THE WOMAN CLOTHED WITH THE SUN Part II/II

Because it is Mense Mariae, the Month of Mary, here is the second part of the little reflection on our Lady in Chapter 33 of Merton's Book, New Seeds of Contemplation. Emphasis in bold and my comments in Italic

 

***

 

The genuine significance of Catholic devotion to Mary is to be seen in the light of the Incarnation itself. The Church cannot separate the Son and the Mother. Because the Church conceives of the Incarnation as God's descent into flesh and into time, and His great gift of Himself to His creatures, she also believes that the one who was closest to Him in this great mystery was the one who participated most perfectly in the gift. (In a perfected sense, she is "Co-Redemptrix"-- With the Redeemer, united to Him perfectly more than anyone else.) When a room is heated by an open fire, surely there is nothing strange in the fact that those who stand closest to the fireplace are the ones who are warmest. (Another sanjuanist imagery.) And when God comes into the world through the instrumentality of one of His servants, then there is nothing surprising about the fact that His chosen instrument should have the greatest and most intimate share in the divine gift.

 

Mary, who was empty of all egotism, free from all sin, was as pure as the glass of a very clean window that has no other function than to admit the light of the sun. (Sanjuanist imagery) If we rejoice in that light, we implicitly praise the cleanness of the window. And of course, it might be argued that in such a case, we might well forget the window altogether. This is true. And yet the Son of God, in emptying Himself of His majestic power, having become a child, abandoning Himself in complete dependence to the loving care of a human Mother, in a certain sense draws our attention once again to her. (Merton's train of thought is interesting. Because Mary is perfectly absolved in God, our contemplation of God would justify us completely forgetting about her. However, God again draws attention to her in His kenosis which entailed submission and dependence on his creature and lowly Handmaid. This is the undercurrent in Merton's work: The focus is not on what humans have done but on what God has done) The Light has wished to remind us of the window, because He is grateful to her and because He has an infinitely tender and personal love for her. (A very spousal imagery of love.) If He asks us to share in this love, it is certainly a great grace and a privilege, and one of the most important aspects of this privilege is that it enables us to some extent to appreciate the mystery of God's great love and respect for His creatures. ("Not because of who I am, but because of what You've done. Not because of what I've done but because of Who You are...")

 

That God should assume Mary into Heaven is not just a glorification of a 'Mother Goddess.' Quite the contrary, it is the expression of the divine love for humanity, and a very special manifestation of God's respect for His creatures, His desire to do honor to the beings He has made in His own image, and most particularly His respect for the body which was destined to be the temple of His glory. If Mary is believed to be assumed into heaven, it is because God desires it to be glorified in us too, and it is for this reason that His Son, taking flesh, came into the world.(Again, the themes of recapitulation and theosis surface again. Following the tradition of the Eastern Fathers, the Incarnation is central to our understanding of the mysteries of faith. Christ became human to unite us, with Mary as first, to His Divine and Triune Life.)

 

In all the great mystery of Mary, then, one thing remains most clear: that of herself she is nothing, and that God has for our sakes delighted to manifest His glory and His love in her. (Again, we see the pulse of Merton's work: Not what she has done but what HE has done for her.)

 

It is because she is, of all the saints, the most perfectly poor and most perfectly hidden, the one who has absolutely nothing whatever that she attempts to possess as her own, that she can most fully communicate to the rest of us the grace of the infinitely selfless God. And we will most truly possess Him when we have emptied ourselves and become poor and hidden as she is, resembling Him by resembling her. (Following the great sanjuanist paradigm, it is Mary's poverty, her nothingness, that enabled her to be the most sublime vehicle for this self-giving God.)

 

And all our sanctity depends on her maternal love.(Again, this is a BOLD assertion, that our holiness depends on Mary) The ones she desires to share the joy of her own poverty and simplicity, the ones whom she wills to be hidden as she is hidden, are the ones who share her closeness to God. (Mary is All-Holy One, the Panagia. Thus our holiness is absorbed in her perfected sanctity.)

 

It is a tremendous grace, then, and a great privilege when a person living in the world we have to live in suddenly loses his interest in the things that absorb that world, and discovers in his own soul an appetite for poverty and solitude. And the most precious of all the gifts of nature or grace is the desire to be hidden and to vanish from the sign of men and be accounted as nothing by the world and to disappear from one's own self-conscious consideration and vanish into nothingness in the immense poverty that is the adoration of God. (When everything orients towards God, it is at once a supreme poverty for the soul as it is fully emptied and full adoration to God. The paradigm of St. John of the Cross applied to Mary and to us--NADA for TODA.)

 

This absolute emptiness, this poverty, this obscurity holds within it the secret of all joy because it is full of God. (Again, borrowed from St. John of the Cross) To seek this emptiness is true devotion to the Mother of God. To find it is to find her. And to be hidden in its depths is to be full of God as she is full of Him, and to share in her mission of bringing Him to all men. (...and women.)

 

Yet all generations must call her blessed, because they all receive through her obedience whatever supernatural life and joy is granted to them. (Reminds me of St. Irenaeus-- "so the knot of Eye's disobedience received its unloosing through the obedience of Mary." Adv. Haer. iii.34.) And it is necessary that the world should acknowledge her and that the praise of God's great work in her should be sung in poetry and that cathedrals should be built in her name. For unless our Lady is recognized as the Mother of God and as the Queen of all the saints and angels and as the hope of the world, faith in God will remain incomplete. How can we ask HIm for all the things He would have us hope for if we do not know, by contemplating the sanctity of the Immaculate Virgin, what great things He has power to accomplish in the souls of men. (Amen! All is oriented towards God--Mary illustrates the power of God.)

 

And so, the more we are hidden in the depths where her secret is discovered, the more we will want to praise her name in the world and glorify, in her, the God Who made her His shining tabernacle. Yet we will not altogether trust our own talent to find words in which to praise her: for even if we could sing of her as did Dante or St. Bernard, we would still have little to say of her compared with the Church who alone knows how to praise her adequately and who dares to apply to her the inspired words God uses of in His own Wisdom. Thus we find her living in the midst of Scripture, and unless we find her, also, hidden in Scripture where and in whatever promises contain her Son, we shall not fully know the life that is in Scripture. (Zing! Merton smashes the 'Protestant' assertion that Catholic devotion to Mary is contrary to Scripture.)

 

It is she, who in these last days, is destined by the merciful delegation of God, to manifest the power He has given her, because of her poverty, and save the last men living in the ruins of a burnt world. (Here, we see, understandably, Merton's mild apocalyptic worldview, living in a world recently emerging from two world wars and the threat of the Nuclear annihilation. Very reminiscent of the Fatima message.) But if the world's last stage, by the wickedness of men, is likely to be made the most terrible, yet by the clemency of the Blessed Virgin will it also be, for the poor who have received His mercy, the most victorious and the most joyful.

 

 

MY THOUGHTS

Merton strongly emphasizes that Mary does not stand on her own right, as her mystery cannot be comprehended apart from God's work of salvation. The Church's understanding of Mary is both Theocentric and Incarnational. The importance of Mary does not so much depend what she has done but rather on the great things that He who is Mighty has done for her. In Mary, one sees the power of God perfectly at work.

 

Merton's understanding of Mary is nestled in the imagery offered by St. John of the Cross:"Although the fire has penetrated the wood, transformed it, and united it with itself, yet as this fire grows hotter and continues to burn, so the wood becomes much more incandescent and inflamed, even to the point of flaring up and shooting out flames from itself. It should be understood that the soul now speaking has reached this enkindled degree, and is so inwardly transformed in the fire of love and elevated by it that it is not merely united to this fire but produces within it a living flame. The soul feels this and speaks of it thus in these stanzas with intimate and delicate sweetness of love, burning in love's flame, and stressing in these stanzas some of the effects of this love." -- (St John of the Cross, "The Living Flame of Love", Prologue 3-4)

 

This, for Merton, is Mary's role in the economy of salvation. The wood, consumed in the fire, tells us less of the wood and more of the potency of the flame.

It is within this backdrop that one can understand Merton's bold statements on the Mother of God: That our holiness is dependent on the Blessed Virgin and that she is necessary in understanding Scripture. Since Mary is perfected in holiness, all who walk on the road of sanctity will undoubtedly encounter her, she who fully embodies the holiness of the elect. Therefore, to fully appreciate the transforming power of the Word, one must encounter Mary in whom the seed of the Word produced a rich and perfect harvest. In Mary, fully alive in God, one sees the fullness which the Redemption of Christ wrought for the sons and daughter of Adam and Eve.

Thus, Mary, whose sublime holiness is born out of her profound poverty, becomes the fullest human example of the life of grace. She is truly and fully alive in Christ, a living witness to the salutary power of the Word, transforming those who are pure and lowly of heart. Mary, glorified in Christ, is a sign of eschatological hope for all humanity.

We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined he also called; and those he called he also justified; and those he justified he also glorified. (Romans 12:28-30)

Blessed are you, Mary, called by God according to His purpose and fully conformed to the image of his Son.

Blessed are you, Mother of the Lord, in whom our created holiness is perfected!

Blessed are you, Woman of the Word, a sign of sure hope and solace to the people of God during its sojourn on earth. (LG, 68)

Blessed are you, Mary, Icon of grace and hope in Christ.

Mother of God, All-Holy One, you who show us the way, intercede for us, now, always and at the hour of our death. Amen.

 

 

Done