James McCaffrey
The first disciple
Mary is God's mother and our mother, too — mother of all Christians, mother of Carmel. But she is also a disciple of her Son. Paul VI, for example, speaks of Mary as the first disciple. This marks a renewed approach to the mystery of Mary in relation to her Son — 'she was the first and the most perfect of Christ's disciples,' he tells us. And his words are echoed by one of his successors, John Paul II: 'in a sense Mary as Mother became the first "disciple" of her Son,' he writes, `the first to whom he seemed to say: "Follow me"?' And follow him Mary did — as his disciple throughout her life, right to the hill of Calvary where she stood at one with him in his Passion. She is a model for every true disciple of Jesus and for every true Carmelite. As our Rule tells us — this document written for the 'Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel' — we are called to 'live a life of allegiance to Jesus Christ' (# 2).
Woman of faith
The Carmelite is also a person of deep faith. 'Saint Peter, in his first epistle,' writes Elizabeth of the Trinity, 'says: "Because you believe, you will be filled with an unshakable joy." I think the Carmelite actually draws her happiness from this divine source: faith' (L 236; cf. 1Pt 1:8). Mary's own journey could be described as a pilgrimage of faith. John Paul II again reminds us: '[In her faith], we can therefore rightly find a kind of "key" which unlocks for us the innermost reality of Mary'.3 And as Carmelites, we are familiar with these encouraging words of Th6rese: 'For a sermon on the Blessed Virgin to please me and do me any good, I must see her real life, not her imagined life. I'm sure that her real life was very simple. (Preachers) show her to us as unapproachable, but they should present her as imitable, bringing out her virtues, saying that she lived by faith just like ourselves, giving proofs of this from the Gospel.”
Humble surrender
We first encounter Mary at the Annunciation. It is an exchange, a dialogue, a communion in love such as Teresa describes all true Christian prayer (cf. L 8:5). It is Mary's response of love, in faith, to the God who first loved her 'Rejoice, most highly favoured one...,' says the angel, 'you have found favour with God' (Lk 1:28.30). And Mary responds: 'Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done unto me according to your word' (Lk 1:38). As God's servant she humbly surrenders, in faith, to her place in God's plan of salvation. She launches out into an unknown future — not knowing what that future holds for her, but knowing in faith who it is who holds her future. Her cousin Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, will rightly praise Mary for her faith: 'Blessed is she who believed,' she exclaims, 'that what was spoken to her by the Lord would be fulfilled' (Lk 1:45).
A gaze of wonder
We see Mary in the Gospels as she bends over the cradle of her Son, contemplating the maker of the world helpless on a bed of straw a mystery of infinite love shining through the innocent eyes of a child cradled in a manger. John of the Cross captures Mary's deep faith at the birth of her Son as she looks on the transcendent God of Israel who has become a tiny infant as the Word made flesh:
The Mother gazed in sheer wonder
on such an exchange:
in God, our weeping,
and in us, gladness,
to the one and the other
things usually so strange. (R 9)
Therese, too, speaks of the unfathomable mystery of the Bethlehem scene which challenged Mary's faith: “O God in swaddling clothes, / You delight the angels. / Word made Child, / Trembling, I bow before You. / Who then will comprehend this mystery, / A God Who made Himself a little child?... / He came to earthly exile, / The Eternal One...the Almighty!'5 No wonder she could exclaim: cannot be afraid of a God who made Himself so little for me..”
Testing the inmost heart
Mary is called by God to enter, with Jesus and Joseph, into the exodus experience of the people of God. The flight into Egypt, we are told, 'was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Out of Egypt have I called my Son"' (Mt 2:15). God is here reminding his people of how he had guided them on their desert journey: `Remember how the Lord your God led you for forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and to test you in order to know your inmost heart (Dt 8:2).
The Gospels do not provide us with the trials and testing of Mary's faith on her arduous journey. But the history of salvation repeats itself continually. God's specially chosen instruments are tested with difficulties. In these, they have to rely on faith because the ways of God cannot be understood with human thinking: 'My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts' (Is 55:8-9). In the inscrutable ways of his Providence, God is always testing those whom he loves, as he tested his own Son on the exodus journey of Jesus' Passion and death. Mary is no exception. Indeed, she is the one whom God has fashioned most deeply in the likeness of his Son.
Walking in darkness
At the Presentation in the Temple, the aged Simeon prepared Mary for her future trials of faith when he foretold the Passion of her Son, and her sharing in it with Jesus: 'Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, destined to be a sign of contradiction - and a sword will pierce your own soul, too - so that the secret thoughts of many may be laid bare' (Lk 2:34-35). Twelve years later, once more in the Temple, Mary's faith will again be deeply tested, when she experiences for three days the absence of God - 'Son, why have you done this to us?' she pleads. 'Behold, your father and I have been searching for you anxiously' (Lk 2:48).
Mary knows the pain of inner change in a relationship with her Son that grows as he himself grows: 'Did you not know,' he replies, 'that I must be about my Father's business?' (Lk 2:49). All this is part of Mary's faith journey in openness to the action of the Spirit. Mary walked in darkness and did not always understand the meaning of Jesus' words: `(She and Joseph) did not understand the words which he spoke to them' (Lk 2:50). Yes, Mary's faith was tested - radically and utterly tested. Therese comments in this way on Mary's finding of Jesus in the Temple: 'Mother, your gentle Child wants you to be the example / Of the soul searching for Him in the night of faith.' And she adds, significantly, that Jesus 'wanted his Mother / To be plunged into the night, in anguish of heart' (PN 54:15.16).
Accepting the mystery
Mary's faith gives meaning to her years of quiet daily living in Nazareth. As Therese aptly remarks in this same poem, addressed to Mary: 'I know that in Nazareth / You live in poverty... / It's by the ordinary way... I That you like to walk' (PN 54:17). We are reminded, here, of how uneventful life in Nazareth really was a tiny, remote and obscure village where nothing ever seemed to happen, and where life apparently continued unnoticed by the world at large. Even one of Jesus' first disciples, Nathanael, remarks on how insignificant the village was in the unfolding story of world events: 'From Nazareth? Can anything good come out of that place?' (Jn 1:46). We notice the unbelief of the villagers in response to the miracles of Jesus when he returns home: 'They were astounded, saying,... 'Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary..., and are not his sisters here with us?' (Mk 6:2-3; cf. Mt 13:54-56).
It is all part of the scandal of the Incarnation. Mary accepts the mystery in faith while others refuse. All through these hidden years, Mary has to grapple in faith with the possible misunderstanding of her seemingly scandalous pregnancy. But she keeps her secret while she 'ponders' and 'treasures' (Lk 1:29; 2:19.51) everything in her heart and 'listens to the word of God' (cf. Lk 8:21).
Never wavering
As Mary stands in eloquent silence, at one with Jesus on the Cross, she is like the gospel woman 'in travail' of whom Jesus speaks at the Last Supper: 'she has sorrow because her hour has come' (Jn 16:21). At the foot of the Cross, Mary gazed on him whom they had pierced (cf. Jn 19:25.37), her heart overflowing with compassion while the angel's words at the Annunciation must surely have remained there, echoing constantly at the back of her mind and testing her faith: 'He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there will be no end' (Lk 1:32-33). Mary never wavered: she still believed. that what was spoken to her by the Lord would be fulfilled' (Lk 1:45).
Born of her faith
“Woman, behold your son!' (Jn 19:26). These are not just bland words: they effect what they signify. They do not just designate Mary as the mother of all believers: they institute her as our mother. Mary's motherhood is born of her faith and her oneness with her Son. 'Behold your mother' (Jn 19:27), Jesus now says to his beloved disciple, who represents every disciple of Jesus. From that moment, the disciple made a place for Mary in his home — he opened his heart to receive her as his own. The invitation is there for all of us to do the same. John of the Cross repeats it: 'The Virgin comes walking, / the Word in her womb: / could you not give her / place in your room?” (P 13)
The deepest faith of all
The Calvary scene is not just a remote and distant event of the past. It has special relevance to Jesus' invitation to us to take up our cross daily and to follow him. We are with Mary, as her companions in faith, when we stand beside her on Calvary and share with her in the Passion of her Son. Edith Stein captures beautifully for us this profound mystery of our place at one with Mary in union with the Crucified:
But those whom you have chosen as companions here, Surrounding you one day at the eternal throne, We now must stand, with you, beneath the cross And purchase, with our heart blood's bitter pains, This spark of heaven for those priceless souls Whom God's own Son bequeaths to us, His heirs.
Here, Edith is simply echoing this insight of St Paul: “we are children, then heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him' (Rm 8:17). To embrace this mystery requires the deepest faith of all. So, too, does Paul's personal testimony, a verse much loved by Carmelites: 'I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake,' he tells his first converts, 'and in my body I complete what is lacking in Christ's sufferings for the sake of his body, which is the church' (Col 1:24). We have our part to play, like Mary, as co-redeemers with her Son— in his mysterious plan of redemption as it unfolds until the end of time, and I could not forget to pray for all without casting aside simple priests whose mission at times is as difficult to carry out as that of apostles preaching to the infidels. Finally, I want to be a daughter of the Church as our holy Mother St Teresa was and to pray for the Holy Father's intentions which I know embrace the whole universe. This is the general purpose of my life...
Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,
and rejoice with joy and singing.
The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They shall see the glory of the Lord,
the majesty of our God.
Isaiah 35:1-2
