Posts Tagged ‘Dark Ages’

Mary – an ordinary girl

August 17, 2024

Pentecost 13 – 2024

Celebration of Mary (St Mary’s) Kangaroo Point

 Luke 2:1-7

Marian Free

Hail, Mary, full of grace,

Blessed art thou amongst women

the Lord is with thee.

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

pray for us sinners,

now and at the hour of our death. 

Amen.

Grotto in the Basilica of the Annunciation (above). Mary’s well (below)

If you visit Nazareth, you will probably be taken to two Marian sites at both of which you will be told that this was where the angel appeared to Mary. One site is the Basilica of the Annunciation. Beneath the floor of this church a first century grotto was uncovered in which was found a foundation stone inscribed with the words: “Hail Mary”. A second site is known as Mary’s well – a covered well which used to be fed by a spring and from which water was drawn by Palestinian villagers for many years. Of course, we have no way of knowing at which site, if either, the angel appeared to Mary. The gospels do not accurately record where the events of Jesus’ life occurred and it was not until the fourth century when Helen, the mother of the then Emperor Constantine visited the Holy Land, that any such details were documented for posterity. 

In terms of developing a background for Mary, we are not served well by our scriptures. We have a backstory Elizabeth, who according to Luke, was a descendant of Aaron, was. married to Zechariah who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah, was righteous before God, and lived blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. Luke further informs us that both Zechariah and Elizabeth were “getting on in years” and that Zechariah was performing his priestly duties when the angel appeared to him.

In contrast, we know nothing of Mary’ s life prior to the appearance of the angel. Though we are given quite a lot of detail about Elizabeth, Luke appears not to be interested in Mary’s heritage or her piety. The only information he gives us is that when the angel appeared to Mary, she was in a town in Galilee called Nazareth and she was engaged to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. Similarly, Luke is not particularly interested in where Mary is when the angel appears. What he tells us is that despite Mary’s initial confusion at the angel’s announcement, she readily submits to God’s will, and then she visits her cousin and sings a hymn exalting in the reversal of the fortunes of the rich and poor. 

Details of Mary’s parents and of her childhood belong to a later time and are almost certainly apocryphal.

That said, it is clear from the Gospels and Acts that Mary was held in regard by the early church, both as the mother of Jesus and as a prominent member of the community.

Perhaps as a consequence of her place in the emerging church, veneration of Mary began quite early. In the Roman catacombs there are paintings of Mary with the Christ child that date from the middle of the 2nd Century. Dedication to Mary grew and in 431CE. the Council of Ephesus gave Mary the title, Theotokos or Mother of God – thus sealing her place in the devotional life of the church. It was, and is, believed that Mary’s special relationship with Jesus enabled her to intercede with him on behalf of believers, a belief that became especially important in the Dark Ages.  When God was depicted as a remote and unforgiving figure and the church held the fear of hell fire over its members, Mary offered a vision of the divine that was conciliatory, relational and accessible. 

The trajectory  from Mary, the unknown young girl from Nazareth to Mary Queen of Heaven, is more complex than my simple picture, but what it is clear is that over time, Mary had been transformed from a person much like you and I, into an ideal figure to be appealed to and worshipped, and had been assigned an intercessory role between those who prayed and the God to whom they prayed.

The last thing I want to do is to disparage or diminish the practice of venerating Mary, but I can’t help wondering if elevating Mary to such an extent has had the effect of distancing Mary from us, of making her more into an idealised figure who is beyond our reach rather than someone with whom we can identify and whose example we can aspire to emulate.  

When the angel appeared to Mary, she did not stand out from the crowd in any way that the evangelists thought was worth recording. She could not trace her ancestry back to any person of significance, let alone to Aaron or to David. Her piety appears not to have set her apart from the crowd. As the scriptures tell it, Mary was an unknown, even ordinary, young girl from an insignificant place in an occupied country with no claim to notoriety or to religiosity. She was an ordinary person living an ordinary life when, out of the blue an angel appears with startling news. 

Mary is startled, but does not run away, she expresses surprise, but not anxiety and despite the fact that she is entering unchartered waters, despite the fact. That she has no idea how Joseph will respond, and despite potential cost to herself Mary says: “yes” to God. What is significant is not her background or even her faithfulness, but rather her openness to the presence of God and her willingness to say: “Yes” even when God suggested the impossible.  

In Mary, the Mary to whom the angel appeared, not the Mary who is the creation of the church, we find someone like ourselves – someone of little or no importance, someone without qualifications or impressive forbears, someone who is uncertain and tentative, someone whose faith and piety does not set them apart but someone who is curious and open to the presence of God in her life.

As the mother of Jesus, the one whose ‘yes’ to God changed the course of history, Mary deserves a special place in history and in our hearts, but perhaps the most significant role Mary has to play is that of reminding us that “ordinary” people – people like you and I – have the capacity to do extraordinary things. Mary is constant reminder that God does not seek extraordinary, talented, well- known people to make God’s presence known in the world. God uses people like you and like I, if only we are open to God’s presence in our lives and willing to add our “yes” to that of Mary.

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Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-Giver

May 25, 2013

Trinity Sunday 2013

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31, Romans 1:1-5, John 16

Marian Free

 

In the name of God, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver. Amen.

The MIddle Ages was a time in which there was a great flowering of spirituality.  After the morbidity and fear of the Dark Ages, in which judgement and hell were predominant religious themes, the spiritual tenor of the Middle Ages was an understanding of God’s love and Jesus’ saving passion. The spirituality of the time was more intimate and forgiving. God was not envisaged as a distant judge but a close and familiar friend.

Many of our favourite and most well-known saints belong to this period of history – Francis and Claire of Assisi, Hildegard of Bingen and Catherine of Sienna – to mention a few. The spirit of the age was such that it not only saw the emergence of mystics and saints, but also the renewal of faith of much of the general population. This was demonstrated by the number of people in all walks of life who went on pilgrimages and by the groups of women (Beguines) who, while not entering a religious order, lived together in community.

One of the expressions of spirituality at that time was that of anchorite. Men and women had built for themselves single rooms attached to churches or Cathedrals in which they confined themselves for the remainder of their lives – praying, meditating and reading their scriptures. Julian of Norwich was one such person[1]. Little is known of Julian except that when she was thirty and a half, in 1373 she was ill to the point of death. During this time she had a series of revelations (Showings in her terminology) which she recorded in both a shorter and a longer account. It is through these writings that she is known to us.

The church emerged from the bleakness of the Dark Ages with an image of God that was less distant and wrathful, more forgiving and understanding, full of tenderness and compassion. Julian’s experience of God reflects this trend. Perhaps the most powerful illustration of this is the illustration which imagines God as a mother who may sometimes allow a child to fall, for its own benefit, but who can never suffer any kind of peril to come to her child because of her love. On the other hand, the child, when it is distressed and frightened, runs quickly to his mother (300).

Even though Julian claims to be uneducated, the style of her writing and her knowledge of scripture indicate otherwise. For example, though her language is vastly different, her theology is not too dissimilar to that found in the readings from Proverbs and Romans today (the presence of Wisdom, or the second person of the Trinity at creation, the delight that the Trinity takes in creation and the notion that God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit).

Julian’s homely and familiar relationship with God embraces her understanding of God as Trinity which is expressed in such language as God’s courtesy, that God loves us tenderly and that there is no wrath in God only endless goodness and friendship. The relationship is mutual. Just as the Trinity rejoices in humanity, so the Trinity fills our heart with the greatest joy (181). In fact joy, bliss and delight are words that are repeated in Julian’s description of the relationship between God and humanity. Her experience tells us of God’s confidence in and presence in us: “we are in God and God is in us” (286). When the Trinity created us, he “joined and united us to himself and through this union we are kept as pure and as noble as we were created” (293).

The Trinity, a concept that many of us tend to make hard work of, seems to have been as natural as breathing to Julian. That God is one and God is three, is the basis of her faith. She doesn’t labour over the nature of the relationship, but it is clear from what she writes that she did not think of God in any other way. While she speaks of the individual persons of the Trinity, it is clear that her concept of God is primarily Trinitarian.  For example, she can say: “the Trinity is God and God is the Trinity. The Trinity is our maker, our protector, our everlasting lover, our endless joy and our bliss, from our Lord Jesus Christ and in our Lord Jesus Christ.” (181)

All members of the Trinity are all engaged in our creation and all take delight in humankind and “it is their greatest delight that we rejoice in the joy which the blessed Trinity has in our creation.”(286)  “God the blessed Trinity, who is everlasting being, just as he is eternal from without beginning, just so was it in his eternal purpose to create human nature, which fair nature was first prepared for his own Son, the second person, and when he wished, by full agreement of the whole Trinity he created us all at once.” (293)

Interestingly, though Julian refers to Jesus as “he”, she constantly refers to the second person of the Trinity as “Mother”.  This was consistent with the spirit of the time which, in reaction to the harsh and distant God of the previous generation, discovered in Jesus the love and compassion often attributed to a mother. So for example, Julian can say: “As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother. Our Father wills, our Mother works, our good Lord the Holy Spirit confirms. In these three is all our life: nature, mercy and grace (296).” “And so in our making, God almighty is our loving Father, and God all wisdom is our loving Mother, with the love and goodness of the Holy Spirit, which is all one God, one Lord” (293).

It is too easy to dismiss the Trinity as difficult to understand or explain. Mystics like Julian remind us that it is not a concept to be feared, but to be embraced; to know ourselves known and loved by God – Father, Son and Spirit, Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer and Life-Giver, Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.  Three persons, one God whose creative power breathed us into being, whose saving power restored us and whose in-dwelling presence continues to fill us with love and joy.

[1] Colledge, Edmund, O.S.A., Walsh, James, S.J. Julian of Norwich: Showings. The Western Classics of Christianity. New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1978.

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