if needs be. Not because we desire a reward in heaven but because we are faithful spouses. At this point, given many events in recent world history, I feel the need to stress that for Christians the concept of martyrdom consists of a willingness to endure suffering but never, never, never a willingness to inflict it.

The Bride who has done these things, listened, considered and turned towards the Bridegroom, becomes in His eyes beautiful precisely because she has done those things. In the whole history of humankind it sometimes happens, rarely I'm sure but sometimes, that a bride becomes a little vain. She is proud of her beauty and congratulates herself if only within herself about it. In his letter to the Ephesians St Paul lets us into a secret about the bride of Christ.  Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendour, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. (Ephesians 5:25-27) Any beauty we may have comes to us as pure gift from the Bridegroom. What Christians call Grace, the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, is the very thing that prompts us to listen, that helps us to consider wisely and which sustains that act of will by which we turn towards Him and keep turned towards Him. And it is the sacrifice of the Son on the Cross at Calvary that washes us clean from all the acts by which we have disfigured our beauty from the very moment that we first set our heart on anything other than Him. So if we are radiant brides He is our radiance, if we have a beautiful dress He has supplied it. Another motif which runs through the Old Testament is that of adultery, the sin by which Israel turns from the Almighty and runs after other husbands. If we too fall in that way then our Groom stands ready to make us anew if we once again turn back to Him. We have no cause for vanity or pride but many causes for gratefulness and, it maybe, for repentance too.

Not the least cause for our gratitude lies in the fact that He, Creator of all that is seen and unseen, desires us. He loves us. He died for us. We are not instruments to be used we are made by Him in His image and likeness. Despite all that we have done to mar that image, to distort that likeness He will patiently help us to reconfigure ourselves to our Divinely crafted original. He desires us, if we remember this continually then we will as continually strive to make ourselves worthy of that love by allowing His hands to mould us into that which we should always have been had not our blindness and folly led us astray down dark paths where He is not to be found.

And so to the controversy. What I have said so far is I think common ground among most Christian traditions. Catholics see in the figure of the bride all that Protestants see. In addition, however, they discern Mary the Mother of Jesus. In part this is because, in a sense, Mary is the Church. For a time, certainly, the Church consisted of her alone, she was the first to hear of Jesus, the first to have faith in Him, the first to give Him to the world, the first to follow Him. In part also it is because she most assuredly is the spouse of the Holy Spirit for by His power it was that she became fruitful and contained within her womb Him whom the heavens could not contain, the Logos of God, her Son Jesus. But I think even if we lay aside all these claims for Mary which Protestants for reasons of their own baulk at we should all be able to agree that our Lady represents to a superlative degree all those qualities which the psalmist outlines.

Mary listened to the Archangel Gabriel attentively, she considered their meaning she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be (Luke 1:29) And not just once did she listen, not just once did she consider but repeatedly  Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.  (Luke 2:19) His mother treasured all these things in her heart.  (Luke 2:51)  And she turned towards Him and forgot all else at the beginning Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ (Luke 1:38) and at what appeared to be the disastrous end Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister (John 19:25) And, quite literally she was given a new family When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. (John 26-27)  A family which she was at the centre of and family ties which strengthened not weakened their mutual faithfulness to the Bridegroom  When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus  (Acts 1:13-14)      

And we for our part can do nothing better than to imitate Mary. As she chose so can we Those who look to Him are radiant with joy; their faces will never be ashamed. (Psalm 34:5)
  
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Light is Sown

11 Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart.
Psalm 97 Geneva Bible

This verse tells us several things about God, the believer and the relationship between them. God gives light and joy to the believer in the form of a seed. He can do this because He is Light and He is Joy. He does this moreover in response to the believer's overtures to Him. The believer readies himself for these gifts by being righteous and upright in heart offering these things to the Lord as the prelude to God's generous giving. And because this is a relationship and not a static exchange of gifts each giving calls forth further giving. The more light and joy is sown the more righteousness and uprightness grows.

Because the words are familiar to us we readily assume that we understand what they mean in this context. This is not necessarily the case. When Christians think of righteous persons part of the image called up is that of the Pharisees or of the Puritans. A strait-laced, joyless and condemnatory kind of people. The idea of righteous slips very easily into the idea of self-righteous. I think that the clue to the psalmists meanings for 'righteous' and 'upright' are to be found in the addition of the words 'in heart.' This is the righteousness of those who recognise the meaning of the prophecy "For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings." (Hosea 6:6) The heart-knowledge of God, the God of mercy, is what constitutes righteousness and the deeds that flow from this knowledge are what constitute the right acts that prompt the sower of seeds to plant light and joy.

It is a persistent metaphor this use of the idea of 'light' and, again, there is some risk that we take it so much for granted that it becomes somewhat banal to us. I remember when I was being received into the Church the priest, Father John, who was preparing me was fond of illustrating lessons with examples from his Irish boyhood. One anecdote he repeated several times was the experience in rural Ireland in, I suppose, the 1940's leaving a house at night in a place without electricity or street lighting of any kind. The darkness was profound, the way was uncertain and rough and the sudden springing up of light from a torch had a life saving, landscape transforming impact to it that partook of the miraculous. The light of God has, if we allow it to have, such an impact upon our internal landscape.

Considering light in the form of a seed is rather more of a mixed metaphor. For Christians, though, it has a meaning which the psalmist would not have considered. "I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." (John 12:24)  The seed of light which God sows in the heart of the believer is the Lamb that was slain and is now alive. He sows Himself, He is the Light and when He is sown He becomes our righteousness, our uprightness. This is the reciprocal arrangement, the more He grows within us the more light we become and the more seed is sown.

Beyond a certain point all multiplicity is resolved into unity and so light and joy become the same thing because they come from the same source. In this life here below though it is but seldom, if ever, that we experience this blessed union in God, through God because of God. So it is worth considering joy in its independent aspect as we can experience it here and now in the gift of it that the Father through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit gives us. Because it is a hidden gift it is a deep joy, a joy that forms a permanent underlayer to everything that we do and are waking and sleeping, unless, that is, we kill grace in our soul by committing acts of mortal sin. This kind of joy is about more than laughter and wine and good times though it certainly can include these things. It is a manifestation of the theological virtue of hope and a banishing of despair.

When my parents died I was possessed by grief, my sorrow was beyond the power of my words to describe. Yet throughout those times I was never dispossessed of joy. Because the seeds within remained within and did not cease to be tokens of the Divine Presence I never ceased to be in communion with Him. I may not have felt that communion, He may not have sent me tokens of His presence but He was present and that made a difference and that was the joy that did not depart even in the presence of suffering and loss.

Perhaps the most perfect illustration of this psalm verse can be found in the person of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the time of the Annunciation. Light and joy were sown in her by the words of the Archangel Gabriel and by her glad and free consent to them. And then Light Himself and Joyfulness Himself became literally the seed within her womb, a womb which contained Him whom heaven itself could not contain. And these things were sown in her because she above all other creatures of God was righteous and upright in heart. In her is our model, through her came our salvation, who can resist saying with the angel Hail Mary, full of grace?

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The Bible & The Virgin- Part 1

Why Bible-believing Christians should honour Mary

When Christians from the communities inspired by the 16th Century Reformation (traditionally called Protestants) debate the subject of the Virgin Mary with Catholics they usually say something like "Well, of course we honour Mary but these things Catholics do just aren't Scriptural." Which always makes me think two things. Firstly, in all the flood of books and blogs, sermons and songs produced by these Christians Mary is hardly ever mentioned. It is a curious way of honouring someone to ignore them assiduously. Protestants only ever seem to talk about Mary when arguing with Catholics so what do they mean by saying "of course we honour Mary?" Secondly, granted that some Catholic Marian (Marian means about Mary) beliefs are only implicit in Scripture even if you ignore those the explicit New Testament allusions to her clearly demonstrate that of all the merely human creatures in the Bible no one is more highly deserving of praise and honour than the Blessed Virgin. Don't believe me? Let me walk you through the verses.

The angel went to her and said, ‘Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you.’  Luke 1:28 NIV At this point the only things that we know about Mary are that she is a virgin and that she is engaged to be married. The Archangel Gabriel describes her as "highly favoured" the Greek word in the text, kecharitomene, can be variously translated. The Vulgate renders it as "gratia plena" that is 'full of grace'. The Geneva Bible, a good Protestant translation, has Hail thou that art freely beloved. So we have this young woman who is highly favoured by God or filled with grace by God or freely beloved by God. Note that these things are said of her before she becomes the mother of Jesus or even consents to do so. That is, Mary is already an extraordinary woman in some way. Why else would Gabriel apply this word to her? He adds "the Lord is with you" This same phrase is found in 2 Chronicles 15:2 The Lord is with you when you are with him. So why is Mary freely beloved and why is the Lord with her? The evidence from Scripture would be that she must be a devout and virtuous woman to a phenomenal degree. Her virtue and devotion are so great that God responds to her love in a phenomenal fashion also.

 The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favour with God. Luke 1:30 NIV Gabriel here tells Mary that she has found favour. It might perhaps have been argued that Mary was a passive recipient of God's bounty. Many Protestants seem to argue that any Jewish virgin would have been up to the task that Gabriel is about to unfold. Here, however an active not a passive term is used. Mary has done something which has caused God to look with favour upon her. No heroic act of our Lady is recorded prior to this so the plain, literal sense of Scripture would lead us to suppose that it is the entire way that Mary has lived her life up to this point that has caused God to look so positively upon her.

  You will conceive and give birth to a son Luke 1:31 NIV Sometimes we become so familiar with an idea that we take it for granted and stop noticing how mind-blowingly amazing it actually is. Mary is a virgin. As a virgin she is going to have a child. And not just any old child the unique Son of God. This young woman whom we now know to be virtuous, devout and loved by God to an extraordinary degree is going to become the mother of One who will be the Saviour of the world. There is a story (or myth) that the painter Picasso was requested to sketch a woman's portrait. He quickly did so and then offered it to the woman for $6000. "But it only took you 5 minutes" she said. "Only 5 minutes and also my entire life" said Picasso. The salvation worked for us by Jesus in a sense only took the few hours between His betrayal by Judas and His death on Calvary. In another sense it took His entire life. And for about 30 years Mary was to be the central figure in that life.

 ‘How will this be,’ Mary asked the angel, ‘since I am a virgin?’ Luke 1:34 NIV This is not the first time in Biblical history that an Angel has promised a child to a woman. In the Old Testament there are the examples of Sarah, mother of Isaac, and Hannah, mother of the prophet Samuel. In the Gospel there is St Elizabeth, mother of St John the Baptist. This, however, is the first time that a woman who is a virgin receives such a promise so again we see something unparalleled elsewhere in the Bible concerning Mary. It is also worth wondering why Mary would ask this question since St Luke has already introduced her to us as betrothed to St Joseph. Unless she was pledged to a life of virginity then she would expect conception to follow the normal course of her imminent married life. And if she was pledged to virginity then this too was a new thing in Israel for there is no record in the Old Testament of young women making this offering of themselves to God.

The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God  Luke 1:35 NIV This crucially reveals the relationship that the Blessed Virgin has with the Holy Trinity. We already know that she is highly favoured by God the Father, now we learn that God the Holy Spirit is to become fruitful by her, she becomes in a sense the spouse of the Spirit, and that God the Son is also to become Son of Mary. In all human history, in all salvation history, no one, not Abraham, not Moses, not David, not Solomon not any of the prophets enjoys such an intimate and special relationship with each person of the Trinity. Search the Scriptures and you will see that it is so.

And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word Luke 1:38 KJV We do not know how old Mary was at this time but it is reasonable to infer that she was a young woman, probably in her teens. In any event having been told the most awesome, incredible, mind boggling thing in the world see what her response is. She might have been forgiven for asking more questions, or expressing some doubts or point blank refusing. Our Lady did none of these things. Her faith is as perfect as a human's could be, her response is prompt and whole hearted, cheerful even. At the very least she is a role model for all Christians. A faith which does not have Mary as the poster child for faith and joyful acceptance of the gifts of the Spirit is surely missing a trick and, arguably, not reading their Bibles very attentively.

 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea Luke 1:39 NIV Hearing that her elderly cousin St Elizabeth was pregnant Mary did not take time to digest her own remarkable situation. She went with haste across some rough country to support her cousin. Having displayed perfect faith Mary now displays perfect, self-forgetful, love.

 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Luke 1:41 NIV It is important to note the sequence of events. Mary on arrival immediately calls out a greeting. On hearing the sound of Mary's voice, and as a result of hearing Mary's voice, St John the Baptist leaps in the womb and St Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit. I am being fairly insistent on this point because I have heard Protestants argue that it was the presence of the unborn Jesus that prompted these things. The clear and unequivocal words of Scripture do not say any such thing. It is the sound of Mary's voice that has these effects. That this is so because Mary is the Theotokos, the God Bearer, is certainly true but it does not lessen the glory of God to accept the clear sense of Scripture here that Mary was the chosen vehicle through which His Spirit flowed.

In a loud voice she exclaimed: ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! Luke 1:42 NIV Now, rememeber that St Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit while she utters these words. What she is saying is what God wants her to say. And what she says is that Mary and her unborn child share the title of Blessed. Note also she does not say "blessed because of the child you will bear." The Virgin is certainly blessed for that reason but recall that she was also blessed because she had found favour with God, because the Lord was with her even before the Annunciation of the Archangel Gabriel.

But why am I so favoured, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? Luke 1:43 NIV Again notice that, still filled with the Holy Spirit, St Elizabeth explicitly states that to be visited by Mary is a favour which she has received. Clearly Jesus and Mary are inseparable at this stage in the life of our Saviour so you cannot have the one without the other. What St Elizabeth is experiencing is that Jesus, as it were, shines through Mary. Or, to put it the other way round, Mary is transparent to Jesus. Even if this was only the case during the nine months of her pregnancy, and there is no reason in Scripture to assume that her openness to her Son was of such short duration, it still follows of necessity that Mary has a special closeness to God and a special gift of sharing that closeness that no other person, male or female, in the Bible could claim to have.                            
   

 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfil his promises to her!’ Luke 1:45 NIV  Here the inspired St Elizabeth reveals another reason to consider Mary blessed. She believed fully and firmly in the promises of God conveyed to her by Gabriel. Which is to say that before she conceived Jesus in the flesh she had conceived Him in her heart. Belief preceded conception it did not follow it. We can say additionally that our Lady is blessed because at that moment she became the first Christian, she believed in Jesus before there was a Jesus to believe in. Her contemporaries believed in the Messiah who was to come, she in the Messiah who had already come and who dwelt, in the flesh within her own body and in the Spirit within her own heart.

And Mary said:‘My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour Luke 1:46-47 NIV So, in her first response to all this praise heaped upon her the Blessed Virgin immediately praises the source of all her blessings and joy. She is in this a model of humility, an example of one to whom praise and thanksgiving arises spontaneously to her lips. I have seen Protestants argue from this frank acknowledgement by Mary that God is her Saviour that she must have been a sinner since otherwise she would not need salvation. I do not think that this follows. We believe, do we not, that children who die in the womb through abortion or miscarriage might go to heaven. If they do then this is because the merits of Jesus are imputed to them, since this is necessary for salvation, but we do not assume that unborn children are guilty of actual sin. The only way to heaven is through the blood of Christ and the Catholic Church is happy, along with Mary herself, to acknowledge that her salvation like ours was wrought by her Son Jesus.

From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me  Luke 1:48-49 NIV Our Lady prophetically foretells that until the end of time all generations will call her blessed. Those who do not do so are clearly resisting the Spirit and paying little heed to the plain sense of Scripture. She also tells us why all generations will do this, because the Mighty One has done great things for her. That is, we cannot think of the blessedness of Mary without thinking of the Divine One who blessed her. Those Reformation Christians who fear that giving praise to Mary means robbing praise from God have turned a both/and gift from God's bounty in an either/or choice which smacks of over scrupulousness on their part. Catholics do not fear to praise those to whom praise is due because we know that this praise is only due and can only be due because they have been richly gifted by God who is the source of all good in heaven and on earth.

End of Part One

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The Annunciation

Here is a little soliloquy that I wrote some years ago-

First Joyful Mystery

Most Holy Mary, dear and blessed Mother of our dear Lord. When first you heard that heralds voice were you deep in your prayers as tradition loves to portray you? Were you pondering in your heart the things of God? Were you, the young handmaid of the Lord, busying yourself with the hundred and one daily tasks and duties that our flesh is heir to? We know for certain that at that time you were betrothed to Blessed Joseph and that you lived such a life as to find favour with the Lord. Beyond that we can only speculate.

Of this we can be certain though, before the Annunciation of St Gabriel you loved God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your strength. You were such a one as responded to the Grace of God in a way that even before the Word took flesh in your virginal womb meant you could serve as a model and exemplar to those who love the Lord in all generations and seek to do His Most Holy Will. You, dear Mary, are a pioneer on the way of the Lord and our best and brightest guide towards Him in all ages and for all ages. There were things at this Annunciation that you did not fully understand, you were troubled, you pondered, you asked. To love Him and to serve Him it is not needful you showed us that we should fully understand Him, simply that we should wholly love Him and this you did then and still do today Mary Hope of Christians.

You showed us in this brief but world changing dialogue with the Archangel of the Most High that it is not great knowledge that is the key to great love and great service. No, it is humility that is the key and possessing that gift you alone of all the world had the highest Angel in the service of the Highest Power come down to you and salute you. You alone had Almighty God come down into your womb to take on flesh for your Divinely inspired creaturely humility proved a fitting home for the Divine humility that did not think equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied Himself taking human form with your flesh and your blood Most Dear Mary.

And what is humility? Is it the false modesty that so often masquerades under that honourable title? God forbid. No, humility is the height of acute self analysis. When, by the grace of God, we understand ourselves truly to be what we are in relation to our Creator and to our neighbour then we are necessarily humble. And the more perfectly we understand ourselves then the more perfectly humble we shall be. It is a sign of your great wisdom, dear Lady, that you were so perfectly humble and by your prayers may we be brought to similar self-knowledge. God knows we greatly stand in need of it

Was it, perhaps, because of your humility that you were troubled by the angels greeting? Did you consider yourself all unworthy to stand high in God's favour? Surely, though all these thoughts would have been swiftly driven from your heart and mind by that stunning promise made to you by Gabriel. A Son! And what a Son, one who would reign on the throne of David forever. And you, Mary, to be the Mother of the Messiah, the highest dream and hope of the maidens of God's chosen people for generations.

The painting is The Annunciation by Dieric Bouts