still as trees in Spring

         

Line engraving by R. Strange, 1773, after himself, 1764, after G.F Barbieri, il Guercino, Guercino, 1591-1666, Date 1773

“Consolation of Mary with Christ Arisen” by Rainer Maria Rilke

What they felt then: is it not 

before all secrets sweet and yet still earthly: 

as he, a little pale still from the grave, 

relieved stepped up to her: 

at every point arisen.

O to her first. How were they then

Inexpressibly being healed.

Yes, they were healing, that was it. They had no need 

firmly to touch each other.

He laid for a second 

scarcely his soon to be 

eternal hand to her womanly shoulder.

And they began, 

still as trees in Spring, 

infinitely together, 

this season of their ultimate communing.

The Feast of Mary, Most Holy Mother of God

 

Mary, Queen of Heaven art by Bro. Mickey McGrath

Yesterday Pope Francis gave a Homily at Vespers of the Feast of Saint Mary, Most Holy Mother of God, and Te Deum of Thanksgiving at End of Year.

The whole thing is impressive (you can read it all HERE), but this paragraph particularly jumped out at me.

This is the heart: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14). We hear this repeated several times in this evening’s liturgy that begins the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God. She is the first witness, the first and the greatest, and at the same time, the humblest – the greatest because she is the humblest. Her heart is filled with amazement without the shadow of romanticism, of sweeteners, of spiritualization. No. The Mother brings us back to reality, to the truth of Christmas contained in the few words Saint Paul uses: “born of a woman” (Gal 4:4). Christian amazement is not the result of special effects, of fantasy worlds, but from the mystery of reality: there is nothing more amazing and stupefying than reality! A flower, a clod of earth, a life story, an encounter, the wrinkled face of an elderly person, or the blooming face of a newborn baby, a mamma who nurses a baby in her arms. The mystery shines there.

"Without the shadow of romanticism, of sweeteners, of spiritualization ... "

Amen. Amen. This world. This Reality. Amazing, indeed. 

(I so love that Francis gets this.)

each of us is the midwife of God, each of us

 "Little donkey, on the dusty road" 

A detail from a painting by Huang Zhou (1925-1997) of eight donkeys. Ink on paper.

“Advent Poem” By St. John of the Cross

If you want, the Virgin will come walking down the road 
pregnant with the Holy and say, 
“I need shelter for the night. 
Please take me inside your heart, my time is so close.” 
Then, under the roof of your soul, 
you will witness the sublime intimacy, 
the divine, the Christ, taking birth forever, 
as she grasps your hand for help, 
for each of us is the midwife of God, each of us. 
Yes, there, under the dome of your being, 
does creation come into existence eternally, 
through your womb, dear pilgrim, 
the sacred womb of your soul,
as God grasps our arms for help:
for each of us is His beloved servant never far. 
If you want, the virgin will come walking down the street, 
pregnant with Light, and sing!

the one thing greater than glory is weakness, nothingness, poverty

Herbig-Haro 110 is a geyser of hot gas from a newborn star that splashes up against and ricochets from the dense core of a cloud of molecular hydrogen. This image was taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2004 and 2005 and the Wide Field Camera 3 in April 2011.
(NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA)
From the NASA Space Advent Calendar which is HERE.



God enters into His creation,
Through her wise answer, through her obedient 
     understanding,
through the sweet yielding consent of Sophia,
God enters without publicity into the city 
     of rapacious men.

She crowns Him not with what is glorious,
but with what is greater than glory:
the one thing greater than glory is weakness, nothingness,
     poverty.

She sends the infinitely Rich and Powerful One forth
as poor and helpless,
in His mission of inexpressible mercy,
to die for us on the Cross.

-Thomas Merton,  "To the Immaculate Virgin on a Winter Night", Collected Poems, pp. 218-219

Mary-darkness, faith's walled place

Annunciation, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1897

Advent, by Jessica Powers

I live my Advent in the womb of Mary.
And on one night when a great star swings free 
from its high mooring and walks down the sky 
to be the dot above the Christus I,
I shall be born of her by blessed grace.
I wait in Mary-darkness, faith’s walled place,
with hope’s expectance of nativity.

I knew for long she carried and fed me,
guarded and loved me, though I could not see.
But only now, with inward jubilee,
I come upon earth’s most amazing knowledge:
Someone is hidden in this dark with me.

Salus Populi Romani

icon of Salus Populi Romani in the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica in Rome. 

Recounted by pious tradition to have been painted by St. Luke the Evangelist.

"That God should have condescended to become a human mother's son;  that one woman whose womb was sanctified as the holy temple and tabernacle of the living God should have been permitted to walk the earth -- these wonders make up the sum total of the earth's actual purpose and they are the fulfillment of all its expectations." (pp. 25-26)

- Fr. Alfred Delp SJ, “The Prison Meditations of Father Alfred Delp”, 1963 Herder and Herder New York
See also: The Prison Meditations of Father Delp

they became tremendous silence

The full beauty of the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543), seen in a detailed view from Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), showing a bull's eye pattern of eleven or even more concentric rings, or shells, around the Cat's Eye. Each 'ring' is actually the edge of a spherical bubble seen projected onto the sky -- that's why it appears bright along its outer edge. Observations suggest the star ejected its mass in a series of pulses at 1,500-year intervals. These convulsions created dust shells, each of which contain as much mass as all of the planets in our solar system combined (still only one percent of the Sun's mass). These concentric shells make a layered, onion-skin structure around the dying star. The view from Hubble is like seeing an onion cut in half, where each skin layer is discernible. 

(NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA)

When the angel spoke, God awoke in the heart of this girl of Nazareth and moved within her like a giant. He stirred and opened His eyes and her soul and she saw that, in containing Him, she contained the world besides. 

The Annunciation was not so much a vision as an earthquake in which God moved the universe and unsettled the spheres, and the beginning and the end of all things came before her in her deepest heart. 

And far beneath the movement of this silent cataclysm Mary slept in the infinite tranquility of God, and God was a child curled up who slept in her and her veins were flooded with His wisdom which is night, which is starlight, which is silence. 

And her whole being was embraced in Him whom she embraced and they became tremendous silence. 

-- Thomas Merton, The Ascent to Truth (Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1951, p 317)

weaving the threads of the future

From Francis' homily today at the Shrine of Sumuleu-Ciuc in Romania. Read the whole thing HERE. 

To go on pilgrimage is to realize that we are in a way returning home as a people, a people whose wealth is seen its myriad faces, cultures, languages and traditions. The holy and faithful People of God who in union with Mary advance on their pilgrim way singing of the Lord’s mercy. In Cana of Galilee, Mary interceded with Jesus to perform his first miracle; in every shrine, she watches over us and makes intercession, not only with her Son but also with each of us, asking that we not let ourselves be robbed of our fraternal love by those voices and hurts that provoke division and fragmentation. Complicated and sorrow-filled situations from the past must not be forgotten or denied, yet neither must they be an obstacle or an excuse standing in the way of our desire to live together as brothers and sisters. 

To go on pilgrimage is to feel called and compelled to journey together, asking the Lord for the grace to change past and present resentments and mistrust into new opportunities for fellowship. It means leaving behind our security and comfort and setting out for a new land that the Lord wants to give us. To go on pilgrimage means daring to discover and communicate the “mystique” of living together, and not being afraid to mingle, to embrace and to support one another. To go on pilgrimage is to participate in that somewhat chaotic sea of people that can give us a genuine experience of fraternity, to be part of a caravan that can together, in solidarity, create history (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 87). 

To go on pilgrimage is to look not so much at what might have been (and wasn’t), but at everything that awaits us and cannot be put off much longer. It is to believe in the Lord who is coming and even now is in our midst, inspiring and generating solidarity, fraternity, and the desire for goodness, truth and justice (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 71). It is to commit ourselves to ensuring that the stragglers of yesterday can become the protagonists of tomorrow, and that today’s protagonists do not become tomorrow’s stragglers. This requires a certain skill, the art of weaving the threads of the future. That is why we are here today, to say together: Mother teach us to weave the future.

Pope Francis- Holy Mass Salus Populi Romani 2018-01-28

From the Basilica of Saint Mary Major -Holy Mass presided by Pope Francis on the Feast of the Translation of the miraculous image of Our Lady Salus Populi Romani.

Advent

Annunciation, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1897

Advent, by Jessica Powers

I live my Advent in the womb of Mary.
And on one night when a great star swings free
from its high mooring and walks down the sky
to be the dot above the Christus I,
I shall be born of her by blessed grace.
I wait in Mary-darkness, faith’s walled place,
with hope’s expectance of nativity.

I knew for long she carried and fed me,
guarded and loved me, though I could not see.
But only now, with inward jubilee,
I come upon earth’s most amazing knowledge:
Someone is hidden in this dark with me.

Acrobat's Song (Feast of the Assumption)

On this Feast of the Assumption of Mary

"Acrobat's Song" from Robert Lax’s The Circus of the Sun

Who is it for whom we now perform,
Cavorting on wire:
For whom does the boy
Climbing the ladder
Balance and whirl–
For whom,
Seen or unseen
In a shield of light?

Seen or unseen
In a shield of light,
At the tent top
Where rays stream in
Watching the pin-wheel
Turns of the players
Dancing
In light:

Lady,
We are Thy acrobats;
Jugglers;
Tumblers;
Walking on wire,
Dancing on air,
Swinging on the high trapeze:
We are Thy children,
Flying in the air
Of that smile:
Rejoicing in light.

Lady,
We perform before Thee,
Walking a joyous discipline,
A thin thread of courage,
A slim high wire of dependence
Over abysses.
What do we know
Of the way of our walking?
Only this step,
This movement,
Gone as we name it.

Here
At the thin
Rim of the world
We turn for Our Lady,
Who holds us lightly:
We leave the wire,
Leave the line,
Vanish
Into light."

Nagasaki Mary

The photo is of the charred statue of the virgin Mary in the Catholic cathedral that was close to ground zero 9 August 1945.

Nagasaki: The Forgotten City
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/08/opinion/nagasaki-the-forgotten-city.html?emc=edit_th_20150808&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=805989

Mary

Probably the finest Mary prayer I've ever come across.  From the Visitor Center at the Abby of Gethsemani.

Mary of the Sign (icon)

And far beneath the movement of this silent cataclysm Mary slept in the infinite tranquility of God, and God was a child curled up who slept in her and her veins were flooded with His wisdom which is night, which is starlight, which is silence.  And her whole being was embraced in Him whom she embraced and they became tremendous silence. 

-Thomas Merton

Mary of the Sign, one of the oldest images of Mary with Christ standing in an orb, pressed to her interior.  She experiences Christ in His Essence, in her being; they are inseparable.

Mary stands square to the viewer, her poised stillness or silent constant prayer is noted in the hands, palms extended outward in total surrender to what has been given. Mary clutches and yearns for nothing. In early icons Mary was portrayed as the Burning Bush and Christ the fire that burns within. She is represented as the divine vessel of burning love. She knows and loves Him even before His birth.

The orb containing this revelation rests within her being, Christ surrounded in gold, symbolizing the totality of god without image. Christ is holding a tiny scroll, a symbol of the Scripture being fulfilled in Him and later to be filled in each and every one of us. Christ is our interior teacher, guide master, and rabbi. The icon’s theology is the link between the Jewish tradition and the new understanding of Christ.

“The Lord Himself will give you a sign, behold a young woman shall conceive and bear a child and his name will be emmanuel.” - ISaIaH 7:14.

excerpt taken from The Mary Collection 2008 by Mary Jane Miller. To see more work done by Mary Jane Miller, go to: http://sanmiguelicons.com/galleries.php

" ... it is she who makes me write it down ..."

The following thoughts from Merton, sixty years ago, on the last day of Advent, while looking at a picture of Fra Angelico’s “Annunciation”.

December 23, 1949

Late Afternoon. The quiet is filled with an altogether different tonality. The sun has moved altogether around and the room is darker. It is serious. The hour is more weary. I take time out to pray, and I look at the Angelico picture, feeling like the end of Advent, which is today. ‘Ecce completa sunt omnia quae dicta sunt per angelum de Virgine Maria.’ – that was the antiphon after the Benetictus this morning. For a few minutes I stayed silent and didn’t move and listened to the watch and wondered if perhaps I might not understand something of the work Our Lady is preparing.
It is an hour of tremendous expectation.
I remember my weariness, my fears, my lack of understanding, my dimness, my sin of over-activity. What is she preparing: have I offended her? What is coming up? She loves me. I reject emotion about it. Her love is too serious for any emotion of which I might be capable. Her love shapes worlds, shapes history, forms an Apocalypse in and around me, gives birth to the city of God. I am drawn back again into liturgy by a sense of my great need. I look at the serene, severe porch where Angelico’s angel speaks to her. Angelico knew how to paint her. She is thin, immensely noble, and she does not rise to meet the angel. Mother, make me as sincere as the picture. All the way down into my soul, sincere, sincere. Let me have no thought that could not kneel before you in that picture. No image, no shadow. I believe you. I am silent. I will act like the picture. Ecce completa sunt. It is the end of Advent and the afternoon is vivid with expectancy.
She is here and she has filled the room with something that is uniquely her own, too clean for me to appreciate. She is here with the tone of her expectancy. There is nothing wrong in writing it, for it is she who makes me write it down.

- Thomas Merton, Entering the Silence, pp. 385-386

HT to my friend, Frank G.

Our Lady of the Olive Trees

[Update: The Marion Library at the University of Dayton has verified that the painting below is in its "Epinal" collection. These works of art were named after the French town of Epinal and date to the 2nd half of the 19th Century. They are quite large and are the precursors to what are today known as holy cards. This may not be the leaflet, per se, that Merton was remembering in the Sign of Jonas, but it sure looks like it could be especially with that writing below the picture.]

Toward the end of the book, The Sign of Jonas, Merton mentions Our Lady of the Olive Trees:

"There came from France a tiny, ancient leaflet, printed somewhere in the Auvergne at least half a century ago. It is about Our Lady of the Olive Trees, at Murat. Had I heard of her? I must have. I stood in the shadow of her church ..."

When Merton was 10 years old, his artist father took him to France to live with him. Merton learned French easily and studied mostly at boarding schools while visiting his father on Sundays. During the summer of 1927 when he was 12 years old, Merton lived with an elderly Catholic couple, the Privats, in Murat, a small village in the Auvergne region of France.

This photo comes from a collection of Marian art at the Univerisity of Dayton. I wonder if it is the leaflet that Merton speaks of.Our Lady of Olives takes its origin from a wooden statue of Our Lady which survived the destruction of the Church of Murat caused by lightning in 1493. (Hence, Our Lady of the Olives is the protectress against lightning. Interesting in light of how Merton died from a bolt of electricity.). No one is sure where the name, Our Lady of the Olives comes from. Some say this is a reference to the wood from which she is carved, others say it is an allusion to suffering (Garden of Olives).

Merton comes to this memory just after having committed himself to compassion, whom he names Queen of the hermits and mother of the poor.

"What is my new desert? The name of it is compassion. There is no wilderness so terrible, so beautiful, so arid and so fruitful as the wilderness of compassion ...

"Do you suppose I have a spiritual life? I have none, I am indigence, I am silence, I am poverty, I am solitude, for I have renounced spirituality to find God, and He it is Who preaches loud in the depths of my indigence, saying: “I will pour out my spirit upon thy children and they shall spring up among the herbs as willows beside the running waters” (Isaias, 44:3-4). “The children of thy barrenness shall say in thy ears: the place is too strait for me, make me room to dwell in” (Isaias, 49:10). I die of love for you, Compassion: I take you for my Lady, as Francis married poverty I marry you, the Queen of hermits and the Mother of the poor.

-Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas, p. 334

Below are photos of the church at Murat and the statue of Our Lady of Olives.

The Church at Murat and the Black Virgin - Our Lady of the Olives.

Murat, France (there is a large white statue of the Blessed Mother on that hill on the left)