3.01. Mary the Mother of Jesus — Blessed among Women

CHAPTER I Mary the Mother of Jesus — Blessed among Women WHEN we escape from the weary labyrinth of legend that the fancy of centuries has woven round the name of Mary, and resolutely confine our attention to those traits of her character that are indicated in the gospel records, we may suffer some disappointment at discovering how few and faint they are. Compared with the picture of Jesus that comes to us down the ages, still vivid in its convincing realism, the New Testament portrait of the Virgin is but a dim shadow, flitting across the page for a moment here and there, and then fading away into total obscurity. So marked is this contrast that we are almost tempted to suspect a deliberate design on the part of the evangelists to reduce the mother to relative insignificance in the presence of her Divine Son. And yet the narratives are too artless to admit of any such subtlety. The simpler explanation is that this slightness of texture is itself a note of genuine portraiture; for the reason that Mary was of a retiring nature, unobtrusive, reticent, perhaps even shrinking from observation, so that the impress of her personality was confined to the sweet sanctities of the home circle. That she was a woman without character, feeble and featureless, one of those limp beings who come to be reckoned as cyphers in the world, is not for a moment to be supposed. On the rare occasions when the curtain is lifted we catch glimpses of a character not wanting in energy and power of initiation. Have we not all met with people who make their individuality felt within a very limited circle, while beyond that even their existence is scarcely noticed! The few hints that the evangelists have permitted themselves to let fall about the mother of Jesus seem to point in this direction.

Although all four evangelists contribute materials for our meagre knowledge of Mary, it is St. Luke who supplies us with most of the information on which we have to depend in endeavouring to form some idea of what she was like.

He and St. Matthew are the only evangelists who give us any account of the birth and infancy of our Lord; and here the narrative in the third gospel is both more full and more definite than that in the first.

It must be confessed that these scenes of the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Infancy, beautiful as they are with a rare charm of idyllic grace, affect us also with a sense of idyllic remoteness. They do not move in the plane of our dull prosaic lives. It gives us a shock of incongruity to imagine the Bethlehem shepherds among our Sussex or Dorset farm servants. We would sooner look for them on the “Immortal Dreamer’s” Delectable Mountains than among any downs or sheep-runs we are acquainted with. But is not this feeling only a sign of the limitation of our imaginations and the dulness of our spirits? Who can tell what visions and voices might be perceptible even now to keener eyes and sharper ears than ours? It is, indeed, somewhat daring to assert that man is the only spiritual being in the universe, or that on no occasion has he been brought into contact with other spiritual beings. Of course this is ultimately a question of evidence; but in the estimation of the evidence account must be taken of religious ideas as well as of the factors that are concerned with ordinary historical probability; for it must be remembered that the wonders here related are in immediate connection with the coming of the Son of God for the redemption of the world. We must not forget that these scenes do not stand by themselves as isolated marvels suddenly cropping up in the course of ordinary events, a few rare flowers of paradise breaking out in a desert of earthly things. If they appear as exotics, it is to be observed that they form the border, as we might say, of a whole garden of wonders, such as never spring up in the fields we tread to-day. They are but the prelude to a history that abounds with superhuman marvels.

Still, even when compared with the subsequent narrative of the life of Christ, these scenes seem to dwell in an atmosphere even further removed from that of our daily life. Not only to those who half suspect that a fond fancy has in some degree clothed the poetry of the spirit with images more comprehensible to the average man — especially in the East, where all thought assumes concrete forms — but also to people who fully accept these accounts in their literal meaning as statements of solid facts of history, it is difficult to sympathise with the human interests, with the flesh and blood life, that such unearthly scenes should still be thought to contain. In any case we need a strong effort of the imagination to do this. But if the scenes are unearthly Mary is not unearthly; and if we are to understand her at all we must think of her as a woman, possessing a woman’s gifts and graces, subject to a woman’s limitations and frailties, her natural alarms, hopes, pains, joys; a woman with the warm, palpitating emotions of human nature stirring in her breast.

She first meets us at a time when she can scarcely have crossed the threshold of womanhood. Marriage is early in the East; and a Jewish maiden still only betrothed and looking forward to her wedding as an event of the future must be very young, a girl hardly full grown. To this child, brought up in a peasant’s home, accustomed to the little round of daily duties that is the lot of the daughters of the poor, wholly ignorant of the great world and its ways, there comes the most startling and overwhelming revelation. She is to be the mother of the promised Redeemer of her people! Her first thoughts could not but be full of bewilderment and dismay. The hope and the terror of expectant motherhood are upon her!

Painters of various schools have given us their several interpretations of the Annunciation, but perhaps none have seized upon the purely human aspect of the scene so evidently as Rossetti. It may be said that the nineteenth century pre-Raffaelite artist cannot emancipate himself from the age in which he lives, and in spite of his archaic sympathies is still essentially modern in thought, so that the expression of his Madonna is also distinctly modern. And yet it is only modern in the sense that it is frankly human. Rossetti tells what the old painters with a fine reticence concealed. To them the Divine glory of Gabriel’s message extinguished all earthly considerations in its ineffable splendour. To us the study of the Nazareth maiden in this crisis when she suddenly passes from girlhood to womanhood in its most profound significance cannot but be of primary interest. We want to know how it affected her girlish consciousness; and Rossetti, who, if not exactly a theologian, is a poetic interpreter of human life, clearly answers that question. Mary shrinks from the splendid angel, almost cowers at his feet; but not because she is dazzled by the coming into her presence of one of his lofty estate, for she fixes her eyes upon him in a steadfast gaze.

Those dark eyes have in them the terror of the hunted deer. It is not Gabriel, it is his overwhelming message, that smites her with alarm. Her maiden modesty is troubled. There is nothing of the joyous gratitude of the Magnificat in the picture. And yet is not this just such an attitude as would be natural to the startled innocence of a peasant girl? Wonder and alarm are Mary’s most natural feelings at the moment when the amazing truth dawns upon her. But as she gathers assurance she bows in quiet submission. This is the evangelist’s conclusion. Mary is the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to her as His messenger has said. As yet there is no word of joy, no note of exultation, no sign of triumph. The trembling girl simply accepts the tremendous fact as the will of her Lord. The next scene to which St. Luke introduces us is of a very different character. At the first announcement of her own desting Mary had asked how such a wonder could be; and Gabriel had encouraged her faith by telling her of another though a lesser wonder. A kinswoman, Elizabeth, away in the hill-country of the South, long married and long childless, is also to be blessed by becoming a mother. Forthwith Mary sets out to visit her kinswoman. We may be surprised that a young maiden should be permitted to take so serious a journey, one of several days, all the way from Galilee to the farther regions of Judaea, especially in the interval between betrothal and marriage which oriental etiquette always requires to be a time of the greatest seclusion. It may be remarked that St. Luke must have known this custom at least as well as we know it — and his informant also; and yet the statement is made unhesitatingly. Force of circumstances always gives to women of the humbler ranks of society a freedom that is denied to their more fashionable sisters; but apart from that fact it may be observed that the Jews never placed their wives and daughters in the degrading and cruel position of jealous slavery that is prevalent in Mohammedan countries. And yet we can scarcely think of this young girl taking such a journey wholly unprotected. Where was Joseph’s chivalry to permit such a thing? But on the other hand we are not told that this was the case. The Evangelist never stops to amuse our curiosity -with those picturesque iletails that the “ Special Correspondent “ lays himself out to supply. By whatever means Mary was enabled to make her journey in safety, it is clearly St. Luke’s meaning that she undertook it of her own initiative; and that was remarkable enough for one in her position. Here then we come upon an early hint that the mother of our Lord was a woman of energy and will. Other hints to the same effect will emerge as we proceed.

St. Luke’s picture of the meeting of the two expectant mothers is as remarkable for its portraiture of the hostess as for that of her guest; but it is with the latter that we are now concerned. The elder woman’s enthusiastic welcome stirs the soul of the young girl and gives her courage and hope. Had she not yet breathed her fearful secret to any trusted confidant? Had she not even told her mother? Or was her mother not living? We know she had a sister. [1] Were the sweet whispered confidences of maiden sisterhood impossible to her in this case, so strange, so utterly unique? We cannot tell. That she should not be represented as conferring with her future husband with regard to such a matter as that which now filled her heart with fear and hope is only reasonable; and St. Matthew tells us that Joseph got his information through other channels.[2] It looks as though she had kept her incomprehensible secret deep buried in her bosom till it was drawn out by her warm-hearted kinswoman. Mary, we see, is naturally reticent; but it is just the reticent nature that hungers most keenly for the sympathy it is so reluctant to invite; and when the sealed fountain is broken the stream gushes out all the more freely for the fact that it has long been pent up in a painful oppression. In response to Elizabeth’s glad and generous words Mary breaks through all reserve. They are just what she needs to cheer her in the loneliness of her situation, and [1] John 19:25 [2] Mat 1:18-21 her whole nature now makes a rebound from the attitude of submissive fear in which we left her before to a state of exultant gratitude. No longer oppressed by the terrible idea of her coming motherhood, she kindles with joy and praise at the thought of her high privilege. It is when the mother thinks of her child that she forgets herself, or, if still thinking of her own fate at all, forgets her alarms and glories in the gift of a life that is to be hers to love and cherish. But Mary’s case is not that of simple motherhood, most beautiful and divine of human experiences though it be; for she is to be the mother of the Christ, the Holy One of God! And this is the thought in which she now exults. The Magnificat has come down to us as Mary’s expression of exultation in answer to Elizabeth’s greeting. Now it has been objected that it is unreasonable to imagine a young girl, when meeting one of her relations under the circumstances here described, composing such a hymn as this, there and then, on the spur of the moment. And it has been suggested that even if Mary were a poetess this composition is out of harmony with the situation; that her lyric muse would not have prompted a psalm of so liturgical a character, one more fitted for the public worship of the sanctuary than for the private confidences of two women in the home. Moreover, we are reminded, these early chapters of St. Luke abound in hymns. The Bethlehem Angels, Zacharias the priest, Simeon the old man in the temple, all burst into song, all utter themselves in poetry. This is not even dramatic poetry. It is lyric, and in the case of the Magnificat, at least, not after the type of the simple, thrush-like song that would be the vehicle of personal feeling, but in the form of the spacious ode that might befit the emotions of a multitude on some great public occasion. This grand poem requires the organ rather than the lute as its fitting accompaniment. On the other hand, it has been pointed out that the Magnificat is almost entirely constructed of phrases culled out of the Old Testament, being moulded especially on the Song of Hanna[1] — itself a poem appearing under very similar circumstances; and further that Mary was just in the circumstances which would inspire the most exalted form of poetry. We are reminded, too, that the people of the South and East are much more ready with impromptu poetry than the more phlegmatic folk of the West. Travellers who have lived among the Arabs tell of their almost miraculous gifts of improvisation. This must be allowed; and it should check a rash conclusion based only on our experience of English domestic life.

Nevertheless these considerations do not entirely dispose of what has been said against the notion that we have here just the very words that a shorthand reporter would have been able to take down in bis note-book had he been present at the meeting of the two kinswomen. We know that ancient historians, even when most anxious to give a true impression of what actually occurred, permit themselves great freedom in rendering the speeches of the leading characters of their narratives, and indeed do so in order the more clearly to bring out what they conceive to be the true thoughts of these people. If, then, any readers of St. Luke should seem driven to the conclusion that the Evangelist employs hymns composed more deliberately to express the thoughts and feelings of the people whom he is describing in this early part of. his gospel, he should not be thought the less intent upon a serious historical recital. It is to be observed that we have no indications of this method when we come to the sayings of Jesus, where the fidelity of the disciple to his Master is always preserved. In any case, it should be admitted, that although the Magnificat gradually glides into utterances of a general character that do not seem to have any immediate bearing on its occasion, the spirit and temper of it finely agree [1] 1Sa 2:1-10 with what we may well believe to have been the feelings of. Mary when meeting Elizabeth. It is to be noticed that there is nothing here that might not have been in the mind of a Jewess before the time of Christ. There is not the faintest reflection of New Testament thought; as has been already said, the poem is entirely moulded on the Old Testament. Plainly it is not the work of a Christian.

Certainly St. Luke did not compose it. His style is of good Greek; this poem is intensely Hebraistic. So far it fits into the time in the history where it occurs. Then, it may be remarked, the Scriptures on which it is based are for the most part Psalms, next to the Law the most familiar portions of the Jewish Bible, as they are also the most devotional Further, the prevailing tone of the poem is one of joyous, exultant gratitude. This perfectly expresses the new mood into which Mary has now passed, the gladness and thankfulness she experiences in contemplating the unspeakable privilege God has placed upon her. At the same time there is a full confession of lowliness. Here we reach the central point round which the whole movement revolves.

God has looked on the low estate of His handmaiden. The thought indeed takes a general form. The proud are scattered, princes dethroned, the rich sent empty away; while they of low degree are exalted, the hungry filled, and His servant Israel helped by God. The conclusion would seem to suit Esther in her triumph over Hanan, the enemy of her people, more fitly than Mary at her meeting with her kinswoman Elizabeth. This, however, is the climax in which the dominant theme is worked out to its grand conclusion. It starts from Mary’s position. For it is indeed wonderful that an honour, which any princess in the king’s court might covet beyond all things, has fallen to the lot of this lowly maid from a Galilean peasant’s cottage. The well-known incidents connected with the birth and infancy of Jesus that are narrated in the first and third gospels do not throw much light on the character of His mother, though as we muse on them to our imagination there rises the picture of a gentle, loving woman, devoted to her wonderful Babe, awed before the dawning mystery of His nature. With St. Luke as our guide we follow Mary and her patient, loyal husband from their highland home in the north to the royal city of David. Although both the genealogies appear to give the descent of Joseph, there is good reason to believe that he had followed the custom of his people, and married in his own tribe of Judah. The unhesitating way in which the two evangelists who assert the virgin birth of our Lord also treat Him as the Son of David shows that they both held his mother to have been of the royal lineage. If there had been any doubt about this, we may be sure the question would have been raised by the Jews as soon as the miraculous conception was declared, whenever this may have been, since the denial of it would have been fatal to the Messianic claim. At Bethlehem, in the home of her ancestors, the crowded khan affords no room for one who, by right of descent, should have been in the usurper Herod’s palace at Jerusalem; and it is necessary for her, in the supreme hour of her need, to take shelter among the stalls of the cattle.

It is not unreasonable to give credence to the picturesque tradition that this was a cave, for the statement is found as early as Justin Martyr (about a.d. 150), [1] and it seems to have been in the Gospel acceding to the Hebrews,’[2] an apocrypha], but still a very ancient book, unfortunately now lost. Caves abound in the limestone hills of Judaea, and in the present day we may see them used for the stabling of animals, and even as parts of houses that are built against them. Probably the young mother would have more quiet and seclusion in such a retreat than would have been possible among the rough travellers, hucksters and others, who thronged the arcades of the comfortless inn.

Here the first terrible experience of motherhood came upon Mary, and then doubtless at the birth of her firstborn that moment of sudden revulsion from agony to unspeakable gladness which the true mother reckons to be more than compensation for all she has endured. The wonderful Babe lay in the manger, as helpless as any other babe; and St. Luke is careful to tell us that His mother bound Him in those tight bandages that Eastern people use to this day, with the belief that they support the feeble infant frame, and which certainly add to its look of helplessness and dependence. That the Christ should be thus dependent on Mary was a unique privilege for this one woman. And yet does not His teaching suggest that every mother who ministers loving care to her infant, with 1 thoughts of the Bethlehem Babe, and with the tenderness and reverence she would have shown to Him, is really ministering to Jesus Himself?

While in Bethlehem Mary receives the visit of the Shepherds; and at this point St. Luke flashes a rare ray of light on her inner life. He tells us that “ Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.” [1] As He makes a similar remark a second time, at the finding of Jesus in the Temple,[2] it is clearly intended to be significant. It seems to hint that Mary’s carefully treasured memories were the original sources of these narratives, and that they are to be relied on because she had guarded them well, and thought much over them. At the same time it suggests an explanation for the fact that they were not divulged early enough to find a place in the primitive accounts of the life of Christ, St. Mark’s in particular.

Mary appears in both these scenes as of a deeply meditative nature, remembering, thinking. And yet what fond mother does not treasure up every incident concerning the infancy of her child? Things that may seem trivial to the outside world are to her charged with the deepest meaning, prophetic of the most astounding future. We smile at the

[1] Luk 2:19. [2] Luk 2:51 illusion. Yet there is more truth in it than in our worldly moods we will allow,’ for there is a Christ in every little child, and “Heaven lies about us in our infancy.“

Alas, that the child’s own wilful conduct when he comes to years of choice too often dispels the mother’s dream! But this mournful desting of fond motherhood was not to be Mary’s. By a strange way of thinking that we can scarcely follow, the experience of motherhood, which St. Paul has described as the mystical means for the saving of woman,[1] and which we have come to regard as something like her coronation, was held by the Jews to unfit her for the Holy Presence; so that one who had recently become a mother was required to offer a sacrifice of ceremonial purification. Some have thought that when St. Paul writes of childbearing as the means by which woman is saved, he is referring specifically to the birth of Jesus. Be that as it may, since Christ has come into the world the formal conceptions of Old Testament ritual are abolished; and the significance of the revolution as it touches woman is seen in the fact that with the Christian a Thanksgiving in public worship takes the place of the Jewish ceremony of Purification. But Mary is a Jewess under the law, and she must observe the customs of her people. In his account of the visit to the temple, St. Luke drops a hint of the poverty of the Nazareth household. The law required the offering of a lamb by a mother on the occasion of the birth of her child; [2] but if she could not afford that she might bring two turtle-doves or two young pigeons.[3] St. Luke shows that Mary had to take advantage of this concession and content herself with a poor woman’s offering. The Purification of the mother was followed by the Presentation of the child. Then it was that the aged Simeon took the infant Christ in his arms. That must [1] 1Ti 2:15. [2] Lev 12:6. [3] Lev 12:8 have been a joy to the mother, especially since the touching words of the Nunc Dimittis, expressing the old man’s joy and gratitude, suggest that his prophetic insight came to the aid of Mary’s faith. But to her he added a word of starting and ominous meaning. After predicting the revolutionary effect of the coming of this child to Israel, as an occasion of falling and of rising up for many, he warned her that a sword would pierce her own soul. It is not the common word for sword that is here employed by St. Luke, but one that was used originally for the long Thracian pike, and when applied to a sword at all it indicated a weapon of an exceptionally large make. A terrible thrust is suggested by the selection of this unusual word. The ingenuity of interpreters in all ages has been exercised in endeavouring to discover the significance of this enigmatic expression of Simeon’s. Thus, by the early Fathers it was referred to the pang of unbelief that they supposed to have pierced the heart of Mary at the sight of her Son’s death. Recent commentators have generally explained it with reference to her agony endured while witnessing the sufferings of Jesus on the cross. This is a more natural interpretation; and yet perhaps it would be wiser not to limit the words to any such definite occasion. We have no reason to suppose that Simeon had a distinct prevision of the crucifixion. Knowing the degraded state of the nation, and perceiving that this Infant in the temple was to be the long expected Deliverer, the inspired man saw what none of the disciples would permit themselves to see, even after living long in the companionship of their Lord, that the true redemption could only come in a way that would mean agony to the mother of the Redeemer.