Mary, Revealed In The Holy Spirit
Fr. Donald Macdonald, SMM
REVEALED IN THE HOLY SPIRIT
The parishioners of St. John Vianney, Curé d’Ars, made him a present of a vestment to celebrate the proclamation of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception in December 1854.
In thanking them he said the following. “If I were able to sell myself to give something to the Blessed Virgin, I would sell myself”. Clearly, for such a priest who. spoke as he lived, Our Lady was real. To give her something he would give up everything. He was willing to give himself, which is what genuine love for another means.
John Vianney, therefore, could easily have understood another French pastoral priest, St. Louis-Marie de Montfort whose love of Our Lady was as absolute as his own. God, said Montfort, “Created a world for the wayfarer, that is the one we are living in. He created a second world—Paradise for the Blessed. He created a third for himself, which he named Mary. She is a world unknown to most mortals here on earth”. (Secret of Mary, 19).
Everyone can appreciate the world about us, given the ability to touch, taste, see, hear or smell. We may not like a cold wind but we do feel it. Equally, given faith, we may believe in a world beyond our present reality; where one day we can hope to be with the Lord for ever. Within that world of faith, says Montfort, is Our Lady, so attractive to God and unknown to most people on earth. She is a world within a world.
GARDEN OF GOD
Living there, St. Louis-Marie uses the insight and vocabulary of the contemplative to speak of what he has found. “Mary is God‘s garden of Paradise, his own unspeakable world, into which his Son entered to do wonderful things, to tend it and to take his delight in it”. (SM, 19) From her conception, Mary’s being was open to all that God could give. As her bodily life would receive nurture from the sun, so her inner self, like a private garden, would be tended and cared for by God.
Such is God’s delight in what he had created in Mary. That his Word would take flesh there. Living within the intimacy of mother and child from the womb to the grave, resurrection and glory. The garden would so flower as to bring into being a new creation in her Son. “God therefore 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).
The Cure d’Ars, as Montfort, willing to give everything for her, echoes this insight of the Church. They have found their way into the garden of Mary and are enthralled by what they find there. Their response in love follows the logic of the realization in wonder, that He wh0 is mighty and done great things for her. They then, with her, rejoice in God their Savior. (Lk. 1:46-49).
What is it like to see what they see? Is it possible? Montfort and Vianney were pastoral men at the grass-roots in the Church, in circumstances rarely ideal. Perhaps they can show us, living in a not dissimilar world, how to find our way into the garden of Mary.
Mary Statue: Infant Jesus Parish: Port Jefferson, NY
Such is God’s delight in what He had created in Mary. That his Word would take flesh there. Living within the intimacy of mother and child from the womb to the grave, resurrection and glory. The garden would so flower as to bring into being a new creation in her Son. “God therefore 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”.
Return to The Queen: Articles
THROUGH THE . . .
St. Louis-Marie delighting in what he has found and so eager to share it, says that the way in is through the Holy Spirit.
“Happy .. . is the person to whom the Holy Spirit reveals the secret of Mary . . . true knowledge of her . . . to whom the Holy Spirit opens this enclosed garden . . . to whom the Holy Spirit gives access to this sealed fountain . . . and drink . . . of the living waters of grace”. (SM, 20). Delight in Mary is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Alive in her company having found running, life-giving waters there, Montfort makes it plain three times that the secret was revealed and the garden was opened to him by the Holy Spirit.
St. Louis-Marie here follows St. Paul who was able to “Impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God,” not to be understood by the contemporary world or even adequately described since, “God has revealed (it) to us through the Spirit”. (1 Cor. 2:7-10).
. . . HOLY SPIRIT
Speaking in awe of 1he presence of the Holy Spirit in Christian life he says, “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. 2:10-12).
The vocabulary does not exist to describe what St. Paul sees as the key to authentic Christian experience. But he makes the attempt. The Spirit from the depths of God, which are by definition unquantifiable, is to be found in the depths within ourselves, to enable us to understand something of the gifts given us by God! “Therefore we teach . . , in the way that the Spirit teaches us . . . because it can only be understood by means of the Spirit.” (Cor. 2:13-14).
So, St. Louis-Marie believes that the gift of Mary can only be received and the garden of Mary only entered by the person fortunate enough to be graced by the Holy Spirit. Otherwise we will not see.
FIND . . .
As the love of God pours into Our Lady’s being through the Holy Spirit given at her conception and ever since, her whole being radiates God. Overshadowed by the Spirit, she is enabled to bring a new creation into being in her Son, in whom all of us are one. That is why, says Montfort, anyone “to whom the Holy Spirit opens this enclosed garden . . . will find only God and no creature in the most loveable Virgin Mary.” (SM, 20).
Indwelt always by the Holy Spirit, and having given birth to the Word of God through that same creative presence, she now reflects this wholly in the glory of heaven.
”Her transformation into God far surpasses that experienced by St. Paul and other saints, more than heaven surpasses the earth”. (SM, 21). She has been and is now at one with God in a manner we can scarcely know. As such, she never takes anyone or anything from God. “Mary was created only for God, and it is unthinkable that she should reserve even one soul for herself”. (SM, 21).
One with her in Christ in God, the more she attracts those open to her influence, the closer are they to God. “Mary is the wonderful echo of God. The more a person joins himself to her, the more effectively she unites him to God. When we say “Mary,” she re-echoes “God.” (SM, 21).
. . . ONLY GOD
This echo is not empty of content. The person of Mary echoes the person of Jesus as “In the Virgin Mary everything is relative to Christ and dependent on him . . . genuine Christian piety has never failed to highlight the indissoluble link and essential relationship of the Virgin to the Divine Savior.” (Marialis Cultus, 25).
St. John Vianney and St. Louis-Marie, living in Mary, heard this too. The Holy Spirit, we may believe, drew them into this garden and there they were drawn to what Our Lady now sees in glory. God is so near in her, “Living in Mary he is the Bread of children . . . sympathetic to human weakness”. (SM, 20). The traditionally safe, life-giving image of mother and child echoes fidelity and love. She drew them out of themselves, encouraging them to give themselves to God in Christ as did she. This they did.
Willingly they gave themselves to give her something. Invited by the Holy Spirit to enter her company, we might pray to give her something, that in time we might really give ourselves to what she now sees.
