Mary the Mother of Our Lord

Today we celebrate Mary the Mother of the Lord.

We know very little about Mary's family background; nor do we know much about her life. The gospels are strangely silent about her. We are not certain if she belonged to the Davidic line, as the angel Gabriel's annunciation implies, or to the Aaronic line, as her kinship to Elizabeth would imply.

According to the 2nd century document variously named the Infancy Gospel of James or the Protevangelium of St James, Mary was born of a rich but childless couple, Joachim and Anna, as a result of fervent prayer. Her grateful parents dedicated her to a life of service in the temple, where, from three years of age, she lived ‘as a dove that is nurtured: and she received food from the hand of an angel.'[i]

At the age of twelve she was taken from the temple by Joseph, a widower, as a result of a sign marking Joseph as her divinely ordained protector. Later she was appointed among seven virgins to the task of weaving a new curtain for the temple, the same one that was rent in two at the time of Jesus’ death.

It was during this work that the angel of the Annunciation appeared to her. When she at length was found to be pregnant, both she and Joseph were forced to undergo the water test for adultery[ii] which they successfully passed.

Near the end of their journey to Bethlehem, Joseph searched for a mid-wife while Mary rested in a cave. A cloud overshadowed the cave, a great light appeared, and the child was born and began to nurse. The mid-wife was astonished at these miraculous signs accrediting the Virgin Birth. The narrative proceeds to describe the visit of the Magi, the slaughter of the children at Bethlehem, and other happenings. Such was a 2nd century legend about Mary.

Later on, other legends concerning Mary's death and assumption began to appear. One of them, with a touch of anti-Semitic malice, has it that during the funeral procession for Mary, a Jewish priest laid hands on the bier intending to overturn it, failed, and was then unable to free his hands until he had confessed faith in Mary's divine son. The body of Mary was placed in a new sepulchre and raised by the command of Jesus, who appeared before the tomb with a band of angels. And the angels bore her to paradise.

By the time Dante appeared on the scene, the adoration of Mary was quite something. Dante eulogised Mary in a celebrated prayer (St Bernard’s) that marks the culmination of his spiritual adventure through hell, purgatory, and the Spheres of Paradise, to the beatific vision of the Trinity in the midst of the celestial rose. His prayer reads in part:

Virgin mother, daughter of your Son,

more humble and sublime than any creature,

fixed goal decreed from all eternity,

you are the one who gave to human nature

so much nobility that its Creator

did not disdain His being made its creature.

That love whose warmth allowed this flower[iii] to bloom

within the everlasting peace—was love

rekindled in your womb; for us above,

you are the noonday torch of charity,

and there below, on earth, among the mortals,

you are a living spring of hope.

Lady, you are so high, you can so intercede,

that he who would have grace but does not seek

your aid, may long to fly but has no wings.

Your loving-kindness does not only answer

the one who asks, but it is often ready

to answer freely long before the asking.

In you compassion is, in you is pity,

in you is generosity, in you

is every goodness found in any creature.[iv]

In the light of the foregoing, one might ask how it was that Mary did not become a part of the Godhead. All other Godheads of which I know include a feminine principle of one sort or another. But, as Joseph Campbell pointed out, the Christian Doctrine of three divine persons in one divine substance is actually “a transposition of the Graces three and Hyperborean Apollo of Greek lore into a mythological order of exclusively masculine masks of God. All of which accords well enough with the patriarchal spirit of the Old Testament, but radically unbalances the symbolic, and therefore spiritual, connotations not only of sex and the sexes, but also of all nature. ”[v]

An almost ridiculous difficulty has followed this exclusion of the female principle from its normal cosmic role. The mythological females of the Christian myth have perforce been ‘interpreted historically: Mother Eve, before and after the Fall, as a prehistoric character in a garden that never was; and Mary, the "Mother of God", as a virgin who conceived miraculously and was physically assumed into a place called "Heaven Above" that does not actually exist.’[vi]

Throughout the history of Christianity, its symbols (and liturgies) have been prey to the danger of re-interpretation in some general mythological sense - as has been the case for other major religious groups. Buddhist, Hindu, Navaho and Aztec mythologies are equally susceptible to Christian readings, something that might be interpreted as a triumph for Christianity if the process were not reciprocal.

In point of fact, re-interpretation of Christian myth into an essentially patriarchal system took place very early in the history of the Christian Church, and in such a way that documentary evidence for that process is scant. Revisionism at its worst. And we must bear in mind that this reinterpretation has been sustained from generation to generation by the Church’s liturgies, something that many in this day and age wish to correct.

Carl Jung, I believe, was correct in looking for a feminine principle within the Christian Godhead. So, let us celebrate Mary, Mother of the Lord, with more conviction than some dewy-eyed appreciation of the Lady in Blue.

The cartoonist Leunig's offering of prayer is fitting.

God be with the mother.

As she carried her child may she carry her soul.

As her child was born, may she give birth and life and form

to her own, higher truth. As she nourished and protected her child, may she nourish and protect her inner life and her independence. For her soul shall be her most painful birth, her most difficult child and the dearest sister to her other children.

Our soul shall indeed be our most painful birth, and this life is its gestation. Let us then celebrate the holy mysteries in peace and with joy.

In the name of God.

Amen.

Doug Bannerman © 2022

[i] Book of James or Protoevangelium, From "The Apocryphal New Testament", M.R. James-Translation and Notes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924) VIII 1, see https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/infancyjames-mrjames.html

[ii] Numbers 5:16ff

[iii] i.e. the Celestial Rose.

[iv] Dante, Divine Comedy, Paradiso 31-33. Translation by the late Allen Mandelbaum. See https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2021/03/the-annunciation-2021-dante-and-virgin.html#.YvW4hy8RoUQ

[v] Joseph Campbell The Masks of God: Creative Mythology (Arkana Books: New York 1991) p108

[vi] Ibid p109