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“Woman, what is it to you and to me?”
“Woman, Behold your son!”
Mary is addressed as ‘woman’ by Jesus on two occasions.
She is above all woman and mother. Mary is woman par
excellence. She embodies in herself all that a woman
should be. She completes and perfects in herself what
Eve left incomplete and inadequate. And so Mary is
hailed as ‘blessed among all women.’
Eve, the first woman was created to be a companion to
Adam, the first man. She was ‘bone of his bone and flesh
of his flesh’ (Gen 2:23). After all, companionship, like
partnership, is a respectful term, betraying no trait of
inferiority or superiority. Yet the order of priority of
man is taken for granted in the Yahwistic account of the
creation story in the book of Genesis.
Jesus is the Saviour of the world, the new Adam. He
redeemed the world by his incarnation, death and
resurrection. Mary gave him human flesh; she stood by
the cross as Jesus hung upon it. She is thus acclaimed
as the co-redeemer of the world. The perfect woman is
the perfect companion to the Man who merited to be ‘the
source of eternal salvation to all who obey him’ (Heb
4:9).
The book of Proverbs (31:10-31) describes a good woman
as a perfect partner in the affairs of her husband. From
the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus, Mary was
a perfect partner of Jesus, her son. This is evident at
the Cana wedding feast. Mary accompanied Jesus as he
bore the cross, as tradition suggests. She was there at
the foot of the cross. Mary was there in the upper room
as the Apostles awaited the ‘Promise of the Father.’
Presumably she accompanied the infant Church as it went
about proclaiming the Christ crucified and risen. Mary
is the perfect woman who proved to be the perfect
‘helper’ to the Son of God made man in his work of
salvation.
Mary, the contemplative
Mary is a perfect example of a contemplative.
A contemplative apprehends Divine Truths intuitively. A
woman most of all knows things intuitively. Her mind
reaches for reality in its entirety, rather than in
parts, as does an analytical mind. Faced with reality
her first response is wonder. Sarah laughed when she
heard that she would have a son (Gn 18: 9-15): laughter
in wonder. The woman allows reality to take hold of her,
in stead of trying to control it.
When Mary heard the Angel’s greeting she was
“greatly troubled at the saying and considered in her
mind what sort of greeting this might be” (Lk
1:
29). Luke tells us during the course of the infancy
narrative, how Mary “kept these things and pondered them
in her heart” (2:
19;
2:
51). This was to be her attitude even at the foot of the
cross (Jn 19: 25).
A contemplative is not to be taken for a
passive observer. He/she is actively involved in the
Divine drama that is unravelling itself in mysterious
ways. Mary is known to be the most worthy receptacle of
the grace of God. She, in her contemplative availability
to God, gave to him her everything. As a reward the Only
Begotten Son of God was conceived in her. In this
wonderful exchange of gifts the Fatherhood of God and
the womanhood of Mary were fully revealed. This is the
high point
of contemplation, whereby man fully empties himself and
God fills him with himself.
Having conceived God in her heart and in her
womb Mary makes haste to go to meet
Elizabeth. A contemplative cannot but reach out to
another in love. Whereas any haste made without a spirit
of contemplation might be a futile exercise. What does
Mary teach us today?
Mary for our times
Original sin has separated man from man. The
blame game began with the first fall. Man under the
influence of sin has lost the capacity to see reality as
one and himself as part of the whole. This is the
greatest tragedy of our times. Mary provides the best
answer to this dilemma.
Now-a-days it is becoming increasingly
difficult to acknowledge individual and group
differences. This is at the heart of various kinds of
fundamentalism. Man fails to recognize that men and
women, peoples and cultures are but part of the one
household of God. It is together that they go to make up
the whole. The cries of misplaced feminism and the
arrogance of showy male chauvinism have much to learn
from the Lady on the scene of
Cana
wedding feast and the silent gaze at the foot of the
cross. It is not by competing against one another that
men and peoples attain the Supreme Good, but by
recognizing one another and by mutual collaboration.
Such unstinted recognition and collaboration
is possible only when one waits in patience for the
mystery of God’s ways to unravel in ones life. Ours is
an age of haste and hurry. Pope John Paul said:
“Commotion, sin, feverish activity and the crowd all
threaten man’s inner awareness. He lacks silence with
its genuine voice speaking in the depth of his being; he
lacks order, he lacks prayer, he lacks peace, he lacks
himself.”
Modern man cannot wait. He is like the
restless farmer who daily disturbs the hen which is
hatching eggs, to see if the chicks are out. In the
process he destroys the normal process of hatching and
the chicks never come out. The book of Ecclesiastes
says, “For everything there is a season” (3:1-8). Mary
teaches us to recognise wisely the time to contemplate
and the time to act.
The house at
Nazareth,
a nursery of contemplation
The word Ashram has the connotation of
‘a place where work is done without fatigue.’ Fatigue at
work was seen as a result of sin: “Accursed be the soil
because of you; painfully will you get food from it as
long as you live” (Gn
3:
17, JB). The Ashramites are progressively trained
to blend contemplation with work in such a way that they
transcend the fatigue factor of daily labour. Work at
the house of Mary (and Joseph), likewise, must have been
made easier because it perfectly blended with
contemplation. Let him who would learn to work well,
enter the house of
Nazareth
and there remain with Mary, now contemplating, now
serving. She is the woman who wholeheartedly cooperated
with the will of God. She proved to be the perfect
partner with God in recreating the world in Christ.
Conclusion
Devotion to Mary is expressed best by
contemplating what she is within the plan of God and by
imitating that very person in one’s life. Mary is a
woman after the heart of God. She is the perfect partner
in the work that God accomplished through Jesus, the
second Adam. This she did in her feminine way as she
received the Word of God in her heart and conceived him
in her womb and gave him birth. She continued to
accompany him up to the foot of the cross.
Any one who would like to imitate Mary must
receive the Word of God in contemplation and bear the
kind of fruit that pleases God through obedient service.
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