IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY 2008.
It is a pity that there is not a Gospel written by a woman. We could have expected a unique view of the mystery of Christ. The obvious candidate for such a gospel is Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary is in the background in the gospels but a look at the occasions on which she does appear shows up something curious: every time Mary is mentioned it is in association with relatives. Her Son, of course, but also her husband, her cousin, her cousin’s son, her sister, her father in law, her nephews, her nieces and her relations in general are all mentioned in the same breath as her. Could this be a reflection of a typically female interest and concern for family? At any rate, today’s feast places Mary at the heart of her own family by bringing her parents into the picture.
There is another side to Mary, what Dom Bernardo Olivera, former Abbot General, has called the solitude of Mary. This is a purely positive solitude. It is the great monastic principle of being separated from all in order to be united with all operating in Mary’s life. We see this solitude of Mary in the infrequency, already alluded to, with which she appears in the Gospels. We see it at the Annunciation when the angel Gabriel finds her alone. We see it in the ‘nothingness’ of the Magnificat and we see it at the foot of the cross in the solitude of her grief, no matter who or how many others stand by her. It is the inner face of the face she turns outwards to her relatives and others. Mary could have this balance between inner and outer only because she was without sin. Sin causes an imbalance on one side or the other. Today’s society, at least in this country, has the odd distinction of being imbalanced on both sides. Latest figures show that never have so many people lived on their own and yet society has surely never been so utterly obsessed with relationships.
At the Crucifixion, Mary’s family expanded to include all disciples of Christ and indeed all the human race: ‘Behold thy mother’. That was said to the Beloved Disciple. He took her into his home. What was it like to have a sinless one in the house? To live with such a one for years? For a start she surely was the main influence behind the gospel he would write. The house of the Beloved Disciple with Mary living there was the engine room of the early Church or like a spiritual nuclear reactor.
But here is a description someone has given of Mary’s daily life: ‘looking after a very humble household, preparing the meals, grinding the corn, kneading the flour, baking the bread, going to draw water, bringing it home with pitcher on head’. That is what it is like to have one without sin around and that is why those who say that the Church’s dogmas about Mary remove her from ordinary woman and even from the human race are quite wrong. In the tombs and cemeteries of Ancient Egypt are often found small, wooden models of people doing ordinary things – eating, digging, carrying, fishing, marrying, playing. The same sort of scenes are painted on the walls of the bigger tombs. This shows that thousands of years Before Christ people sensed that their everyday tasks were of eternal worth until the time came when the preaching of Jesus and the life of Mary would confirm it.
At one and the same time, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception reveals the simple humanity of Mary- conceived of parents like every other human being and highlights her altogether special place within the human family – without sin from the moment of her conception.
She had all this influence because she was ‘full of grace’. These words are the scriptural basis for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. From the point of view of time, she is at the beginning of Redemption but as one writer points out it is better to think of it as a mysterious circle. The circle runs from the Immaculate Conception of Mary through the Annunciation and the Birth of the Redeemer to the Cross and from the Cross it returns to the perfect act of Redemption, the Immaculate Conception – Mary’s ‘anticipated Redemption’.
It was of course, our local hero, Blessed John Duns Scotus, who had this crucial insight into the truth of the Immaculate Conception and it found its way into the definition of the dogma in the phrase ‘ in view of the merits of Christ Jesus’. It is an honour for Nunraw to be the nearest religious community to the birthplace of THE champion of the Immaculate Conception, beating the Poor Clares of Humbie to that honour by a good four miles.
Br. Barry
Sermon of Solemnity
Community Chapter
