Mary and the Fourteenth Station

Today is Friday and Fridays during Lent are a traditional day for Stations of the Cross. Many churches have evening services where people do the Stations in groups. Others like to pray them individually.

There are many versions of the Stations and many people have their own favorite – whether it is Clarence Enzler’s Everyone’s Way of the Cross (one of my favorites) or the St. Alphonsus Liguori Stations of the Cross or the Social Justice Stations of the Cross and so on.

The one I picked to reflect on this week is The Stations of the Cross with Mary, from Creighton University Online Ministries.

For all of us who have suffered the loss of a loved one (which I’m guessing is pretty much all of us), the prayer of the Fourteenth Station, Jesus is laid in the tomb is a very powerful one. Here it is:

No mother should ever have to bury a child. Just a short time before this day, Jesus looked into Lazarus’ tomb. He must have known he would be laid in a tomb like that soon. And when he thanked God for hearing his prayer, he must have known that the Father who sent him would give him life that would never die. In just a few days, this tomb would be empty and forever a sign of Jesus’ surrender to the forces of sin and death, for us.

As we picture this scene, let us place the image of the empty tomb before our eyes. Whenever you are tempted to stand outside any tomb and grieve, remember this empty tomb and know that, through the eyes of faith, all tombs are empty. Today, join me in giving him thanks. Join me in signing ourselves with the sign of his cross, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Even during Lent, we remember that the tomb is empty. I’m reminded, as I pray Mary’s prayer, of the some lines of a song I’ve heard used as a recessional hymn, Goodness is Stronger than Evil: “Vic’try is ours, vict’ry is ours through him who loved us. Vic’try is ours, vic’try is ours through him who loved us.”

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They Have No Wine

Today’s Gospel is a scene from St. John’s Gospel that is very familiar to most of us: the wedding feast at Cana.

There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples also had been invited. It sounds like it was a great big party, one of those events where everyone in town is invited. Lots of guests, lots of food, great music and plenty of wine.

But, at a certain point in the celebration, the wine runs out. In Jewish tradition, wine was a visible sign of God’s loving gifts to human beings, as well as a sign of wisdom used in Jewish rites of purification. So to run out of wine unexpectedly was a big, big deal.

Mary realizes the situation and goes to her son and says, “They have no more wine.” At first we wonder what is the point of her statement or whether anything will happen, because Jesus response to Mary is so abrupt and dismissive: “Woman, how does his concern of yours involve me? My hour has not yet come.” Essentially: leave me alone. Not my problem.

If the hearer of that response is a person of timidity of uncertainty, that is the end of the story. Jesus brushes her off and she goes away. But that is not what happens. Instead, Mary turns to the servers and says, “Do whatever he tells you.” Despite Jesus’ words to her, she seems secure in the knowledge that Jesus would take some action. .

And, Jesus does just that. He tells the waiters to fill six stone water jars with water – and then he turns the water into wine. He doesn’t appear to touch the jars, he doesn’t seem to do anything to the water. He gives no blessing, utters no specific words – he simply changes the water into wine. John ends the wedding at Cana story by pointing out that this was the first of the signs revealing Jesus’ glory, and it was because of it that “his disciples believed in him.”

The contrast between Mary and the other disciples is telling. It was because of this first sign that they believed in him. Mary, however, didn’t need the sign; Mary believed before there was a sign. Not only does Mary go up to her son with expectation and certainty, but also by doing so she effectively declares her belief and certainty that Jesus was the Messiah. Mary’s words – the final she is recorded as speaking in the Gospels – implies faith in Jesus.

In his Encyclical Redemptoris Mater, Pope John Paul II wrote,

Mary is present in Cana of Galilee as Mother of Jesus, and in a significant way she contributes to the ‘beginning of the signs’ which reveal the messianic power of her Son…At Cana, thanks to the intercession of Mary and the obedience of the servants, Jesus begins ‘his hour.” At Cana, Mary appears as believing in Jesus. Her faith evokes his first ‘sign’ and helps to kindle the faith of the disciples.

A model of faith for all of us.

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The Testament of Mary

One of my Christmas gifts from Dave was a slim book by Colm Toibin titled The Testament of Mary.

The short novel is told in the first person by Mary late in her life. The book jacket refers to the Mary presented here as “a solitary older woman still seeking to understand the events that become the narrative of the New Testament and the foundation of Christianity.”

The Mary of this book is not the Mary we have come to know from the Gospels and Church teaching. This Mary did not ask anything of her son at the wedding feast at Cana – a feast she didn’t even want to attend and went only to try to persuade her son to come home. This Mary doubted the stories about the raising of Lazarus. This Mary did not stay at the foot of the cross until her son died, but ran away to avoid capture. This Mary goes, not to the Synagogue, but to the temple of the great goddess Artemis.

But the worst offense to the Mary we have come to know occurs near the end of the book, in the final conversation Mary has with the men who are presented as something between her caretakers and her captors – the men who are writing about Jesus to spread his story. The men are (im)patiently explaining to Mary that Jesus died to redeem the world, that his suffering was necessary so that mankind could be saved. And in response to this claim that Jesus was sent by God to redeem the world, Mary says, “if you want witnesses then I am one and I can tell you now, when you say that he redeemed the world, I will way that it was not worth it. It was not worth it.”

The book is a novel and so I take no offense of the image of Mary presented (although I am aware of the angry reviews by many offended by the picture of Mary presented). Rather, although it did nothing to tarnish Mary in my eyes, I found it thought-provoking. I like the encouragement to try to go beyond the little we have in scripture about many figures – including Mary – to try to understand what they must have been feeling. The book is a reminder that the figures about whose lives we read only snatches in the Gospels were real people with real – and complex – emotions.

As for Mary herself, we know that she pondered many things in her heart. And perhaps she did ponder – at least in some fashion – some of the things the book presents her as pondering. Perhaps she wondered if Lazarus really rose from the dead. Or if her son really fed 500 people with a few loaves of bread. And perhaps she even talked (or argued) with God about whether her son’s death was “worth it,” trying to come to grips with the loss of her son. If she did, she would be like many of us, struggling to make sense of things that are not easy to make sense of. But whether she did or not, we do her a disservice when we fail to treat her as a real, complex woman – and as a mother who lose her beloved son.

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Blessed Are You Who Believed

Today’s Gospel is the beautiful encounter between Mary and Elizabeth recorded in Luke’s Gospel. It is a passage I love and have written about before. (See. e.g., here and here.)

Having been told by the Angel that Elizabeth is with child, Mary travels “in haste” to the home of Zechariah and her cousin Elizabeth. Elizabeth says several things when she greets the younger women. The one that struck me this time was the last thing Elizabeth says: “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”

Mary believed what God promised. We see that belief reflected in the canticle that follows Elizabeth’s line (although it is not part of today’s Gospel), in which Mary “proclaims the greatness of the Lord” and speaks about God’s fulfillment of “his promise to our father, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

The question for us is: do we believe in what was spoken to us by the Lord? Do we believe it when God says:

I have called you by name and you are mine. (Isaiah)

I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. (Jeremiah)

I have branded you on the palms of my hand. (Isaiah)

As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you. (Isaiah)

And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age. (Matthew)

I will come back again an take you to myself, os that where I am you also may be. (John)

As we come to the end of this Advent period, we might reflect on God’s words to us. Words Mary believed. Words we can believe.

“Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”

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Let It Be Done Unto Me

Yesterday’s Gospel was Luke’s account of the Annunciation, in honor of which I listened last night to one of my favorite songs of the Annunication – Danielle Rose’s, Let it Be Done Unto Me, from her Mysteries CD.

The lyrics of the song are powerful to me, not only because of what they say about Mary and her faith and discipleship. Rather, her “yes” is the yes we are each asked to give to God’s invitation to us to participate in birthing Christ into the world. Like Mary, we are asked to say

Yes to the Father,
Yes to the unknown,
Yes with all [our] strength,
Yes to God alone.

As we go through these last days of Advent, I pray that I can give a “yes” as firm as Mary’s, as complete and full as hers.

If you haven’t heard the song – and even if you have – take a few moments to listen to it now.

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Presence of Grace vs. Absence of Sin

As I was going through some paper I accumulated during my New York visit, I came across a parish bulletin from St. Francis Xavier, where I attended Mass and spoke about my book on the Sunday I was in New York.

The bulletin entry concerned the Feast of the Immaculate Conception that had taken place the day before. It observed that although the literal sense of the feast is the idea that Mary was born free from original sin, the broader understanding of the Feast “expresses the experience of the faithful that what we know about Mary indicates she lived a life in which she knew she was freely and completely loved by God.” The Feast is thus an illustration that “within human nature God takes the initiative to surround the life of all human beings with love and fidelity.” Thus, it suggested, although we think about the doctrine of Immaculate Conception in terms of absence of sin, it is more importantly about the presence of grace.

The explanation resonated with me for two reasons. First, I have always thought that it makes an enormous difference whether we view our starting point as sin or grace. The reality is that our starting point is grace – we enter the world through the love of God and are gifted with God’s grace in each moment of our existence. Grace comes first, then sin. I think that is something we sometimes forget.

Second, while Mary is an important figure for Catholics and many other Christians for a number of reasons, the explanation makes the Feast about more than Mary. What makes Mary special is that she so fully lived in the grace of God. But that grace is something that is available to all of us and we are each invited to live as Mary did – as people (to paraphrase the bulletin) who freely live and move and make life decisions within that graced horizon. In this, as in so many things, Mary is a model for our lives.

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Annunciation Narratives

Last night was the first of a three-segment Advent program Bill Nolan (pastoral associate at St. Thomas Apostle parish) and I are offering at St. Thomas Apostle for parishioners of STA and Christ the King parishes.

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke each offer a genealogy of Jesus, an annunciation narrative and a birth narrative.

During the session last night I gave a talk on the annunciation narratives in the two Gospels: Luke’a account of the annunciation to Mary and Matthew’s account of the annunciation to Joseph. The narratives are, at one level, very different, and ont he other, quite similar. While Mary’s is the one we tend to focus on, Joseph is no less a model of faith and trusting obedience than is Mary.

Each of the narratives challenges us to reflect on our own responses to God’s invitation to us to participate in his plan of salvation.

You can access a recording of the talk I gave last evening here or stream it from the icon below. The podcast runs for 30:47. (There are two places where I had someone read Gospel excerpts; the second may be a bit soft given the distance of the reader from the recorder.) You can find the handout with questions for reflecion here. The handout also includes one of my favorite poems on the Annunciation.

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Mary’s Ponders and Wonders

I spent Thursday evening through Sunday afternoon at Christ the King Retreat house in Buffalo, MN, giving an Ignatian retreat for women. I have a passion for the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, so it was both a privilege and a delight to lead sixty-two women through a weekend of reflections on this great gift given to us by Ignatius. God’s blessings flowed on all of us.

At one of the Masses, the priest spoke in his homily about Mary. As he told it: Mary is told by an angel that she, a virgin, will give birth by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that her son will be a king. She doesn’t totally understand, but gives her consent. She goes through her very ordinary life wondering what the angel meant. She goes through her pregnancy wondering how and when this son will be king. As he is born in a stable, she wonders how the angel’s prediction of kingship could come to pass. As she raises him, she continues to wonder how this can be. Then he goes off and starts preaching (perhaps with his mother following him), Mary wondering, how and when will my son be king. Finally, she is kneeling at the foot of the cross, still wondering, how will this dying man become king.

There was nothing earthshaking in the priest’s brief retelling of Mary’s life. But, notwithstanding the periodic reminder in the Gospels that Mary “pondered” many things in her heart, I never considered what it must have been like for her to go through her life, wondering over the years what exactly the Gabriel’s message meant. Surely she understood her son was special. But it was powerful to me to realize that as the years went on, she remained in the dark as to the full import of Gabriel’s message and what kind of king her son was meant to be.

The priest suggested in his sermon that it was not until the Resurrection that Mary had a full understanding of the meaning of her son’s life. That is a long time to walk “by faith, and not by sight.”

Mary was already a powerful role model for me. This message makes her even more so.

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Giving Meaning to the Assumption

Yesterday was the feast of the Assumption of Mary. I had the fortune to attend a Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes last evening at which my friend Dan Griffith presided and my daughter Elena was the cantor. So I got a great sermon and the pleasure of hearing Elena sing the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria.

I was interested in Dan’s discussion in his homily of the difference between how the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church speaks about the end of Mary’s life, the former focusing on the raising up of Mary and the latter on her not being subject to death. (Eastern Orthodox speak of Mary’s “dormition,” which stresses her not being subject to death because of her freedom from original sin.)

What was most compelling to me, though, was his stress on our treating days like today, not primarily as matters of dogma, but in terms of what they say to us about us and our lives.

If our picture of the Assumption is of a prone Mary being bodily lifted up by angels into heaven, it seems a bit otherworldly.

On the other hand, if our focus on the Assumption is on Mary’s experience as an embodiment of the reality of our Resurrection, it becomes something much mor meaningful to us. Jesus resurrection is, of course, the true victory over death – that which gives creates the possibility of our own resurrection and ultimate full union with God. But with Jesus there is always the nagging thought, “Well sure, he was God, of course it worked for him. He may have been fully human, but he was also fully divine from the get go.”

But Mary was human, like us. And Mary’s assumption into heaven, body and soul, symbolizes for us the reality of what will happen for all of – resurrection of the body into full union with God. You can phrase it various ways as a matter of dogma. But her experience is, in simplest terms, a foretaste of our own.

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Mary, Mother of Us All

In the Catholic Church, Saturdays are days traditionally devoted to Mary. We celebrate Mary as the Mother of God and as a model of discipleship, faith and fidelity.

We have many prayers associated with Mary. I have always loved Litanys of Mary, which I have prayed in various forms, some less traditional than others.

There was one Litany we prayed at a retreat I attended last summer that I found very powerful, particularly in its reminder that Mary is mother of us all and stands in solidarity with us all. In the Litany we prayed:

Mary, our mother, pray for us.
Unwed mother, pray for us.
Mother of the non-violent…
Mother of the condemned…
Mother of the dying…
Mother of the executed criminal…
Mother of the liberator…
Mother oppressed by religion…
Woman pregnant with hope…
Homeless woman…
Woman at the First Supper…
Political refugee…
Seeker of sanctuary…
Marginalized woman…
Woman of vision…
First disciple…
Comforter of the afflicted…
Woman always on mission…
Queen of peace…

You can pray the litany in this form. Or you can add your own prayers.

How do you name Mary? What does she mean to you?

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