This chapter, an important
milestone to the ongoing discussions on the primordial, anthropological and
Judeo-Christian significance of Mary, is aimed at further clarifying her
relevance within salient aspects of our secularistic culture, this time, more
from a Christian perspective.
Sceptics have often disputed as bogus;
the revelations of Marian relevance as occurs in the light of the New Testament
from the Old Testament. How much of Mary, from Genesis is being fulfilled and
corrected in Revelations? How can we discover within authentic Christian experience,
a credible juxtaposition of her relevance as the new Eve, and as the Ark of the
Covenant?
How much has further doctrinal
claims about her Perpetual Virginity, her Immaculate Conception, Assumption, or
as the Mother of God, by the Catholic Church, complicated Her
contemporaneousness in our day? Are these claims just frivolous assertions, or
are there indeed further mysteries yet to be discovered about this woman?
Credible evidences suggest that
our civilisation is moving from the age of John, an age set by rules and
prowess; unto an age of Mary, an occasion for ‘disarming beauty’, as Julian
Carron puts it, where many who understand how to let go and let God, are
champions.
What is the mystery, we may ask,
behind and between John the Baptist and Mary? What prompted John to choose a
lifelong vocation of baptism? What did John experience of Jesus in the water of
Mary’s womb and what transpired between them during Mary’s visitation to
Elizabeth. There are far greater depths to what we casually read in the
scripture (Lk 1: 39 - 56).
The testimony of a woman was disregarded
in her time, how much then, of Mary’s mind was revealed by John in the
knowledge of the God-Man, Jesus the Christ? Of any man born of a woman, there
is none greater than John (Lk 7: 28), and of any woman born of a woman, there
is none greater than Mary (Lk 1: 42).
John decreased for Christ to
increase, and Mary too must decrease for Christ to increase (Jn 3:30). But
Mary’s form of decrease, unlike John’s, is not unto death (Jn 11:4). Her
decrease is of a greater depth of humility which is intrinsically tied to truth,
which consists of her nothingness,
lowliness and littleness.
1.
Her
Nothingness, the deepest awareness of the truth of her being as an absolute
dependent on God. The genius of Mary lies in her realisation that she exists
only as a Reference, that she is, yet she is not. The greatest truth to be
learnt in Mary is that matter is a lie, and becomes true, only, as a reference
to the ‘I Am’. Recent scientific progress on the holographic nature of the
cosmos is revealing this fact more and more. Nature may harbour a vacuum but
God does not. The eternal nothingness of Mary is the nothingness leading to the
Paradise of Christ.
2.
Her
lowliness, her great aptitude at
understanding that the way up, is down. Steve Job’s counsel about ‘Being
foolish and being hungry’ finds an ideal representation in Mary. She knows how
to rush, not to the highest, but to the very lowest places, and how to repeat
with the greatest confidence the poor Tax Collector’s plea (Lk 18:10-14). She
is an adept at stooping to conquer! That
is the secrete of her triumph over evil. She is the lowest of the lowest, she
often passes unknown and unnoticed. She is, as gentle as silence, as a result,
even angels often ask who she is (SoS: 6:10).
3.
Her
littleness, her willingness and placidity at being carried through thick
and thin, and at being directed absolutely by God. “Behold the handmaid of the
Lord” (Lk 1:38). These words through which God’s heart was won, sums up the alchemical
sentence that remade Eve and which in an instant overturned an age long
primordial curse on humanity. For, if:
Eve was Immaculately created (Gen
2: 23)
Mary was Immaculately conceived
(Lk 1: 28)
Eve was the mother of the living
now dead by sin (Gen 3: 20)
Mary is the Mother of the dead,
now restored to life by grace (Lk 1:32)
Eve is the mother of all sold as
slaves to sin
Mary is the Mother of all
ransomed from sin to grace
Eve caused the loss of lives by
pride (Gen 3: 5)
Mary causes the gain of lives by
humility (Lk 1: 35)
Eve would like to be God (Gen 3:
5)
Mary would allow God to be man
(Lk1:35)
Eve is the spouse of a man who
would live by being God (Gen 3:5)
Mary is the Mother of the God who
would die by being man (Jn 1:14)
Eve is a Cause of perpetual
sinfulness (Gen 3: 9-16)
Mary is a Cause of perpetual
sinlessness (Lk 1: 28)
Eve was accursed for her
disobedience (Gen 3: 16)
Mary is Blessed for her obedience
(Lk 1: 48)
Eve was at the beginning of time
Mary is till the end of time, and
forever!
“I shall put enmity between you and the woman, and between your
offspring and hers, it will bruise your head and you will strike ‘its heel’.”
(Gen 3: 15)
“Then the dragon was enraged with the woman and went away to make war
on the rest of her children, who obey God’s commandment and have in themselves
the witness of Jesus” (Rev 12:17)
The disobedience of Adam through
Eve, is a call to schism, it is a great revolt, a setting up of perpetual war,
a rebellion, a break between the relationship of man with the Divine essence,
unto perpetual fear, loneliness, agony and sadness of Satan.
To eat the fruit is to wage war
against God. This is the result of the banishment. But Christ, made little less
than a God (Ps 8:5) in Mary by the Holy Spirit, has come to restore this lost
essence unto something far better than the Divine relationship. It is that of
Divine unity. o happy fault!
In Mary, we see a fully trained disciple
of the kingdom who brings out of her storeroom, treasures both old and new (Mt
13:52), we discover a transcription and interplay of the paradox of life, the
Ancient and the Modern, The Old and the New Testament, Genesis and Revelation.
Just how much of Mary do we know
and have we known? Under the present circumstance, how much of Eve’s error do
we see corrected by Mary, in Christ? The study is an eternal one, and the more
we see, the more we are awed at the length God goes to glorify crude humans,
and the more we are comforted and assured of our own end.
