MARY AND OUR INNER SELVES

MARY AND OUR INNER SELVES

She is the Madonna of the Streets, the Madonna of the Refugees, the Madonna of the Ghetto. But she is also

Our Lady of Carmel, Knock and Walsingham, not to mention Guadalupe, Lourdes and Fatima. She is in

short our maternal guide from the trials of Earth to the everlasting happiness of Heaven

LADY of Lourdes is praying,

halfway up the stairs. At the end         

of my daughter’s bookshelf the

Immaculate Conception dispenses

benedictions. When my daughter gets bored

by Mass, she revives with talk of Mary. After

all, I say, Mary is only human; she is easy to

understand. She has become Our Lady of

Homework, Our Lady of Sleeping Alone in

the Dark.

In the past two millennia she has been taken

a long way from the woman of Nazareth. After

the birth, the death, the Resurrection, she

became a kind of triage nurse in the hinterland

between Heaven and Earth, speeding some

closer to God, dispensing mercy, appearing

and disappearing at critical moments in our

history. She first appeared before she was

even dead, to St James in Saragossa. Since

then it has been a centuries-long curtain call

as she does that thing we need so badly: she

finds us where we are at.

WHEREVER SHE appears – Guadalupe,

Lourdes, Fatima – she talks the talk of the

natives; she trades in their signs and symbols

(in Mexico, for example, she wore the Aztec

maternity belt to show she was pregnant).

Over the centuries, Mary of Nazareth has

gone native in countless countries. She is Our

Lady of Carmel, Knock and Walsingham. In

one early twentieth-century painting she is

even the Madonna of the Prairie, driving a

covered wagon, the shape of the tarpaulin

creating a halo around her head. Wherever

she is, she is the fearless missionary entering

dangerous territory, donning the clothes of

the country until she can say: “Do you know

who I am?”

Psychologists have noted that when empathetic

people converse they adopt, very subtly,     

the accent of the person they are talking to.

It is Mary’s ability to be like us that is the most

extreme empathy we can know here on Earth:

Madonna of the Streets, Madonna of the

Refugees, Madonna of the Ghetto.

But do we risk making a Barbie doll of the

woman of Nazareth, with an outfit for any

occasion? In southern Italy, during religious

processions, more than once giant statues of

Our Lady have paused outside the home of

a Mafia boss, and the Mother of God is made

to bow. The Mafia’s perversion of religion is

well known; at times like that the Madonna

becomes a puppet in their hands. Indeed, her

undiluted humanity and femininity leave her

vulnerable to all of us. It has become almost

the norm to paint her like a doll. But we risk

ignoring the real message that she bears.

When I taught catechism, the eight-year olds

in my class loved talk of Mary – she was

the mother who did not deal in rules and fear;

she was nothing to do with confession and

commandments. She is La

Madonnina (“the little

Madonna”) to children here

in Italy. When May came

around, I told them the tale

of Fatima and they were

enthralled. Until I got to the

bit where Mary showed the

children a vision of hell. Hell.                               

You would think the word had           

never been spoken aloud. They                                                        

actually jumped in their seats.

My co-teacher gave me a dark look and steered

the discussion away.

BUT WARNING, reparation and penance are

the fundamental messages contained in credible

Marian apparitions. And, at Fatima in

particular, the existence of hell. For Mary is

no puppet and no doll.

It is almost 100 years since those strange

happenings at Cova da Iria that we are not

required to believe. But it is hard not to believe

Sr Lucia’s testimony. The vision of hell was

so terrifying that the 10-year-old Lucia yelled

aloud; people in neighbouring fields reported

hearing that cry.

What the children saw were flames, people

burning and black demons. But even if we

don’t believe in this depiction of the Inferno

as literal, we must remember that God always

brings us truths in images that we, or a child

of 10, can understand.

It may be that fewer people in the Western

world believe in God these days than at any

point in history, and even fewer believe in

hell. Which is ironic, as glimpses of hell are

everywhere – in war, pornography and self harm,

to name just a few. And children are

far more likely to encounter images of these

hells than ever before. For even if they are

not seeing horror and pornography on their

smartphones, their friends are and it is becoming

playground banter. This may sound bleak,

but it gives Mary her greatest opportunity.

IT HAS OFTEN struck me as I recite the Rosary

how those repetitive words must shape our

psyche. These days, when we have ever greater

access to appalling and potentially desensitising

images of cruelty, these kinds of prayers

are even more essential. They form the brain

with truth and beauty; we can make those

images outnumber and neutralise the ugly.

After all, what we put into ourselves on a

regular basis becomes what

we are. This is not to reduce

the power of the supernatural

in prayer – it is about enabling

our brains to receive it and let

it grow.

We are familiar with John

the Evangelist taking Mary

into his home after the

Crucifixion. But Benedict XVI

has illuminated this English

translation with a truer sense

of the original Greek: John is described as

taking Mary into his inner life, his inner being.

This is far from simply giving her a bed in the

spare room. This is yielding to her and becoming

like her; she understands us but in turn

we are asked to absorb her utterly.

Within ourselves she might tread through

selfishness, unbelief or hopelessness – all

cracks into which darkness can pour. That is

why we should pause often in this tinselly

season to recognise her almost incredible feminine

power and to say, as often as we possibly

can, “Hail Mary …” If we do so, we will be

better able to try and achieve the courage of

her fiat and her unsurpassable strength and

patience in prayer, as the life of her child

unfolded, ended and began again.

 “It is Mary’s ability

to be like us that

is the most

extreme empathy

we can know

here on Earth”