Mary’s Motherhood in the Spirit
Fr. Donald Macdonald, SMM
MARY’s MOTHERHOOD IN THE SPIRIT
It is usually a mistake to judge by appearances.
Appearances can be deceptive. “For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards . . . powerful . . . of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish . . . weak . . . low and despised”. (7 Cor. 1:26-28). St. Paul was making it plain that the Christian community in Corinth was of little account judged by contemporary standards. For the most part they would agree. The evidence of their eyes was enough for that.
INSIGHT NOT EYESIGHT
But Paul saw more. He is emphatic that God chose them. Three times in the verses quoted he uses the verb ‘to choose,’ and we may take it that for Paul, it carried all the weight and more of God’s original and creative choice of Israel. Because of God’s choice, Israel became a community in-dwelt by the Spirit of God. The same is true of the seemingly non-descript community in Corinth. They are no haphazard group together because of a chance meeting with Paul. They exist by God’s choice not by chance. Their existence is literally wonderful.
Eyesight would show little of this. Insight is necessary. This Paul has as a member of the community. Again, appearances may be deceptive. “When I came to you, brethren, … I was with you in weakness and much fear and trembling”. (1 Cor. 2:1-3).
In today’s terms, Paul may have been the despair of an advertising agency, but probably he would maintain that if such people could really see, “They would not have crucified the Lord of glory”. (I Cor. 2.8). There is little insight to be had from his contemporaries if they are not enlightened by the Gospel. St. Paul, contrary to appearances, and it is suggested that he may have had particularly bad eyesight, has another source of light; “Revealed to us through the Spirit”. (1 Cor. 2:10).
Statue of Mary, Queen of All Hearts, in a Chapel erected by St. Louis de Montfort at
Montbernage (Poitiers), France.
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THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT
“For the Spirit reaches the depths of everything, even the depths of God … we have received the Spirit that comes from God, to teach us to understand the gifts that he has given us”. (1 Cor. 2:12-13). Paul, attempting to explain the wonder of the Spirit’s presence is lost for words. The presence is everywhere, all- embracing, unquantifiable and reaches, “Even the depths of God …” which can never be sounded. Here everyone is out of their depth. Adoration and wonder is the basic response. The categories of language cannot contain the Spirit.
But there is more. “We have received the Spirit to understand the gifts”. This Spirit has been given to us in the community as a gift, to enable us to understand God giving himself in so many ways. From the depths of God to the depths within ourselves is Paul’s understanding of the Spirit among and within us. In so far as we are open to the Spirit’s presence, shall we understand the gifts God is giving us. This Paul emphasizes is the possession of some apparently ordinary people.
MARY GIFT OF THE SPIRIT
One of the loveliest gifts given to the Christian community is Our Lady.
God “loved her for his own sake, and he loved her for our sake too; he gave her to himself and he gave her also to us”. (Marialis Cultus, 56). Mary, therefore, is a reflection of the creative Spirit at the heart of the Church. The Spirit of God, which in the opening of Genesis is shown creating the universe, later present on Sinai bringing the community of Israel into being, is revealed overshadowing Mary and so a new creation in Christ.
The Infancy Narratives (see this link and this link) of the Gospel invite us to “Contemplate with intimate joy Mary who, taken into dialogue with God, gives her active and responsible consent, not to the solution of a contingent problem, but to that ‘event of world importance,’ … the Incarnation of the Word”. (Marialis Cultus, 37). By her ‘active and responsible consent’ as “The Lord’s slave” (Lk. 1:38), she invites the Holy Spirit into her being. As a result, God gave himself in Christ through her. The wonder of it all was possible because of the promise; “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you”. (Lk. 1.35). The reflected glory of the gift of this creative presence, colors her entire life to the present.
THE SOUND OF HER VOICE
“When the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy” (Lk 1:44), said Elizabeth, as Mary’s presence electrified her. The voice of a loved friend or neighbor can lift the heart. This is so much deeper. “That the mother of my Lord should come to me”? (Lk. 1:43) is a cause of wonder. Mary’s Spirit-filled presence, not least in the Son she is carrying, can even be caught in her voice. What must the company of such a graced woman mean?
Pope John Paul, in considering the mind of Our Lady as glimpsed in her Magnificat, observes that her faith-filled reflective mind, “Can now be said to spring forth like a clear and life-giving flame of the Spirit … Mary’s personal experience”. (Redemptoris Mater, 36). She radiates the Spirit of God, as she knows from the depths of her being that all she is, has and gives, is God’s gift. This life-embracing woman, for whom reality is to give us God in Christ, expresses this best through motherhood. So many in all generations have reacted as did Elizabeth when Our Lady came to their home or into their lives, so grateful for the gift “That the mother of my Lord should come to me.”
MOTHER OF . . .
Our Lady is never closer to the Spirit-filled heart of the community which is the Church than in her motherhood. Both share the one role in the Spirit, since “The Church’s mystery also consists in generating people to a new and immortal life; this is her motherhood in the Holy Spirit. And here Mary is not only the model and figure of the Church; she is much more”. (Redemptoris Mater, 44).
Our Lady is more than a lovely evocative memory or model to be copied. All generations have called themselves blessed because she is their contemporary. God is the God of the living, and in the Spirit, the one creative reality at the Church’s heart, is the constant gift of God giving himself in his Son. Our Lady, as the Mother of my Lord, is for all time intrinsically part of this same gift, and “Carries on in heaven her maternal role … cooperating in the birth and development of divine life in the souls of the redeemed” (Redemptoris Mater, 47).
So many have had the good fortune to take her home once they saw Christ say to them, “Behold, your mother”! (Jn. 19. 27).
Her maternal presence is received as part of the unfathomable riches to be found in Christ in what increasingly becomes a personal relationship. “Mary’s motherhood which becomes man’s inheritance is a gift; a gift which Christ himself makes personally to every individual”. (Redemptoris Mater, 45).
. . . THE CHURCH
If the Spirit from “the depths of God” is given us to enable us to understand the gifts of God, what must his presence mean in Our Lady? Again, without an understanding of the Spirit’s role in her life, appearances can be deceptive. She is not just a poor woman held in the time warp of rural Palestine two thousand years ago.
From the moment of her conception she was open to the creative Spirit of God, which would in time, with her active and whole-hearted cooperation, give birth to “The child … called holy, the Son of God”. (Lk. 1:35). And so the creation of the Christian community. One can only wonder at the insight of a woman so spectacularly blessed. What did and does she keep in her heart?
But the gift of motherhood towards ourselves is to be enjoyed not speculated upon. The relationship is personal, and intended to foster and deepen our life in the Spirit as we live each day in faith. It is supremely encouraging to believe that despite the possible mediocrity of our lives in Christ or whatever poor image we may have of ourselves, “In her new motherhood in the Spirit, Mary embraces each and every one in the Church, and embraces each and every one through the Church”. (Redemptoris Mater, 47). We are blessed if we see this.
