This is the first of two Advent Meditations on the theme “Mary in Holy Waiting”. The second is posted here.
“I waited patiently for the Lord, / and he inclined unto me
and heard my calling” (Ps. 40.1)
Pondus meum amor meus. My love is my weight. A powerful phrase from Augustine, it has shaped the medieval and reformation churches’ understanding of human redemption. The question is about what weight of meaning it might have for the contemporary church in all of our confusions and disarray. Augustine’s image captures a significant theological theme which, on the one hand, counters and, on the other hand, complements the inarticulate loneliness of a culture which has abandoned God. Yet it is there for us to think again.
Mary in Advent is Mary in Holy Waiting. The image relates to the Augustinian phrase. What defines Mary is her waiting upon the will of God. Far from a kind of passive acquiescence, Mary’s waiting is an holy activity, a kind of attentiveness to the pageant of God’s Word revealed in the Law and the Prophets and now, on Angel’s wings, it seems, opening us out to the wonder and the marvel of God’s coming to us through her. To what extent are we in her? For Mary, to use Irenaeus’ poignant and potent phrase is the pure womb which gives birth to that purity which Christ himself has made pure: “that pure one opening purely that pure womb which regenerates men unto God and which he himself made pure.”
It is impossible to think of Mary apart from Christ and so it is of interest the way in which she quietly and patiently intrudes her presence upon our meditations and thoughts. Mary is an inescapable feature of the landscape of Advent. She plays a critical and crucial role in our understanding of Christ’s coming to us, our Emmanuel, God with us. Through Mary we begin to discover how our humanity is totally and inescapably bound up with the will of God towards us; in short, his advent.
What is the weight which defines us? What do our souls desire? The first question is the first utterance of direct speech by Jesus in John’s Gospel which we heard on The Sunday Next Before Advent. “What do you seek?” he asked the disciples of John the Baptist. Our seeking is our longing, our hoping and looking for something more. Advent speaks to that longing and looking. Jesus’ question prompts a question in return by the disciples: “Master, where dwellest thou?” The implication is one of wanting to be with the one in whom all our souls’ desires are found and fulfilled. The longing and the looking speak to our recognition of the incompleteness of our humanity apart from God. But how and in what way is God with us? Advent signals all the ways of God’s being with us: in the Word as Law and Prophecy, in the Word as Judgment and Truth, but most wondrously in the Word made flesh. And, yet, even then there is the pageant of his coming in the flesh about who he is. “Who is this?” The city is moved to say in the Gospel for The First Sunday of Advent.
How is God with us in the quiet darkness of Advent? In ventris and in mentis. In the womb and the mind of Mary, the ancient Fathers say, awaiting the fullness of time, the time of her delivery of the one conceived in her by the Holy Ghost, conceived in mind and only so in womb. The conception of Christ looks back to the Annunciation. In the project of Advent, we are reminded, especially in the Advent Ember days, of the Annunciation, propers (readings) which can be used especially in Advent for weekdays for which there are no special provision (BCP, p. 100). The Annunciation forms a central part, too, of the carols and hymns of the Advent and Christmas season. We cannot think of God being with us in the intimacy of the humanity of Christ without conceiving of Mary and her role in the working out of human redemption.
She is the pure vessel of our Lord’s pure humanity and represents to us the vision of our humanity in its truth qua human. What is that truth? “Be it unto me according to thy Word.” Her ‘yes to God’ is about her free-willing and yet predetermined participation in God’s good will and purpose for our humanity. Her ‘yes to God’ reverses the presumption of Adam and Eve, the presumption of our sin and all the pageant of woe that the Fall entails. Her ‘yes to God’ recalls what belongs to the truth of our humanity rather than its untruth. Sin and death, misery and sorrow are all negatives. They belong to the lie of our humanity. Mary recalls us to the truth of our humanity which is found in knowing and loving the will of God for us which is always about his knowing and loving at work in us. That Word is eternal; all our longing and looking presuppose the eternity and truth of God’s Word as what defines and dignifies our humanity. Mary’s response reveals the simple truth of our humanity. It is found in our willing what God wills for us, our embrace of the divine truth without which our humanity is utterly incomplete. But “be it unto me according to thy Word,” Mary says, and so must we.
Part of what that means is captured in the watchful waiting of the Advent season. It is about our watching and waiting upon the pageant of God’s Word coming to us in Law and Prophecy, in Gospel and Sacrament, and in the myriad of ways in which the truth of God appears in the little things of kindness and sacrifice, of service and care towards one another. All because of Mary’s waiting upon God’s Word, waiting in Advent for the birth of the Child Christ, for the appearing of the One who takes flesh through her.
Her waiting is the highest and truest activity of our humanity. To conceive is more than to receive. Her ‘yes to God’ is an intellectual and spiritual response to the divine initiative and it defines her being and, indeed, the being of the Church. God become man through her active willing of God’s will, the active yielding of her whole being to the divine will and purpose. That active willing is the holy waiting of the Advent season. Mary is in holy waiting, waiting upon the fullness of time in which she brings forth the child Christ. Her waiting is the waiting of the Church in Advent, our waiting upon the motion of God’s Word coming to us so that Word might come to birth in our lives, our lives as lived to God and for one another.
“I waited patiently for the Lord, / and he inclined unto me
and heard my calling” (Ps. 40.1)
Fr. David Curry,
Meditation: Mary in Holy Waiting,
December 3rd, 2013