Mary and the Maturing of Faith
Fr. Donald Macdonald, SMM
Mary and the Maturing of Faith
A nything heartfelt goes to the core of our being. If anyone is heartbroken, it means that they have been crushed. In every-day speech, to say that a person’s ‘heart was not in it’ is to say they did not much care.
Any worthwhile faith is heartfelt, in that I genuinely give myself to it in the light of what I see. I am committed. The practical question is to know how to live it faithfully. There are so many competing claims until I find that “my own actions bewilder me . . . it is not the good my will prefers, but the evil my will disapproves, that I find myself doing” (Rm. 7:15, 19). How can I resolve this, Paul asks, and answers, “thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rm. 7:25).
Clearly, the living faith enabling us to trust and believe in God giving himself to us in Christ through the Spirit, is a gift. If we use it, making it part of ourselves, we see that God who “has blessed us in Christ chose us in him before the foundation of the world . . to be . . . his children through Jesus Christ . . . to the praise of his glorious grace” (Eph 1:3-5, 12).
Such insight is literally wonderful. For a Christian, this is the heart of reality. It means that there is point and meaning to life. I matter, and, therefore, should hope that God matters to me. Every moment is an invitation to respond to this. To savor this and so be alive to God, I need to be present in each moment too.
WHO AM I?
How present am I to myself? The Dominican priest Eckhart used to say that God is with us always ‘if he finds us at home, and have not gone out for a walk with the five senses.’ Who is that? Let’s go there. What did you say? Look at that? I like that . . . Our minds may never be still. We may be rarely in one place.
We can live through things and other people. I know who I am because of the house I live in, the clothes I wear, the way I look and speak, the car I drive, the job I have or do not have . . . My identity may be built on the shaky, immature basis of fashionable opinion and other people. This is a pity. I am what I have. In that world, rarely if ever at home with myself – often afraid to be alone – I may have no genuine center within myself to be at home with God.
So in the tension between the superficial and the real, the external and the genuine ‘me,’ my faith has to mature, weaken or be lost. To live an authentic Christian life, I must come to know myself and my Lord. I need to grow into a mature, adult Christian.
This cannot be done, St. Louis-Marie believes, by people in sin or following what is not of God, because “they are never or very seldom at home, in their own house . . . in their own interior, the inner essential abode that God has given to everyone to dwell in. Sinners have no liking for solitude, or the spiritual life or interior devotion” (TD 187). We can lose taste for God.
Madonna of the Roses (cropped): French Painter: William-Adolphe Bouguereau: 1903
. . . he stresses that it must be genuine devotion centered on the real ‘me’ and the real Mary. “It is easy to enroll in a confraternity . . . say the few vocal prayers . . . The chief difficulty is to enter into its spirit . . . I have met only a few who have caught its interior spirit, and fewer still who have persevered in it”. The heart of it, the ‘interior spirit,’ “requires an interior dependence on Mary, and effectively become her slave and the slave of Jesus through her”.
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HELP . . .
It is here that St. Louis Marie values devotion to Our Lady. But he stresses that it must be genuine devotion centered on the real ‘me’ and the real Mary. “It is easy to enroll in a confraternity . . . say the few vocal prayers . . . The chief difficulty is to enter into its spirit . . . I have met only a few who have caught its interior spirit, and fewer still who have persevered in it” (SM 44). The heart of it, the ‘interior spirit,’ “requires an interior dependence on Mary, and effectively become her slave and the slave of Jesus through her” (SM 44).
. . . TO MATURE
St. Paul, who earlier wrote of the struggle we experience in coming to a mature life in Christ, sees himself in the same letter, the most formal of those we have, as, ‘Paul, slave of Christ Jesus’ (Rm. 1:1). St. Louis Marie prizes that self-description too, and in Our Lady, finds a God-given help in keeping that perspective. He accepts that not everyone sees what he does, because, “as this devotion essentially consists in a state of soul, it will not be understood in the same way by everyone. Some . . . will stop short at the threshold. Others will take but one step into its interior. Who will take a second step, a third . . . remain in it permanently? Only the one to whom the spirit of Jesus reveals the secret. The Holy Spirit . . . until at length . . . transformation into Jesus” (TD 119).
Montfort insists that interiority is a key mark of authentic devotion to Our Lady. It must be inbuilt; “that is, it comes from within the mind and the heart and follows from the esteem in which we hold her and the love we bear her” (TD 106). If the real ‘me’ is not engaged, obviously there cannot be a real relationship. Equally, if I do not give myself to the real Mary, the devotion is unreal.
WITHIN ME
This growth is taking place within the individual person. Our Lady is not yet one more distraction between us and God. In his devotion to her, Montfort believes he follows the way of his Lord; “Lord Jesus, how lovely is your dwelling place (Mary)! . . . How happy is the one who dwells in the house of Mary where you were the first to dwell!” (TD 196). The Son points the way to his mother.
“Do not think . . . that Mary, the most fruitful of all God’s creatures, who went as far as to give birth to a God-man, remains idle in a docile soul. She causes Jesus to live continuously in that soul and that soul to live in continuous union with Jesus . . . . more especially her fruit and her masterpiece in the soul where she is present” (SM 56). This is logical, as Mary is ever the person she has always been, the one ‘blessed . . among women . . . the mother of my Lord’ (Lk. 1:42-43).
As she is now assumed into glory with her Son, Montfort echoes the wonder and delight of Elizabeth as Mary too comes into his house. Coming with Christ to Elizabeth, the meeting was charged with insight and joy by the overshadowing Holy Spirit. Her presence is electric. St. Louis Marie has experienced this personally as have so many before and since.
MARY . . .
Whether that is Our experience or not, St. Louis Marie’s sound advice may help us attain or retain it; gradually acquire the habit of recollecting ourselves interiorly and so form within us an idea or a spiritual image of Mary. She must become . . . an Oratory . . . where we offer up our prayers to God . . . safer . . . a burning lamp lighting up our inmost soul and inflaming us with love for God . . . a sacred place of repose where we can contemplate God in her company . . . When we receive Jesus in Holy Communion, we will place him in Mary for him to take his delight in her . . . Mary will help us to forget self everywhere and in all things ‘ (SM 47).
Clearly, that is heartfelt on Montfort s part. He speaks of what he knows and does. This is a glimpse of mature, adult faith. He is wholly present to Mary presenting him to Jesus. If we have the interior discipline to invite the Holy Spirit to do as much for us, constructing within ourselves an oratory of Mary, we too would find what St. Louis Marie and so many others have found. It is a lovely world, God-centered, adoring, attentive.
. . . THE ORATORY
As this perspective deepened it might help separate us from ‘superficial devotees . . . only the externals of devotion appeal to them because they have no interior spirit . . , the substance has no appeal at all. If they do not FEEL a warmth in their devotions, they think they are doing nothing . . . become upset . . . give up everything .. . do things only when they feel like it. The world is full of these shallow devotees (TD 96).
No doubt, there is some of that in most of us. We need to grow in faith. Invite Mary within us, therefore, to be really present to our real selves. Her Spirit-graced presence could do for us what once it did for Elisabeth. As it registers, we will come to live in Christ in the wonder of adoration for the praise of his glory.
