| | So the other day I was in a chapel devoted to Mary-- even now I'm unsure how to refer to her (Virgin Mary, St. Mary, Mary Mother of God, Mary the Mother of Christ?)-- and I asked, rather timidly if she'd watch over me, since my own mother was rather far away. You know, if Mary didn't mind.
Now, I see no particular issue in talking to the saints. I am as much in communion with them as I am to Diane Kenney or Bob Kelsey. There is little we affirm more as Christians than that death is a weaker force than love. So the other day I told St. Michael, if he wanted to be in a novel I'm working on, he'd better offer some inspiration as to how. I see no problem with this. You may say this distracts us from praying to God Himself, but so does any conversation with the living, and I see no protest there.
That said, as much of a wannabe Catholic as I am, I've always been a bit trepidatious about Mary. Not that I don't respect her position in God's historic work of salvation, but all this business about immaculate conception and perpetual virginity and bodily assumption tends to give a good Methodist pause. If for no other reason than my sympathy with poor St. Joseph, I'd have a hard time believing perpetual virginity, much less than the stronger stuff.
And yet, here I am in France and Italy, both-- at least historically-- heavily Catholic countries, and at every museum and Cathedral I pass by the countless images of the Madonna and Child, the Annunciation, the Coronation, and the Assumption of Mary, and I can't help but think, maybe at the very least, we Protestants are not giving Mary her due. Looking at these images of Mary holding our Lord at his frailest, I wonder if anyone else in all of history has anything close to her experience. God incarnate was incarnate from her flesh, formed in her womb, nursed at her breast! Christ may be fully God, but if he is also fully man than that man, surely, is of Mary. You start to wonder if the idea of Mary's immaculate conception is not so much a prop for her virtue as a resolute belief that the very skin and bone of Christ could come from nothing less than an immaculate woman.
Could God have done His incarnational work through anyone? Perhaps. But He didn't do it through anyone; He did it through Mary, who "found favor with God." And now I wonder, what are we to make of that?
I do not mean to argue here for the full Catholic image of Mary; it is an image I understand with nothing approaching clarity. But, looking constantly into the eyes of this demure woman, present all through Christ's ministry, more faithful than all the disciples, and most clearly indivorcible from the Lord during His infancy (As if anyone would paint the Child without the Madonna!), I admit I'm struck with something a bit more than vague respect.
At the very least, if she cared for Christ (difficult as He must have been), I should like to think she could spare an eye for me. |
| | Posted 9/19/2007 12:20 AM - 12 Views - 2 eProps - 1 Comment
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