Thoughts from a Householder - Part 2

Protestant that I am, when scanning my memory for child-bearing Saints I was entirely unconscious of the spiritual hero I overlooked. As I wrote about the spiritual refining achieved through the struggle of child raising it did not once cross my mind to consider the Holy Mother.

Less than 24 hours after I wrote this post I found myself in a chapel at a convent of the Blessed Virgin Mary, standing before a statue of Mary holding her baby Jesus with Joseph at her shoulder. There she was, looking so much like a mother, a wife, a woman - with God playing on her lap - the spiritual hero looked to by millions.

I was struck by the scandalous, beautiful, wonder of it all. Mary, Joseph, Jesus - a family; the real-life quality of God's work in us - birth, life, flesh, death. The Divine incarnation and redemption did not break out of them but worked within them.

I walked through the chapel and looked into the stain glass windows. In the first, the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, telling her that she had been chosen of God, telling her of what was to come. Mary responded "I am the Lord's servant. Let it be to me as you have said." This reaches to me powerfully. We have little control over our lives. Our task is to listen, to wait, to accept, to surrender. For our spirit this is the beginning, or the end, of everything.

In the second window I saw Mary with the newborn baby Jesus, and I felt the pain, danger, and joy of birth. This most human of moments is when God breathed his first breath.

The third window showed Mary and Joseph finally finding their son, teaching in the temple. I saw in her face the anxiety, the relief, the bafflement. My spirit cried out with the realization of the task now ahead - giving up, letting go; humbly realizing that this child is no longer primarily an experience of my own, but a person and identity all his own. This baby may have begun as part of my body, literally one person with myself, but now he will forever be somewhat of a mystery, somehow inaccessible. Now I must learn, learn to see my children not define them. To say 'it is no longer about me but about you, and what God is doing in you, and who he has created you to be.' This profound experience of motherhood has given birth to a new soul, and now begins to fade into the background

And the fourth glass - Mary, seeing her son at the cross. The look on her face is easily recognizable: she is facing our ultimate fear - the pain and suffering of her child; the breaking of the body and life that she so carefully built and nurtured.

Surrender, and birth. Surrender again, and death. These are the seasons and steps of our lives, and God's incarnation and redemption are played out within them, among them.

When God touched mankind most dramatically - when he walked among us, and when he redeemed us - he did it not with the shocking supernatural moves of a comic hero or demigod as we might expect. He used the same mundane tools and life seasons used by each one of us. To show himself to us He came to earth; not on a bolt of lightening or riding on a cloud - he was carried in a womb, born of a woman, made into flesh and blood - incarnated. And to redeem us this same human body did not triumph majestically but was broken, his flesh torn, his blood spilt - death.

The sacred does not float ethereally beyond the reach of mortals. The sacred has mingled with the mundane.

So there is a spiritual hero who's life and energy was spent raising children. Protestant though I am her example is there for me to see, her experience for me to envision. Today I saw Holy Week through the eyes of a Mother. I saw God's work through the eyes of Mother.