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This
is often forgotten by Catholics themselves, and therefore it is not
surprising that those who are not Catholic often have a completely
wrong conception of Catholic devotion to the Mother of God. They
imagine, and sometimes we can understand their reasons for doing so,
that Catholics treat the Blessed Virgin as an almost divine being in
her own right, as if she had some glory, some power, some majesty of
her own that placed her on a level with Christ Himself. They regard
the Assumption of Mary into heaven as a kind of apotheosis placed in
the Redemption would seem to be equal to that of her Son. But this is
all completely contrary to the true mind of the Catholic Church. It
forgets that Mary's chief glory is in her nothingness, in the fact of
being the "Handmaid of the Lord," as one who in becoming the Mother of
God acted simply in loving submission to His command, in the pure
obedience of faith. She is blessed not because of some mythical
pseudo-divine prerogative, but in all her human and womanly
limitations as one who has believed. It is the faith and the fidelity
of this humble handmaid, "full of grace" that enables her to be the
perfect instrument of God, and nothing else but His instrument. The
work that was done in her purely the work of God. "He that is mighty
hath done great things in me." The glory of Mary is purely and simply
the glory of God in her. And she, like anyone else, can say that she
has nothing that she has not received from Him through Christ.
As a
matter of fact, this is precisely her greatest glory: that having nothing
of her own, retaining nothing of a "self" that could glory in anything for
her own sake, she placed no obstacle to the mercy of God and in no way
resisted His love and His will. Hence she received more from Him than any
other saint. He was able to accomplish His will perfectly in her, and His
liberty was in no way hindered or turned from its purpose by the presence
of an egotistical self in Mary. She was and is in the highest sense a
person precisely because, being "immaculate," she was free from every
taint of selfishness that might obscure God's light in her being. She was
then a freedom that obeyed Him perfectly and in this obedience found the
fulfillment of perfect love.
The genuine significance of
Catholic devotion to Mary is to be seen in the light of the Incarnation
itself. The Church cannot separate the Son and the Mother. Because the
Church conceived of the Incarnation as God's descent into flesh and into
time, and His great gift of Himself to His creatures, she also believes
that the one who was closest to Him in this great mystery was the one who
participated most perfectly in the gift. When a room is heated by an open
flame, surely there is nothing strange in the fact that those who stand
closest to the fireplace are the ones who are warmest. And when God comes
into the world through the instrumentality of one of His servants, then
there is nothing surprising about the fact that His chosen instrument
should have the greatest and most intimate share in the divine gift.
Mary, who was empty of all
egotism, free from all sin, was as pure as the glass of a very clean
window that has no other function than to admit the light of the sun
(Son). If we rejoice in that light, we implicitly praise the cleanness of
the window. And of course it might be argued that in such a case we might
well forget the window altogether. This is true. And yet the Son of God,
in emptying Himself of His majestic power, having become a child,
abandoning Himself in complete dependence to the loving care of a human
Mother, in a certain sense draws our attention once again to her. The
Light has wished to remind us of the window, because He is grateful to her
and because He has an infinitely tender love, it is certainly a great
grace and a privilege, and one of the most important aspects of this
privilege is that it enables us to some extent to appreciate the mystery
of God's great love and respect for His creatures.
That God should assume Mary
into heaven is not just a glorification of a "Mother Goddess." Quite the
contrary, it is the expression of the divine love for humanity, and a very
special manifestation of God's respect for His creatures, His desire to do
honor to the beings He has made in His own image, and most particularly
His respect for the body which was destined to be the temple of His glory.
If Mary is believed to be assumed into heaven, it is because we too are
one day, by the grace of God, to dwell where she is. If human nature is
glorified in her, it is because God desires it to be glorified in us too,
and it is for this reason that His Son, taking flesh, came into the world.
In all the great mystery of
Mary, then, one thing remains most clear: that of herself she is nothing,
and that God has for our sakes delighted to manifest His glory and His
love in her.
It is because she
is, of all the saints, the most perfectly poor and the most perfectly
hidden, the one who has absolutely nothing whatever that she attempts to
possess as her own, that she can most fully communicate to the rest of us
the grace of the infinitely selfless God. And we will most truly possess
Him when we have emptied ourselves and become poor and hidden as she is,
resembling Him by resembling her.
And all our sanctity depends
on her maternal love. The ones she desires to share the joy of her own
poverty and simplicity, the ones whom she wills to be hidden as she is
hidden, are the ones who share her closeness to God. |
