Devotion to Mary: Mystical Union With God

Mystical Union With God

K arl Rahner, the well known German theologian, once wrote; “The faithful of the future will be mystic, one who has experienced God, or the faithful will not exist at all”.

Often this sentence is misquoted so that it reads; “The Christian of the future will be mystic . . .”.  However, Rahner thinks in broader terms for his concept of mysticism is based upon the human person in the transcendental openness to the absolute.  His statement, therefore, applies to all in some manner open themselves to the transcendent.  It pertains to all who live out their lives from within the finality and frailty of their own existence.

This realization –  even though implicit – of our finitude and limitation implies an infinite which is the horizon of human existence.  This yearning for the infinite, this openness to the absolute is the basis for Rahner’s assumption that the faithful of the future will be a mystic.

Present Day Situation of Faith

The experience of God is often impeded in many Christians by a fixation on laws, teachings, precepts in themselves rather than understanding them as effective guidelines to a deep personal, mystical experience of God.  Often, knowledge of the faith stagnates by the age of sixteen.  Moreover, it is generally limited to memorized answers; if not faith-knowledge, it is not an all-penetrating experience of God.

Modern Christians have reacted to the intellectualism of faith.  They want to experience – and not just know about – the salvation brought to us by God in Jesus Christ. Faith is not the pure and  simple intellectual acceptance of “incomprehensible dogmas”.  Rather, the core of faith involves one’s entire existence for it is the loving and active total surrender on every level of personality into the other who then constitutes the norm of everything we say, judge, do, plan. It is finding of self by losing one-self in the infinite, our God. It is the never-ending fulfillment of the yearning for the infinite which is ingrained in every human heart.

Prerequisite of Faith

The prerequisite of faith is openness, the willingness to confide in the other; to receive from the other, to be addressed by the other. This entails the conviction that “no man is an island, ” that we need one another, that we want to need one another be- cause we are in need of completion, of salvation. In the biblical world, this attitude is beatitude; “Blessed are the poor in heart . . . blessed are the meek”.  It is devotion to Mary which truly forms this attitude – this beatitude – in the depths of our being.

A mystical union between God and human persons is not, therefore, merely a matter of the intellect. Love is involved and, therefore, faith which dares to open up and confide in the other. Where love gives rise to faith, a personal relationship between human persons and God will develop. This implies a personal knowledge of the beloved’s absolute reliability, not a dispassionate understanding.

Devotion to Mary: A Means To Faith

Can this faith-knowledge be learned? Surely not by only reading about it. One of the best ways to enter this mystic way is to model ourselves on persons whose faith is truly mature. The church looks upon the saints – especially those who are authentic mystics – as models. Now there is one person on whom all the faithful may model themselves. One person who in a special way is our model of authentic faith. That person is Mary. She was the first to believe in God’s love-offer on behalf of the new Israel and of all creation: “How happy is she who has had faith so that the Lord’s promise would be fulfilled”.  (Lk 1:45).

Saint Louis de Montfort, an exceptional guide in the spiritual life, refers us to Mary as the model we should follow on our journey into the blazing light of God Alone. It must be remembered that Montfort’s devotion to Our Lady seeks nothing else but the continual strengthening of deep, personal faith in Jesus Christ. The eternal and incarnate Wisdom in whom God’s love-offer becomes flesh and blood. How then, does devotion to Mary assist us in our yearning for mystical union with God? Especially, Montfort would say, in two ways.

Mary, Mother-Model . . .

As the  Mother-Model of Faith. By her life she exemplifies to us the meaning of faith and the basic attitudes necessary for the growth and maturing of faith. Montfort, therefore, insists that the perfect consecration to Jesus through Mary is lived out through the practice of those virtues which are associated with Mary as a true Christian. We are to live “in, with, through and for the Virgin Mary” so that we will live ever more intensely “in, with, through and for Christ Jesus.”

The Virgin Mary is the first among humankind who believed in God in his personal self-revelation, the incarnation of the Word: Jesus Christ. The first request God made of her was that she recognize God in the child she was to bear. She did not understand this in its fullness.  For like the apostles she was only able to comprehend its full meaning at the paschal mystery of her Son’s death/resurrection. Yet she never retracted her faith; in her evangelical meekness and humility of heart, she believed permanently. Her faith was not the acceptance of “incomprehensible dogmas”; rather, she surrendered totally and lovingly to God in all the mysterious ways of salvation; “Let it be done unto me according to our word.”

. . . of Faith

The Marian dogmas explicitate Mary’s fulfillment which follows upon her faith. The immaculate conception, her perpetual virginity are not arbitrary privileges. They tell us something about the faith of this outstandingly devout woman. These dogmas reveal that Our Lady is total openness to God, total obedience to His word, total surrender to God Alone. She believes not in order “to have” God but to be there for Him. Mary was so radically open to the working of the Holy Spirit that the fruit of her body could be nothing else but the fruit of her faith. In Mary, God’s word becomes flesh and blood!

God wants to become “incarnate” in us also. Jesus, the perfect and definitive incarnation of eternal Wisdom, is the fulfillment of human existence. Salvation (i.e., God in His self-communication through the Word in the power of the Spirit) can only become “flesh and blood” in us and thus “bread for the world,” if we develop, in imitation of Mary, the necessary religious openness, biblical meekness. The mystical life of faith-knowledge is a gift which flows from the contemplation of the woman of faith, the virgin Mary.

Mary, Mother-Mediatrix of Faith

It is this personal union with Mary as ideal and faithful Christian which tells us that Mary is more to Montfort than a model. The second may, then, that Mary strengthens us in our mystical union with God in Christ Jesus is as Mother-Mediatrix of Faith. She actively and positively influences us in our faith-knowledge. Mary. our Mother and Mediatrix of God’s love, is a sure means of union with God through the one mediator, Jesus the Lord.

Mary is more than a moral example. She shares in a unique way in God’s self-disclosure through the incarnation of the Word. She “mediates” God’s entry into personal dialogue with creation through her faith-filled “yes” at the annunciation and through her surrender to the overshadowing Spirit who forms within her the Savior of the world.

The incarnation tells us that God’s word of love is not just a word about love; rather it is infinite love which surrenders itself and thus becomes flesh and blood in Jesus. And it is Mary, who in the name of unworthy creation, accepts in total openness this word of unconditional love in the offer to become one of us while remaining our God.

Contemplating the communication of God to us through Mary at the incarnation. We can understand better God’s continued communication to us in the Holy Spirit. Mary’s active and responsible consent, her willingness to be so unconditionally loved; these are not merely “examples” of the mystical way. Rather, they indicate that, dependent upon Jesus her Son, she truly influences our lives so that her faith-openness, her  faith-meekness will be ours.  In her we hear and learn what God wants to be in us.

Conclusion

Our Lady shows us the way in which our faith may truly become the experience of God’s unconditional love. It is the path of receptiveness and openness to God; it involves shaking the chaff out of our own ideas about God; moreover, it implies the humility by which we let God love us. Devotion to Mary, as taught by St. Louis de Montfort, enables us to accept and to be loved by God who embraces us unconditionally and thus eternally.

We therefore must imitate John at the foot of The Cross. In response to Jesus’ plea., let us admit Mary into our lives so that she can actually be our mother. She has already accepted us as her children long ago!