Blessed Virgin Mary

SERMON BY THE VICAR Sunday, 14th August 2022: The Blessed Virgin Mary

Readings: Galatians 4:4-7, Luke 1:46-55

“Emmanuel is three years old and can no longer walk. The flesh on his legs, which dangle from his mother’s hip as she carries him around, is wasting away. The little boy is suffering from severe malnutrition and is close to starving to death. He weighs just 15lb – half the typical weight for a boy of his age.” The next morning, he was dead. This was in an email last week from a friend working in humanitarian relief in East Africa where, where conditions are rapidly deteriorating, and 7.2 million people are at risk of starvation and another 26.5 million face acute food insecurity. At least 12.8 million children in the region are acutely malnourished. The reason I begin with this is twofold. First, we commemorate the Blessed Virgin Mary who witnessed the death of her own child. I know from my own family’s experience that there is nothing more painful than for a mother to bury a child. It feels like a cruel reversal of the natural. We expect in the course of life to bury our parents, but not the other way round. In this Church, one of the more powerful pieces of religious art is the distraught Virgin Mary at the foot of the cross is Emmeline Halse’s powerful depiction on the reredos. This is a mother’s pain. And it is the Blessed Virgin Mary whom we commemorate today, together with most of the rest of the Christian world. So today, I want to speak about the Virgin Mary today by using a recent book. This is Mary, Grace, and Hope in Christ, published by the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission, or ARCIC. This is a groundbreaking document, and it not only goes beyond many of the old, worn-out stereotypes and positions, but also brings our two Churches significantly closer together. I want to use two insights from that book, Mary pain-bearer, and Mary, mother of consolation and strength.

First, Mary pain-bearer.  Any mother knows that this is one of the things mothers do, from the pain of childbirth to the shared pain of rearing offspring, to use a farming term.  This never goes away.  Anything your child does at whatever age will affect you, for good or ill.    This is part of being connected through the human family and isn’t necessarily restricted to those who are biological mothers.  There are many who take on and experience this mothering role, both men and women, who may not have produced children of their own.  This is part of the destiny and role of the Virgin Mary, willingly accepted.  When the child Jesus was brought to the Temple by his mother, Simeon said to her amongst other things.  “And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”  This is Mary, pain-bearer, and in Christian spirituality it has been especially powerful and helpful.  My own mother chose this reading at the funeral of her own son, my younger brother.  ARCIC recognises this in these words, speaking of Mary the pain-bearer at the foot of the Cross: “Understood in terms of discipleship, Jesus’ dying words give Mary a motherly role in the Church and encourage the community of disciples to embrace her as a spiritual mother.”  This, amongst other reasons, was why the early Church gave Mary the title Theotokos, or God-bearer, because it is ultimately God who shares all human pain by becoming fully human.  Anglicans share this term with the universal Church, and it has been a joy in this Church to have commissioned a twenty-first century icon of Mary the God-bearer pointing to her Son.   This helps many in their worship and can be real source of unity. 

Now Mary, mother of consolation and strength.   Mary sings the Magnificat, her song.  We hear this in the Gospel set for today, and indeed it has a central place in the daily prayer of the Church.  Come to this Church on any day to Evening Prayer and this Gospel canticle, the Song of Mary, is recited every day.  Marian devotion thus takes pride of place in the universal Christian tradition. Why has this song been such a powerful influence on Christian spirituality?  For an answer, we need not go the rich, the powerful, and the self-contained, because it is manifestly not their song.  It is the song of the powerless throughout the ages, which is also a song of strength and of defiance.  Let me quote again from the new document: “In Mary’s response, we can see an attitude of poverty towards God that reflects the divine commitment and preference for the poor.  In her powerlessness, she is exalted by God’s favour…Issues of justice for women and the empowerment of the oppressed have arisen from daily reflection on Mary’s remarkable song.  Inspired by her words, communities of women and men in various cultures have committed themselves to work with the poor and the excluded.”  So, this is not a quietist piety, but an active, powerful, revolutionary one.  It is no surprise that the Church of England, often siding with secular power at the expense of the poor, has not been particularly keen on Mary, mother of consolation and strength.  The Chaplains of the East India Company in India were forbidden from saying the Magnificat, the song of Mary, lest it gave the native Indians the wrong idea.  Remember this was the Church which produced “the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, he made them high and lowly, and ordered their Estate.”  But Mary, mother of consolation and mother of the poor comes to invert all of that in her Kali-like turning of the world upside down. Marty’s song addresses the present political situation in our own country, and in our media.  You will find very little, if anything, about the famine in east Africa.  You will find plenty about what a vote winner it is to cut overseas aid.  In this situation, Mary would ask, is it the political class which turns its face away from famine starvation and death or is it an electorate whose hearts have turned to stone? My answer is that it is the human condition so accurately described in our Christian anthropology, and we, the people of Magnificat, have a direct mandate to challenge official heartlessness by invoking the Song of Mary. This is the second reason I began with the death of Emmanuel from starvation.

So we celebrate the Blessed Virgin Mary today and join our prayer to hers.  As we pray with her, so she prays with and for us.  This a model of mutual listening, and one which all communities should take to heart. We recognise through her that the vulnerable and helpless have a special place in the economy of Grace – one of the most powerful reasons we baptise infants, as we baptise Lola today. I end with words again from ARCIC on Mary’s special place of honour for all Christians: “The Scriptural witness summons all believers in every generation to call Mary “blessed”; …We are to bless her as the “handmaid of the Lord”, as the mother who pondered all things in her heart, as the refugee seeking asylum in a foreign land, as the mother pierced by the innocent suffering of her own child, and as the woman to whom Jesus entrusted his friends.  We are at one with her and the apostles, as they pray for the outpouring of the Spirit on the Church.”

Further Reading:  Mary, Grace & Hope in Christ (Morehouse Publishing) ISBN 0-8912-813