THE DIVINE MOTHERHOOD BY DOM ANSCAR VONIER, OSB
Chapter XI
HOPE AND WONDER IN THE DIVINE MOTHERHOOD.
It seems to be the general persuasion of the Church that the great mystery of the Incarnation took effect at the moment when the Angel left Mary, after she had said: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word!" The Angel departed from her then, not without having adored the God made flesh. It is true that Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin, when the latter visited her, still speaks of things that will come in the future: "Blessed art thou that hast believed, because those things shall be accomplished that were spoken to thee by the Lord" (Luke i. 45).
At the same time Elizabeth addresses Mary as one already blessed with the glories of motherhood: "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the Fruit of thy womb." So there seems no room for doubt as to Mary’s blessed pregnancy, when she went to visit Elizabeth. It is necessary therefore to connect Elizabeth s prophecy with Gabriel s words as to the future greatness of the Child to be born, and to the throne of David, and to the eternal rule in the house of Jacob.
The great Conception was an accomplished fact; the divine Birth was Mary’s certain and joyful hope; but as to the future greatness of the Child much was still obscure to her. Elizabeth s spirit, moved by the Holy Ghost, had leaped forward into futurity, and had seen the accomplishment of the wonderful things predicted to Mary. Mary’s faith as to the first portion of the angelic message was to be to her an assurance of the gradual accomplishment of the second part, the promissory part, of the same heavenly oracle. It is no doubt in connection with Christ’s eternal mission and its gradual development that there was wonder and astonishment in Mary’s mind at times. The central fact of the divine Sonship of Jesus was clear to her as the noontide light; but the way in which Christ’s great domination would be accomplished was not yet revealed to her. She believed in it firmly as she believed in the mystery which was already contained in her chaste bosom; the way of it, however, had not been made clear to her as the mode of the Incarnation itself had been made clear. St. Gabriel tells Mary how she is to become the Mother of God; but no explanations are given as to the great mystery of Christ’s sovereignty.
So it happened that Mary did not always understand when it was a question of Christ’s external influence, open or secret; she wondered with Joseph as to the meaning of it all. "And he said to them: How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business? And they understood not the word that he spoke unto them" (Luke ii. 49 50). It cannot be doubted that little has been revealed to us concerning the ways and the times of Christ’s triumph and sovereignty, and what we know about Christ’s Person is immensely greater than what we know about His actual influence on mankind. The Mother of God herself seems to have received lights in the same proportion; her knowledge as to Christ’s Person was immense; her knowledge of the ways in which He would become the Ruler in the House of Jacob for ever seems to have been much less explicit. Here one may quote Christ’s words to the group of disciples that went up with Him to Mount Olivet, on the Ascension day. "They therefore who were come together asked him, saying: Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? But he said to them: It is not for you to know the times or moments which the Father hath put in his own power; but you shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even to the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts i. 68). There is given to the disciples a most explicit knowledge of Christ, of the Holy Ghost, of the specifically spiritual means that will save mankind; the knowledge of God’s external providence in shaping human events so as to make them subservient to the triumph of Christ’s grace is not bestowed on them in the same measure. Our
Lady has not been an exception to this dispensation, though we may admit in her case a much larger measure of vision of the future. Nothing compels us to believe that Christ’s external career was manifested to her at once, at an early stage; it unfolded itself to her eyes gradually; she wondered and suffered; but she could never suffer scandal, and she soon came to comprehend the fact, hidden for so long from the disciples, that Christ ought "to have suffered these things, and so to enter into his glory" (Luke xxiv. 26).
In the glorious song of her maternity, the Magnificat, the Mother of God renders in her own words, with the exultation of a supremely pure human heart, the burden of the message delivered by Gabriel. The song contains no dark anticipations, any more than did Gabriel s announcement. Her own maternity, her people s joy in the new king whom Gabriel had announced, such is the double theme of that immortal outpouring of a maiden s spirit.
The Lord had done great things to herself, and all generations shall call her blessed; but the thought of her fathers, of Abraham, never leaves her; the seed of Abraham is in her own virginal bosom. One might almost call Mary’s song a tribal hymn, the hymn of Israel, if one did not bear in mind the Messianic role of Abraham s race, and its privilege to make of the Incarnate God a perfect participant of the human nature, by bestowing upon Him the blood that is common to all those that are descended from Adam.
When Mary sings of her people, of Israel the servant of God, she does so not as all the Jewish singers had done, as Deborah and Anna had done; her song is the very heart of the incomparable new mystery, the Incarnation ; the great things done in her by Him Who is mighty, and Whose name is holy, are the promises made to Abraham, passed on from generation to generation, and now come to their perfect fulfilment in the "Seed", in the Holy Thing that is in her bosom, and she, Mary, stands between the generations of the promise and the generations of the reality, and she, the heiress of the blessings bestowed upon the patriarchs, will be the blessed one for all ages to come. Never did maternity embrace a greater sphere, and never had it been so personally, so supremely triumphant. Mary understood fully then the Incarnation in what might be called its life aspect; she understood the nature of the new life that was in her, and how life would come from her; but it is impossible for us to tell whether at that moment she knew clearly the other aspect of the same mystery, the great and agonizing death. She knew then that all generations would call her blessed, that she had been made the Mother of the living; but the scene of Calvary, when her crucified Son gave her to redeemed man, in the person of John, as his Mother, was no doubt, at that time, a mystery hidden from her eyes. St. John begins the narrative of Christ’s passion with the words : "Jesus, therefore, knowing all things that should come upon him, went forth and said to them: Whom seek ye?" (John xviii. 4.) This clear foreknowledge of His own career seems to have been the exclusive property of Christ ; He had such knowledge from His very infancy. Mary’s initiation into the mystery of Christ’s death and passion was no doubt progressive, and often she must have wondered what would be the next terrible thing she had to learn.
