Mary, the mother of Jesus

Yesterday we had an excellent Parish Study Day at St Andrew's on 'Our churches and their Patron Saints'. Our churchwardens and members of the ministry team enabled us get to know our three churches, the buildings and the people. We found out more about their history and reflected on the lives of the saints that they are dedicated to.

This is what I had to say about Mary, the mother of Jesus:

The Revd Matthew Askey has said of Mary: “Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is one of the most significant, but neglected, figures in our shared cultural story. Mary was remarkable for the time and she has many things to show us and inspire us with today. She was an unmarried teenage mother, on the run, a refugee really, and at the same time through both her vulnerability and her determined strength she embodies so many positive characteristics of motherhood and what it means to be a woman today. Mary ultimately said ‘yes!’ to life, and gave herself into the hands of God’s love, and this is something that resulted in the life of the most inspiring person who has ever lived, Jesus, and then the birth of the world-wide Church that followed. The Church has 2 billion members today world-wide, is still growing, and about 32% of the world’s population are involved in some way with its acts of charity and life-transforming message of forgiveness and love for all people. Mary is right at the root and start of this movement of love.”

Mary was engaged to Joseph when the annunciation occurred. As she was found to be with child before they lived together, Joseph planned to dismiss her quietly. He had his own meeting with Gabriel which changed that decision but, if the man to whom she was betrothed, could not believe her without angelic intervention, then it would be no surprise if disbelief and misunderstanding characterised the response to Mary wherever she went.

We can learn much from Mary’s faith, trust and persistence in the face of disbelief, misunderstanding and probable insult. Our experience in times of trouble and difficulty will be similar as, on the one hand, God asks us to trust and persevere while, on the other, he will provide us with moments of support and strengthening. So, let’s look at some of her experience in more detail.

‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord,’ said Mary, ‘let it be with me according to your word.’ Mary said ‘Yes’ to God. As we have already begun to reflect, there is much more to saying that simple one syllable word ‘yes’ than we might at first imagine.

The poet-priest Malcolm Guite describes the Annunciation as follows:

‘a young girl stopped to see
With open eyes and heart. She heard the voice;
The promise of His glory yet to be,
As time stood still for her to make a choice;
Gabriel knelt and not a feather stirred,
The Word himself was waiting on her word.’

Victoria Emily Jones has reflected that ‘When Gabriel came to Mary to tell her she would bear a son, she was at first troubled, afraid, guarded. How was it possible that she, being a virgin, could become pregnant? But with the angel’s words of reassurance and promise, she yielded to the divine plan …” This is known as Mary’s fiat (Latin for “let it be”)—her consent to become the mother of God—and it’s celebrated by the church as the moment at which God became flesh, setting salvation in motion.

Theologians have debated the nature of Mary’s fiat—whether she really had a choice in the matter. After all, Gabriel comes speaking in terms of what will happen, without mentioning any conditions. However, most believe in the criticality of Mary’s “yes,” of her willing bodily and spiritual surrender. Between the angel’s ‘Hail’ and Mary’s ‘Let it be’ was a moment of supreme tension, one that Luci Shaw explores in her poem ‘The Annunciatory Angel’:

‘… We worry that she might faint.
Weep. Turn away, perplexed and fearful
about opening herself. Refuse to let the wind
fill her, to buffet its nine-month seed into her earth.
She is so small and intact. Turmoil will wrench her.
She might say no.’’

Why might Mary have said ‘No’? In the same poem Luci Shaw suggests there was a ‘weight of apprehension’ at the Annunciation because what had to be announced would ‘not be entirely easy news.’ As a result, Alan Stewart, in an Annunciation monologue, has Mary say ‘I said yes to my God / And I have come to question those words / For I did not know where they would lead’:

It was a day like any other day
Kneading bread. Lost in my thoughts
And then from behind
This light
An amazing light that filled the room
I turned round, holding my hand to my eyes
Backing away from it
And from inside this light, the figure of a man
Standing there. Looking at me
I felt I should run
I wanted to run
But his gaze fixed me to the spot
Like some rabbit charmed by a fox
But actually
His eyes were kind
And I felt strangely safe
‘is this an angel?’ I suddenly thought
have I sinned?
Has he mistaken me for someone?
Someone of importance
And then he spoke
‘Mary’
he knew my name
‘Mary’, he said ’don’t be afraid’
‘I have news for you’
‘in 9 months you will have a child and you are to call him Jeshua; God saves’
before I knew it, I was speaking
‘but I’m not married yet, I don’t…’
‘the child will be fathered by the Holy Spirit and he will save his people
the lord God will give him the throne of his father David’
the Saviour?, the Messiah?
I knelt down
And whispered
Simply
‘may it be to me as you have said’
I said yes
I said yes to my God
And I have come to question those words
For I did not know where they would lead

Where they led was to an immediate future of gossip, rumours and insult from those who thought of Jesus as illegitimate and in the longer term to a life of gathering gloom, ultimately one of sorrowing and sighing before a stone-cold tomb after the experience of viewing her son’s torture and cruel death; which was like a sword piercing her heart.

And yet, although she did not know it and could not have articulated it, there is a sense that she accepted all this when she accepted the challenge that the angel Gabriel brought from God. It may also have been that for having Jesus as her son she was, like many parents, more than glad that she had said yes, accepting the trauma, the gossip, the exile, the insults that she might bear her child, the promised Saviour.

Mary could have said ‘No’ but her ‘Yes’ was a ‘Yes’ to new life, to growth, to new birth. As we have already noted, Matthew Askey says that: ‘Mary ultimately said ‘yes!’ to life, and gave herself into the hands of God’s love, and this was something that resulted in the life of the most inspiring person who has ever lived, Jesus, and then the birth of the world-wide Church that followed. The Incarnation was predicated on the willingness of the teenage Mary to respond to God’s call.’ Mary, he says, is right at the root and start of this movement of love. This means that every act of Mary is an act of love:

Love is saying yes to God without knowing what that choice entails.

Love is waiting for your man to realise that what you have said is true and to support you.

Love is enduring the arch looks and snide comments from those who know you are bearing a child conceived out of wedlock.

Love is support from your cousin, your child leaping in your womb, and your magnifying God.

Love is enduring the discomfort of travel to your husband’s hometown when you are close to full-term.

Love is accepting a stable when there is no room at the inn.

Love is laying your newborn child in a manger when there are no extended family around to support you.

Love is being welcoming when shepherds unexpectedly arrive in the night soon after you’ve given birth.

Love is treasuring all their words and pondering them in your heart.

Love is giving your child the name an angel requested.

Love is fleeing to another country knowing that the life of your newborn child is under threat.

Love is making a life to bring up your child separated from friends and family.

Love is saying yes to God without knowing what that choice would entail
and it is that choice which creates a cannonball of love that,
from that first Christmas ever onwards,
explodes love throughout the Universe and in us.

Let’s finish with a brief story of Mary’s inspiration on a later ministry. John Bosco was a priest and Founder of the Salesians. He had a particular call to help young men and pioneered new educational methods, for example, in rejecting corporal punishment. His work with homeless youth received the admiration even of anticlerical politicians and his promotion of vocational training, including evening classes and industrial schools, became a pattern for others to follow. To extend the work, he founded in 1859 a religious community, the Pious Society of St Francis de Sales, usually known as the Salesians. It grew rapidly and was well-established in several countries by the time of his death on this day in 1888.

John Bosco’s certainty that, in the face of desperate circumstances, he would nonetheless build a thriving religious community for boys came from a vision received as a dream. In his dream he saw Our Lady directing him in the way he should go; a way that involved walking on thorns. Friends, lay and clergy, were alongside him but declined to also walk on thorns. Finally, a new group of followers arrived who were willing to walk with him. The Mother of God said to him: ‘The thorns on the ground represent the sensitive human affections, sympathies and antipathies that divert a teacher from his true goal, hurt him, hinder his mission and prevent him from forming and reaping wreathes for eternal life. Roses are the symbol of the ardent charity by which you and your associates must distinguish yourselves. The thorns symbolize the obstacles, sufferings and sorrows that await you. But do not lose heart. With charity and mortification you will overcome everything and will have roses without thorns!’

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Adrian Snell - How Can I Explain.

Push on through the obstacles

Here is my reflection from today's Choral Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

He was amazed at their unbelief. Then he went about among the villages teaching. (Mark 6. 1 - 6)

I wonder how often you have been in a situation where your work or your mission keeps coming up against barriers or difficulties. That seems to have been the situation that Jesus faced here when he taught in his home town of Nazareth. Elsewhere, at this time, his teaching and his healing ministry were broadly welcomed. In Nazareth, however, he encountered an almost complete block.

Such situations pose a dilemma; do we press on regardless and push on through the obstacles convinced of the need for our work or mission, or should we view the existence of barriers to progress as a reason for reflecting on our approach and altering our plans? In this situation, Jesus modified his immediate activity in Nazareth but pressed on with his wider mission. This is an approach that he later commended to his apostles when he sent them out to preach saying, ‘If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.’

It is advice that those the Church has recognised as saints have often followed as well. Today, the Church remembers John Bosco, Priest and Founder of the Salesians. Born in 1815 to a peasant family, John Bosco spent most of his life in the Turin area of Italy. He had a particular call to help young men and pioneered new educational methods, for example, in rejecting corporal punishment. His work with homeless youth received the admiration even of anticlerical politicians and his promotion of vocational training, including evening classes and industrial schools, became a pattern for others to follow. To extend the work, he founded in 1859 a religious community, the Pious Society of St Francis de Sales, usually known as the Salesians. It grew rapidly and was well-established in several countries by the time of his death on this day in 1888.

What that brief summary of John Bosco’s life fails to reflect is the extent to which his ministry encountered opposition. John's early years were spent as a shepherd, and he received his first instruction from a parish priest. His childhood experiences are thought to have inspired him to become a priest. At the time, being a priest was generally seen as a profession for the privileged classes, rather than farmers, although it was not unknown. Some biographers portray his older brother Antonio as the main obstacle for Bosco's ambition to study, as the brother protested that John was just "a farmer like us!" - a similar response to that which Jesus encountered in Nazareth!

Later, when visiting Turin’s prisons, John Bosco was disturbed to see so many boys from 12 to 18 years of age. He was determined to find a means to prevent them ending up here and began to meet the boys where they worked and gathered in shops and market places. He looked for jobs for the unemployed and provided sleeping quarters for those sleeping rough. As a result, he was turned out of several places in succession. After only two months based in the church of St. Martin, the entire neighbourhood expressed its annoyance with the noise coming from the boys at play. A formal complaint was lodged against them with the municipality. The group was evicted.

Opposition to Bosco and his work came from various quarters. Several attempts were also made on his life, including a near-stabbing, bludgeoning and a shooting. He was also subjected to petty annoyances and obstacles which, at times, seemed to spell the ruin of his undertaking. His perseverance in the face of all difficulties led many to the conclusion that he was insane, and an attempt was even made to confine him in an asylum. He persevered, however, to the point that some of the boys he helped decided to do what he was doing, that is, to work in the service of abandoned boys. And that was the origin of the Salesians, the religious order that would carry on his work.

At the time of John Bosco's death in 1888 there were 250 houses of the Salesian Society in all parts of the world, containing 130,000 children, and from which there annually went out 18,000 finished apprentices. Up to 1888 over six thousand priests had also gone forth from John Bosco's institutions. Today Salesian houses are located far and wide, and include elementary and high schools, colleges, seminaries, hospitals, vocational schools, and foreign missions.

John Bosco’s certainty that, in the face of desperate circumstances, he would nonetheless build a thriving religious community for boys came from a vision received as a dream. In his dream he saw Our Lady directing him in the way he should go; a way that involved walking on thorns. Friends, lay and clergy, were alongside him but declined to also walk on thorns. Finally, a new group of followers arrived who were willing to walk with him. The Mother of God said to him: ‘The thorns on the ground represent the sensitive human affections, sympathies and antipathies that divert a teacher from his true goal, hurt him, hinder his mission and prevent him from forming and reaping wreathes for eternal life. Roses are the symbol of the ardent charity by which you and your associates must distinguish yourselves. The thorns symbolize the obstacles, sufferings and sorrows that await you. But do not lose heart. With charity and mortification you will overcome everything and will have roses without thorns!’

God also calls us to face and overcome obstacles when these are encountered as part of the ministry to which we are called. James, the brother of Jesus, wrote: ‘My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.’ (James 1. 2 - 4)

That is what we see lived out by Jesus, his apostles and John Bosco. Jesus was amazed at the unbelief of those in Nazareth but then he continued his mission by going to other villages to teach there instead. John Bosco’s fellow priests tried to persuade him to abandon or at least limit his thankless work with youth, which had only brought ridicule and suffering. He had become obsessed by hopeless idealism, they told him. “Not at all,” replied Bosco, “I see things plainly as they are. Presently we shall have churches, vast playgrounds, priests, helpers of all kinds and thousands of boys.” Such was his confidence about these goals that he freely and frequently spoke of them as accomplished realities.

The perseverance and endurance of Jesus and John Bosco was, therefore, based on their sense of calling and mission. Are we clear about our call and mission? Then, when we are, do we have a similar degree of commitment to pressing on despite the obstacles we face? Let us pray: O God, who raised up John Bosco as a father and teacher of the young, grant we pray, that, aflame with the same fire of love, we may seek out souls and serve you alone. Amen.

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Bob Dylan - Pressing On.