New Eve, new Ark

Mary and the sacramental worldview

“Blessed art thou among women.”

We should take these words seriously. Not only because they are in Scripture, which is reason enough. But more, because they are said twice: first by the angel Gabriel, and second, by Elizabeth. The angel is a messenger of God, and speaks only God’s words. That should make us take notice. But Elizabeth’s words are not vain repetition. Recall what St Luke (1:42) writes in the Scriptures: “Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry. ” It is the Spirit of God Himself who speaks through her. Mary is proclaimed blessed twice, once by angel and once by human. Together, their words make up the first half of the Hail Mary, and we should have no hesitation in repeating those words, because they are God’s own.

Mary is blessed among woman in a singular fashion, but Elizabeth is blessed too. What both women have in common is that their blessing comes through what, or rather who, is within them. It the baby in Elizabeth’s womb who first realises whom and what Mary bears. The foetal St John the Baptist jumps for joy, and his mother gives voice to his first prophecy. Only a few days after conception, what is in Mary is not “a bundle of cells,” but the Lord: that word used by pious Jews to avoid pronouncing the Holy Name of God. Already, the Word is made Flesh, the Incarnation has begun in hiding, as the last Prophet knows and wordlessly proclaims.

But we would be quite wrong to suggest that Mary and Elizabeth were nothing but incubators for their sons, that Jesus and John passed through them like water through a viaduct. Both women were chosen for their holiness. Both were devoted to God — Elizabeth was of Aaron’s priestly line — and both were blessed with miracles: Mary by her Virgin birth; Elizabeth, like Hannah of old, by being rescued from barrenness even though she was past childbearing age. The children they bore increased their holiness, and that holiness did not depart from them once they had given birth. Grace perfects. God does not merely use people. His presence blesses all that it touches and fills.

What we think about Mary is not merely an optional add-on to the Christian faith, something for people who happen to like that sort of thing. It has implications for the whole of our Christian life, and the way we see the world and God’s work in it.

A typically modern way of seeing the world is as empty matter, which we humans define by our will. This leads us to seeing other people as basically tools, or that horrible phrase, “Human Resources,” existing only for our own use. The result is the commodification of natural resources and of people. It is no coincidence that this way of seeing the world has so much in common with the modern Protestant reticence towards Mary: she is “just a normal human,” used by God for the higher end of bringing Christ into the world, after which her job is done.

Dare I say that to see mothers merely as vehicles for reproduction is not especially good news for women. Nor does it take into account that a child, whether in the womb or outside it, is never a completely separate person from his or her mother. The identity of mother and child is interwoven — more so, at least in the beginning, than that of father and child — and they influence one another throughout their lives and beyond, even if only by their absence and the pain that absence brings.

The modern view of matter leads to a sense of entitlement: if everything in the world exists for people to take, why have I not got as much as others? Compare Elizabeth’s quite contradictory response to Mary, who bears not just a prophet, but the Lord God Himself: “Why is it granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” No envy there! Hers is the truly Christian response, which sees the world not as our right, but as a gift freely given by God, for which we can only give thanks, with joy.

By entering creation, Christ blesses all things. That mission begins with Mary. From Mary, he comes forth and blesses the animals, the Jewish shepherds and gentile Magi, the waters of the Jordan, the sick and demon-possessed, the poor and outcast, the condemned criminals, the wood of which the Cross is made, even the grave and Hell itself. Nowhere is left untouched by God’s grace. Nothing is empty and meaningless. Every person has meaning and value, right from conception. The whole cosmos has meaning, purpose, beauty, and radiates the same joy that Mary, John, and Elizabeth felt at the Presence of God so close and intimately in their midst.

If the modern view of the world can be characterised as “instrumental,” the authentic Christian view is “sacramental.” A sacrament, we recall from the Catechism, is the outward and visible sign of an inward grace. Mary, who shares uniquely in the body of Christ, in that she alone bequeathed to Him His human flesh, or what we would nowadays call His genetic material, mediates Him in a sacramental fashion. The Word of God, God’s mind from which everything in existence unfolds, the Word by which God spoke Light and all things into being, is hidden now within the Virgin’s womb. Mary contains within her the seed of the entire cosmos. And that seed perfects her, takes the old images and renews them.

So, Mary is the New Eve. The first Eve was made from the rib of Adam, and gave birth to the entire human race. But Mary’s role is higher still: the New Adam, Jesus, comes from her, and with Him, the entirety of Creation.

Mary is a new Noah’s Ark. The first ship carried the remnant of the human race and the animals two by two to safety and dry land on Mount Ararat, giving a new start to creation. Mary goes to Elizabeth’s hilltop temple in Judea bearing inside her the very image of God, the fully human and fully Divine. She will give birth to the Kingdom of God among us, the one who is greater than the sabbath, creation finally perfected.

Mary is the new Ark of the Covenant. Like the old Ark, she is filled with God’s grace and glory. And like those prototypes, she is cleansed and blessed by God’s Presence. Before that Presence, St John dances with joy, as King David danced before the Ark. She stays with Elizabeth and Zechariah for three months, just as the Ark stayed for three months in the home of Obed-edom. The Ark contained the Law and the manna bread, which would give life to the Israelites in body and in spirit; and at Bethlehem, the House of Bread, Mary will give birth to Him who is the embodiment of the Law, and the Bread from Heaven which gives eternal life.

Today, in bread and wine, we receive the same flesh that Mary bore in her womb, and we too are impregnated with the Holy Spirit. We have only to respond as she did, and as John did, and as Elizabeth did: with joyful recognition that He is, truly, the Lord our God, with us now and always. And thereby, we become, like Mary, God-bearers. We too become sacramental mediators of Christ’s Presence, a living Temple, radiating His light into the world around us.

May our souls magnify the Lord with the Blessed Virgin Mary this Christmas and always.