Mary: The God-Bearer

For the One, eternal God to be present in space-time, He needs a receiver, a receptacle.  God is present, and all is present to God, as the ultimate cause of all that exists.  God’s “personal presence,” if we can use this language, depends on human cooperation, for God and man meet in the in-between of the divine-human. The Almighty seeks carriers, human beings in whom He may dwell, and through whom He may act.  For the ancient Israelites and the devout Jews before Jesus, God was experienced as dwelling especially in chosen men and women as prophets, as those who “spoke the Word of God.” And God was understood to dwell on occasion in certain chosen individuals into whom His Spirit rushed, leading to action on behalf of God’s People, Israel. Israelite and Jewish scriptures (our Old Testament) provide much evidence of the belief in God’s presence as a spirit of power, charisma, insight, vision, and decisive action.  Finally, the magnificent stories that open the Book of Genesis (chapters 1-2) present the belief of Jewish spiritualists that what we recognize as human being is essentially that into which God inbreathes his spirit or breath (ruach). To be human is to carry God.

What God does apart from His action as the ultimate cause of all that exists, and His presencing action in particular human beings, we do not know, for we cannot experience God in Himself.  To speak to you, God needs a human carrier. God in effect borrows a voice, an image, silent thoughts stirring in your heart. That which is utterly silent needs a voice to be heard by human ears, and that which is pure Love needs a loving receiver of His love to bless human beings.  Although God has indeed “spoken to us in many and various ways” as we read in the opening of the Letter to the Hebrews, there remains the unique God-bearer:  According to our Gospels, Mary is the human being who utterly disposed herself of God, and through whom God directly entered our human condition—a truth expressed in the belief that God took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  She clung to nothing of her own—no ego, knowledge, reputation. Mary allowed herself to become an active-docile receiver of the God who is ever coming, that is, always presenting himself to human beings.  And so we honor her as the Godbearer par excellence: as the mother of God in the flesh, as the mother of Jesus Christ.

John the Baptist loves God as the Almighty, as the Just Judge of the world, and in his preaching John presents what he imagines as the coming wrath of God to destroy evil and evil-doers.  In the same Gospels we see that John had difficulty accepting Jesus as the coming of God, because Jesus did not bring destruction to evil-doers, but mercy and conversion to those who welcomed his word.  And we see that Mary’s way is simpler than John’s:  Mary loves God as the One who has presented Himself to her, in her, as the One we call Christ.  John proclaims; Mary adores.  John speaks of what he partially knows; Mary loves the One who is utterly intimate to her.  The Church cannot dispense with either John or Mary:  John as the voice warning us in the wilderness of our lives; Mary as the most humble, loving servant of the One who “has come to set us free” from bondage to sin, self, death.

  
 Her head is bowed, she sits in silence, she beholds with a wide-open heart Christ Jesus dwelling in her. As St. Bernard wisely wrote, “Mary conceived Christ in her mind before she conceived him in her womb.”  And conceive she does.  By silent adoration Mary understands more of God than can ever be reached by prophets, philosophers, spiritualists, or knowers of one kind or another. Mary has become, by God’s sheer grace, the home of God in the world.  She is the human manger, she is the stable, she is the womb where Life itself grows in sheer silence.  Her response is quiet, still, “filled with love beyond all telling.”   

Apart from Mary, we do not have, we do not know, the Gift of God that is Jesus Christ. God did not use Mary and throw her away. This young woman of Nazareth has become for all time the chosen vessel through which Christ entered the world in divine fullness. And His entrance began, not as an adult, nor as a child, not even as an infant in Mary’s arms. Christ’s entrance in the world began as the unseen Presence, the conceptus-fetus-infant growing in Mary’s womb.  With the most childlike, loving faith, Mary conceived Christ in her womb, and adored the unsurpassable Gift of God.  

On The Coming Of God Into Time

The eternal God presents himself in time. The prophets of Israel and of Greece, and of other cultures, heard the word of God in their minds, and communicated that word to their people. Sages and mystics through the centuries lovingly opened their hearts and minds to the presence of the eternal God in their souls. Philosophers in ancient Greece discovered the divine intellect moving and radiating into their minds, and they explored the effects of God’s reason in structuring reality around them as they used science to explore the wonders of nature.Through the centuries, lovers of truth have responded to the divine presence both in-yet-beyond the borders of their souls, and as the cause of beauty and order in the world.  Those who explore the presence of the divine within are prophets, mystics, philosophers; those who explore the effects of the divine intellect in the cosmos are philosophers and scientists.   

God Himself is both ever present and ever beyond the searching mind. What we call God is that which draws us to seek truth, beauty, and goodness beyond our confined selves.  To those who seek God, He is both the cause of the seeking and the One being sought, both the One who is utterly and simply present and the One ever beyond our questing.  The mystery of God can be discovered by human beings, and has been; but it ever remains beyond any final grasp or  comprehension. In the wise words of the Apostle Paul to his disciples, “Now that you have come to know God—or rather, to be known by God…”. The lover of God is ever discovering the face of the Beloved Lover here, there; but the human lover also knows that the Lover sought is still greater than the Lover found.  All that one can experience or know of God is as a drop of water in the vast ocean, or as a single sand on the sides of the sea. The true lover of God, and of human being, knows that his or her love “has only just begun,” is ever blossoming into greater loving, further knowing, and ever-deepening joy.  

Many have speculated on the coming of God in particular ways, at particular times, and they invariably are disappointed.  For God’s comings are never fully expected, nor accurately predicted. For we are human beings, not God.  John the Baptist was a lover of God, who expected the just God to appear quickly with blazing wrath to destroy evil and evil-doers.  And then came Jesus, and John was puzzled.  He sensed the presence of God in Jesus, but Jesus did not fit John’s expectations:  “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”  “Go and tell John what you see,” Jesus declares.  “Open your eyes to what God is doing here and now, even in me, and relax your futuristic speculations.”  Perhaps in prison John discovered the One he proclaimed, present in Christ, and present in the depths of his soul.“Behold, I am the One whom you are seeking, here and now, moving you in your quest.  Be at peace, John, for you are mine, and I will never abandon you. Even when a foolish evil-doer has you beheaded, John, you are mine, and I am yours.  I AM ever now.” 

The Church in its wisdom presents to us the truth of Christ—the truth of God-with-usand-beyond-us—in many and various ways. In the preaching of the Word and in the gift of the Eucharist, Christ comes. In the silent cries of the needy and oppressed, in the infant in the womb and the elderly man living alone, Christ speaks to us. In the use of our God-given abilities to love and to seek the truth, Christ is at work in us. To the true lover of God, he or she ever hears afresh, "Here AM I, the One you are seeking, the One with you every moment from now into the unknown, unexplored depths of eternity."

 

2nd Sunday Of Advent

There is a strong tension in our readings today, between the prophet Isaiah’s metastatic dream of universal peace, when “the lion lies down with the lamb,” and the urgent, intense cry of John the Baptist:  “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Produce good fruits as evidence of your genuine repentance!”  In their zeal for God, prophets and the faithful must struggle against allowing their imaginations to lose grip on reality:  Isaiah’s dream of complete peace on earth—of a radical change in reality—is an illusion, which the Church Fathers corrected by projecting the blissful state to the realm beyond death, into eternity.  Secular souls, bound to a temporal perspective, still get drunk on Isaiah’s illusions of radical change.  John the Baptist’s imagination of the coming wrath of God clashed head-on with the coming of God in Christ Jesus, whose merciful deeds and words tasted of wrath only in those who hated him, and rejected God.  And still one encounters preachers of the word who are overly absorbed in visions of wrath, and seek to “scare the living dickens” out of their flock.  Love and truth are far more powerful agents of change for the better.

First Sunday of Advent

Advent has often been called “the season of hope.”  A question must be asked:  “Are you, am I, hoping for the right things, or the wrong things?”  Hope to live a long and healthy life, hope to prosper in one’s work and to do well, hope for peace in one’s family or country—all of these are “natural hopes,” and good things.  Ultimate or divine hope is in God: the hope of sharing God’s divine life forever, beyond death.  But there are also false hopes, and the first reading, from Isaiah, presents such a false hope that has had an enormous influence on history:  “They will beat their swords into pruning hooks.. and never will they train for war again.”  The history of utopian dreaming, of metastatic faith, has begun.  Its offspring can be seen in Enlightenment belief in the spread of progress and democracy; in Marxism’s belief in a global world society where “all are free and equal;” and in the American naive belief in the “promised land.”  In Advent, one should sit still and seek to give up false hopes.  We in our present society and world are bombarded with false hopes, as from the mass media, entertainment, sometimes even in the churches.  “Time to wake from sleep,” as St. Paul admonishes us.

An Advent Prayer

You wait in silence and darkness, hidden to wandering eyes, unheard by noise-filled ears. You wait, silent and alone, like the moon in the dark-night sky.  No sound, no movement, nothing seen, nothing known. You alone truly know what or who you are.   

I wait in darknesses and in lights, not hidden, eyes wandering, mind wandering, ears filled with noises. I wait, noisy and busy, like dried leaves blowing across a frozen yard.  Many sounds, movements, things seen, nothing truly known. The mystery of being has melted in the heat of much busyness.  So busy living, no time to live.    

I say, “Come, Lord God Almighty,” but if You were not here, how could I—how would I—possibly seek You? You were here before I turned towards You, and You will be here long after I, too, have scurried across the frozen ground, a dried leaf. What does it mean that “You are here?” You are no object, nothing seen, nothing known by your boundaries or limits, nothing heard nor felt. You are here in the darkness from which I turn away, in the silence I cannot hear. You are present, but I am absent—now here, there, perhaps nowhere at all. You are present in ways that nothing is or can be present. You are present in your apparent absence.  

How can I seek You when I am dispersed everywhere? My mind is fragmented in so many thoughts, feelings, sensations, that there is no room for your still nothingness. Are our parties and liturgical services truly an aid to seeking You, when they resemble Santa’s sack of stuffed toys? Not silence, but noise; not stillness, but motion-commotion; not darkness, but infatuations.   

And still, You wait. You come to the one who sits alone in silence, waiting, as You wait, and listening, as You listen. You speak in silence; our speech drowns out silence, leaving You unheard. You shine into darkened minds, which turn themselves away from your penetratingly bright, discerning gaze. You come, only if I will sit still, and allow You to draw me empty-handed, empty-minded into the Cloud of Unknowing.