I am still reading Geoffrey Ashe's The Virgin - his dense, fascinating, and very stimulating book about the historical development and meaning of the Catholic veneration of Mary, Mother of Jesus.
(Ashe was himself a Roman Catholic, and deeply involved with Marian societies - especially the Carmelite Friars' shrine to Mary at Aylesford in Kent.)
This passage was one I found very striking. Ashe is describing the theology of Saint Germanus, who was Patriarch of Constantinople in the early 700s.
Mary, Germanus maintains, does not simply put requests to the Deity on matters they could agree about; she actively and successfully opposes him. "You turn away the just threat and the sentence of damnation, because you love the Christians... Therefore the Christian people trustfully turn to you, refuge of sinners."
The universe is split at the summit. God stands for Justice, and since we are all sinners more or less, most of us have little to hope for at his hands.
Mary stands for Mercy, and it is only because of her influence at court, not because of love or goodwill on God's part, that Heaven is within reach for more than a handful of human beings...
The Byzantine Virgin seems the only friend close to the throne and the only rescuer from utter awestruck despair...
The Greek church agreed that Mary was indispensable to salvation. An edict issued from Constantinople in 724 condemns anyone who withholds worship from her...
She is no longer the gentle Lady to whom Christians may turn for help. She is the unique being... to whom they must turn or be in peril of losing their souls forever.
[From before 1233] the norm of Marian miracles in hardening. The people concerned are apt to be commonplace and sometimes repellent.
The sole redeeming feature they have in common, "redeeming" quite literally, is their love for the Virgin. This protects them against the consequences of wrongdoing. Her devotees seem able to get away with anything....
It is unfair to treat this mythology as a license to sin; by saving misguided mortals the Virgin enables them to repent.
But the moral is not always conspicuous...
The medieval popular Virgin represented the all-too-human, the irregular, the exceptional. She was superior to the system and could break through every rule. Humanity had her on its side in its perpetual protest against divine law and human ordinance.
For her, every case was a special case. She could draw "her" sinner up out of hell itself, giving him another chance.
Such considerations stimulated various thoughts. One is that - however theologically alien and contradictory the role of Mary in Catholic devotion; the effect of Marian devotion has often been exemplary from what I regard as a strictly Christian perspective (as well as this-worldly-expedient - in terms of sustaining and strengthening the churches).
I understand the above descriptions to represent a spiritual correction to the not-Christian (i.e. not Jesus-derived) emphasis on Justice that has so often overtaken Christian churches of almost every kind.
When Jesus is made into a divine ruler of the universe, he has often been attributed with the characteristics of an idealized human ruler in some particular society - hence the de facto primacy of justice, defined legalistically - despite this being multiply-contradicted in the Gospels.
Furthermore, the tortured theology of Original Sin (which was only required because early theologians made it mandatory to conceptualize and define God as Omni) - led to the weird double-negative explanation of Jesus's work; as having been accomplished by a vicarious sacrifice (torture and death) demanded by Divine Justice to compensate for sin.
Against this historical backdrop of systemic misrepresentation of the fundamental nature of Jesus Christ's work and the paths to salvation by love of Jesus; Mary seems to have emerged, with the consequence of re-creating the truth of Jesus's salvation by personal love.
With the difference that the necessary love is displaced from Jesus, to his mother (but his mother having been re-conceptualized to possess the salvific attributes of Jesus).
But I don't doubt that this displaced or indirect love was none the less effective in attaining salvation for Marian adherents ; so long as the motives were true.
The simple heart of Christianity - i.e. resurrected eternal heavenly life to those who follow Jesus - has always been open to the kind of "license to sin" misrepresentation Ashe describes in the second excerpt above.
This is a kind of parody of Christianity, along the lines of: I can do what I like, be as selfish and gratification-seeking as I like... yet Mary will save me if I love her...
Such is the exactly the same type of criticism made of Jesus's teaching during his life, by those whose real concern was social order and sustaining the power of their church...
Popular with those who do not really believe that All Men are sinners including themselves; and that no Man good enough for Heaven without first passing through death and resurrection*.
(Or who may regard following Jesus as less a matter of love than of following rules.)
The parody is untrue, because it ignores that motivation is primary, and that the love really must come first.
Salvation is not attained by using love as an excuse to enable the primary motivation of doing evil. That is to put this-worldly gratification first.
But, on the other hand, salvation really is - not for those who successfully past some test of following some laws; but salvation is for all those who love and desire to follow Jesus more than anything else.
Or, in this instance... love and desire to follow Mary more than anything else - so long as Mary is conceptualized in the way she has been by some ancient (and some modern) Catholic Christians, as described in Ashe's book.
*I suppose I should state that I regard it as theologically incoherent from a Christian perspective to claim that Mary was conceived and existed without sin, and was assumed into Heaven without going through death and resurrection. The necessity and work of Jesus - and the requirement that we are all incarnated into mortal life - only makes sense when it is understood that death and resurrection was and is the only way to "fit us for Heaven". Nonetheless (fortunately for all of us!) theological coherence is not a requisite for salvation!
5 comments:
This post unlocks a new understanding of my life long Marian spirituality. I didn't choose it and I have always wondered why it has been the case since childhood that I have always been oriented toward Mary. I have come to realise in adulthood that my orientation is "spiritually incoherent', but there it is! Your post has shown me how in the end the inconsistency need not be fatal. Ad Jesum per Mariam. I've just bought Ashe's book. Thank you!
@Igude - I'm delighted the post has been helpful.
Ashe's account - mostly scholarly, but sometimes speculative (and marked as such) describing how the veneration of Mary emerged from the "grass roots", from the bottom up - as if a spontaneous and natural emergence that the theologians and bishops learned-from and incorporated as best they could.
That strikes me as rather wonderful - and goes far towards explaining the special quality of Marian devotion.
I am also affected by the historical fact that England was seen as the most Marian nation of Christendom. e.g. I live just a few score steps from a now mostly ruined and forgotten, but once nationally significant, place of Marian pilgrimage - https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2016/04/from-ancient-and-modern-catholic-folk.html
Ashe is perfect for me being of a similar age so we have read much of the same material. I'm up to Chapter 3. One key takeaway is that BOTH Jesus and Mary, although connected to previous manifestations of the dying and rising god and the great mother bring something entirely new into the world. I always wondered as a child at Nuns being "Brides of Christ", while it was left unsaid if there was any male equivalent. Because I had a direct experience of Her in the Tribune Chapel of St Joseph's in Subiaco Western Australia I took it as a commission to create Icons of Her. And that is the creative contribution I find myself contributing to in old age. I love your appreciation of the "grass roots". nature of Marian spirituality. As an American by birth I never knew of England being 'the most Marian nation'. I'll check out your post. I do know of the persistence of the Lady Chapel in a certain kind of Anglo Catholic church (and the vexation this cases in another kind of Anglican!) and that strikes me as rather wonderful too!
@Igude. I'm delighted you are getting so much positive stimulus from Ashe!
IMO One problem with mainstream (top-down defined) Marian devotion is that it is too much "normalized", integrated, and therefore taken for granted as "just another thing we have to do".
What Ashe does - I think, including with the evidence for a grassroots attribution of the origins - is to restore the strangeness, mystery and romance - the *specialness* and thereby power - of Marian devotion.
I was (and theoretically still am - although not theologically) more of a practising Anglo-Catholic than I am anything else; and have had glimpses of this mystery - especially when I visited the (Anglican) premier English Marian shrine of Walsingham - https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-anglican-shrine-at-walsingham-visit.html
@Igude - Just realized you commented on the above linked post, and so you already know about it!
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