THE WOMAN CLOTHED WITH THE SUN Part I/II

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

 

***

 

All that has been written about the Virgin Mother of God proves to me that hers is the most hidden of sanctities. What people find to say about her sometimes tells us more about their own selves than it does about Our Lady. For since God has revealed very little to us about her, men who know nothing of who and what she was tend to reveal themselves when they try to add something to what God has told us about her. (Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, meet pot.)

 

And the things we do know about her only make the true character and quality of her sanctity seem more hidden. We believe that hers was the perfect sanctity outside the sanctity of Christ her Son, Who is God.But the sanctity of God is only darkness to our minds. (Borrowed from St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book II, Chapter 3, Verse 1.) Yet the sanctity of the Blessed Virgin is in way more hidden than the sanctity of God: because He has at least told us something about Himself that is objectively valid when it is put into human language. But about Our Lady He has told us only a few important things-- and even then we cannot grasp the fullness of what they mean. For all He has told us about her soul amounts to this: that it was absolutely full of the most perfect, created holiness. But what that means in detail we have no sure way of knowing. Therefore, the other certain thing we know about her is that her sanctity is most hidden. (A true contemplative, Merton approaches our Lady from an apophatic perspective. We come to know her by what she is not.)

 

And yet I can find her if I too become hidden in God where she is hidden. To share her humility and hiddenness and poverty, her concealment and solitude is the best way to know her: but to know her is thus to find wisdom. Qui me inveniet vitam et hauret salutem a Domino. (From Prov 8:35 - He that shall find me, shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord. Here, he picks up the Eastern tradition of the Theotokos as "Οδηγήτρια" Hodegitria-- She who shows the way.)

 

In the actual living human person who is the Virgin Mother of God are all the poverty and all the wisdom of all the saints. (All, All, All-- Toda, toda, toda. His train of thought reveals his sanjuanist sensibilities) It all came to them through her and is in her. The sanctity of all the saints is a participation in her sanctity, because in the order He has established, God wills that all graces come to men through Mary. (This is just the beginning, see where Merton takes this)

 

That is why to love her and to know her is to discover the true meaning of everything and to have access to all wisdom. Without her, the knowledge of Christ is only speculation. But in her, it becomes experience (Mystagogy!) because all the humility and poverty, without which Christ cannot be known, were given to her. Her sanctity is the silence in which alone Christ can be heard, and the voice of God becomes an experience to us through her contemplation.

 

The emptiness and interior solitude and peace without which we cannot be filled with God were given by Him to Mary in order that she might receive Him into the world by offering Him the hospitality of a being that was perfectly pure, perfectly silent, perfectly at rest, perfectly at peace and centered in utter humility. If we ever manage to empty ourselves of the noise of the world and of our own passions, it is because she has been sent close to us by God and given us a share in her sanctity and her hiddenness.

 

Mary alone, of all the saints, is in everything incomparable. She has the sanctity of them all and yet resembles none of them. And still we can talk of being like her. This likeness to her is not only something to desire-- it is one human quality most worthy of our desire: but the reason for that is that she, of all creatures, most perfectly recovered the likeness to God that God willed to find, in varying degrees, in us all. (Here, Merton picks up the notion of "recapitulation" articulated by Sts. Irenaeus and Athanasius: In Christ, we regain what we had lost in Adam, namely existence according to God's image and likeness. Merton argues that in Mary, this is perfectly achieved.)

 

It is necessary, no doubt, to talk about her privileges as if they were something that could be made comprehensible in human language and could be measures by some human standard. It is most fitting to talk about her as a Queen and to act as if you knew what it meant to say she has a throne above all the angels. But this should not make anyone forget that her highest privilege is her poverty and her greatest glory is that she is most hidden,(Here it comes...) and the source of all her power is that she is as nothing in the presence of Christ, of God. (Toda, toda, toda... nada! She is all-holy for holiness in its perfected totality is achieved in her precisely for her nothingness. How sanjuanist!)

 

This is often forgotten by Catholics themselves and therefore is not surprising that those who are not Catholic often have a completely wrong conception of Catholic devotion to the Mother of God.(Very true!) They imagine, and sometimes we can understand their reasons for doing so, that Catholics treat the Blessed Virgin as an almost divine being in her own right, as if she had some glory, some power, some majesty of her own that placed her on a level with Christ Himself. They regard the Assumption of Mary into heaven as a kind of apotheosis and her Queenship as a strict divinization. Hence, her place in the Redemption would seem to be equal to that of her Son. (This isn't just from non-Catholics. There are those in the Church that argue that to call her 'Mediatrix of Grace' is to put her on par with her Son.) But this is all completely contrary to the true mind of the Catholic Church.(Sentire cum Ecclesiae-think with the mind of the Church) It forgets that Mary's chief glory is in her nothingness, in the fact of being the "Handmaid of the Lord," as one who in becoming the Mother of God acted simply in loving submission to His command, in the pure obedience of faith. She is blessed not because of some mythical pseudo-divine prerogative but in all her human and womanly limitations (?!) as "one who has believed." It is the faith and fidelity of this humble Handmaid "full of grace" that enables her to be the perfect instrument of God and nothing else but His instrument. The work that was done in her was purely the work of God. "He that is mighty hath done great things in me." The glory of Mary is purely and simply the glory of God in her, and she, like anyone else, can say that she has nothing that she has not received from Him through Christ.

 

As a matter of fact, this is precisely her greatest glory: that having nothing of her own, retaining nothing of a 'self' that could glory in anything for her own sake, she placed no obstacle to the mercy of God and in no way resisted His love and His will. Hence, she received more from Him than any other saint. He was able to accomplish His will perfectly in her and His liberty was in no way hindered or turned from its purpose by the presence of an egotistical self in Mary. She was and is in the highest sense a person precisely because, being "immaculate," she was free from every taint of selfishness that might obscure God's light in her being. (Here again, Merton borrows from St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mt Carmel, Book II, Chapter 5, Verse 6)-- a mirror, when totally cleaned, disappears and all one sees is the light that shines through. ) She was then a freedom that obeyed Him perfectly and in this obedience found the fulfillment of perfect love.

 

 

MY THOUGHTS...

Here, Merton contemplates our Lady through the mystical theology of St. John of the Cross. The central dynamic is that of an incoming God who fills empty spaces. Merton asserts that in Mary, this is 'perfectly' achieved in such a paradigmatic way that to receive God through our emptiness is to participate in the perfectly contemplative emptiness of our Lady. Thus, Merton can say that "in the order He has established, God wills that all graces come to men through Mary." All through Mary! I would suggest that the keyword for Merton is not Mary but rather is the "ALL"-"TODA," which in sanjuanist theology carries much weight as it is the word used by the mystical doctor to refer to the fullness of God indwelling in the soul.

 

To better understand this, take a read at St. John's understanding of "theosis" -- "A ray of sunlight shining on a smudgy window is unable to illumine that window completely and transform it into its own light. It could do this if the window were cleaned and polished. The less the film and stain are wiped away, the less the window will be illumined; and the cleaner the window is, the brighter will be its illumination. The extent of illumination is not dependent on the ray of sunlight but on the window. If the window is totally clean and pure, the sunlight will so transform and illumine it that to all appearances the window will be identical with the ray of sunlight and shine just as the sun's ray. Although obviously the nature of the window is distinct from that of the sun's ray (even if the two seem identical), we can assert that the window is the ray or light of the sun by participation. The soul on which the divine light of God's being is ever shining, or better, in which it is ever dwelling by nature, is like this window, as we have affirmed." (Ascent of Mt. Carmel, Book II, Chapter 5, Verse 6)

 

For Merton, Mary becomes that window 'totally clean and pure,' so transformed that when one sees her, she, in a sense, disappears, and all one sees is 'the divine light of God's being is ever shining.' Thus, for Merton, Marian polemic, though understandable, carries no weight at all. Mary does not stand on her own and bear no glory on her own. All that she is is oriented towards God's work of salvation in Christ His Son and as the fully redeemed one, stands before us as the Icon of One who is in every sense, "Full of Grace." Truly she is 'THE WOMAN CLOTHED WITH THE SUN.'

Done