Mary, Reflecting the Spirit
Fr. Donald Macdonald, SMM
(Secret of Mary Nos. 19-20)
REFLECTING THE SPIRIT
A child came home from school and told his mother of his latest discovery.
“If you have two apples and three apples you will have five apples. If you have four oranges and two oranges you will have six oranges”. “Oh,” his mother said, “what if I have two bananas and three bananas?” “I don’t know” the boy said, “we haven’t done bananas yet”.
The teacher did her best to explain the mysteries of mathematics to the child. She used concrete imagery in categories the child might be expected to understand. But it had not taken. There was a vast, abstract world of reality to which he was still a stranger. He was on the outside trying to look in. As yet he did not have the insight to see.
The parallel holds with ourselves and God. Unless and until we are given the insight of faith we shall not believe. It is a gift from God which we, at best, can only receive. There is no other way into the mystery of God, but by receiving the necessary light to enable us to glimpse something of what is there.
TOO ORDINARY, AT FIRST SIGHT
A classic expression of this is shown in the second chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel. Our Lady, her husband and her baby go into the Jerusalem Temple, bringing with them the poor people’s offering. This, presumably, was the most common, ordinary, everyday sight in that Temple, as it is in temples and churches throughout the world. Any priest on duty that day, seeing them, would have seen the familiar. There is nothing out of the ordinary here. He is looking at what he knows without any particular attention. Our Lady, her husband and her child are too ordinary to merit a second glance. He would do what he could for them.
A very different perspective is seen by “Simeon . . . righteous and devout” (Lk 2: 25). Coming up to Our Lady with her son, “he took him up in his arms and blessed God” (Lk 1:28). He is ecstatic, taken out of himself, overwhelmed in joy and wonder. Now, he says, he can die, “for my eyes have seen thy salvation . . . a light of revelation to the Gentiles, and for the glory of thy people Israel” (Lk 2:30, 32). This is literally a fantastic statement. The helpless baby has become the center and focus of what traditionally was seen in the Jerusalem Temple.
INSIGHT
The Temple was the source and focus of light. In the imagery of the prophet, an ever-deepening river flows from it bringing life and nourishment wherever it goes. This was because, at the heart of the Temple, dwelt God as in nowhere else on earth.
Experience teaches most of us that our hearts are uncertain places and do not always keep and foster the best that we have been given. How then receive, keep and worship Jesus there? “Here is the great way,” says St. Louis-Marie, “the wonderful secret . . . surrender into her hands all we possess . . . keeping nothing for ourselves . . . she will give herself to us in a real but indefinable manner; and it is in her that eternal Wisdom will come and settle as on a throne of splendor”
Return to THE QUEEN: Articles
God’s presence there was the charge which electrified Israel. In so far as the holiness of God’s presence registered with the people, as clearly it did with Our Lady and her husband, they could channel God’s presence within themselves and to the world about them. The Temple, therefore, reflected the glory of God – what God is like, dwelling at the heart of his people – and those who glimpsed this could help bring this light to others.
This is something of what Simeon sees in the child in his arms. There is a seismic change here. The center of gravity has moved from the heart of the Temple to the heart of the baby. By any rational judgement, Simeon literally has taken leave of his senses. No wonder Jesus’ “father and mother marveled at what was said about him” (Lk. 2:33).
Why then did he speak so? What did he see that others could not? The evangelist St. Luke emphasizes, three times in two verses, that Simeon was able to see as he did because he was graced particularly with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gave him the insight to see what remained hidden to the eyesight of everyone else. “The Holy Spirit was upon him . . . revealed to him by the Holy Spirit . . . and inspired by the Spirit he came into the Temple” (Lk. 2:25-27).
THE SPIRIT’S GIFT
It is ever the same. Unless we too are enlightened by the Holy Spirit, we shall be like the child mentioned earlier, outside, without the understanding to know what we see. We need the grace of insight to see, and that is in the Spirit’s gift. Once it is given, we too like Simeon, St. Paul and so very many, can glimpse the glory of God in the face of Christ. People around us may see little or nothing, but we like Simeon, are taken out of ourselves to bless God for enabling us to see as we do. We then enjoy the realization and wonder of receiving God giving himself in Christ – and with that gift, says St. Paul, have we not received everything!
St. Louis-Marie, the practical preacher, knew this too, and worked so hard to encourage people to help and savor the gift of God in Christ. Our Lady particularly, he knew from experience, could help us do that, “When the Holy Spirit, her spouse, finds Mary in a soul, he hastens there and enters fully into it. He gives himself generously . . . according to the place it has given to his spouse” (TD 36).
WHEN THE SPIRIT FINDS MARY IN A SOUL
Montfort believes this because, “Mary is God’s garden of Paradise . . . into which his Son entered to do wonderful things, to tend it and to take his delight in it . . . Happy the person to whom the Holy Spirit opens this enclosed garden .. . this sealed fountain where he can drink deep draughts of the living waters of grace. That person will find only God and no creature in the lovable Virgin Mary” (SM 19-20).
This lovely personality of Our Lady was created to receive Jesus through the Holy Spirit – “the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will over-shadow you” (Lk. 1:35) – and so give him to us. Mary, as pure receptivity, simply reflects what she sees and receives. This is the woman Montfort sees in Christ, not as a past memory to imitate but as a present reality to relate to in love.
DRAWN TO GOD
So God has given us himself in Christ through the Holy Spirit. If we are wise, we want to ever deepen the insight of faith to respond in wonder, worship and service to the Lord we see there. Mary, whose receptive being created by the Holy Spirit of God, drew the love of God in Christ, can help do as much for us now. Doing this, Montfort believes Mary is acting in character.
Experience teaches most of us that our hearts are uncertain places and do not always keep and foster the best that we have been given. How then receive, keep and worship Jesus there? “Here is the great way,” says St. Louis-Marie, “the wonderful secret . . . surrender into her hands all we possess . . . keeping nothing for ourselves . . . she will give herself to us in a real but indefinable manner; and it is in her that eternal Wisdom will come and settle as on a throne of splendor” (LEW 211).
All of this is the work of the creative Spirit. The teacher may or may not be able to introduce the child to mathematics in terms he can come to understand. Centuries of experience, corroborate the testimony of St. Louis-Marie. If we are graced to enter the garden of Mary and, open to her influence, are drawn to what is to be seen there, our reaction may echo the joy and wonder of Simeon. She who drew the Spirit can draw us.
