MARY, THE FIRST MISSIONARY DISCIPLE
THE INTIMATE BOND OF MARY AND JESUS Of the many treatises written on the spiritual life in the Catholic tradition, there is one I visit annually, usually around Advent: The Reed of God, by 20th century English writer and mystic Caryll Houselander. In this work, Houselander examines the Virgin Mary as the model Christian disciple and missionary.
ELISE URENECK is a communications and public relations professional who writes from Boston. She is a regular columnist for Catholic News Service and founder and principal of Credendi Communications. Her previous roles include associate director of the Church in the 21st Century Center at Boston College and the executive director of The GIVEN Institute.
20
A R C HDIOCE SE OF DET ROI T
The general idea is that Mary, in her purity and virginity, is capable of allowing the Word to work in and through her. “It is emptiness like the hollow in the reed,” writes Houselander, “the narrow riftless emptiness, which can have only one destiny; to receive the piper’s breath and to utter the song that is in his heart.” Beautiful as her mediations are, there is one passage that always makes me laugh for its forthrightness about how some Catholics, myself included, can struggle with Marian devotion. “When I was a small child someone for whom I had a great respect told me never to do anything that Our Lady would not do; for, she said, if I did the angels in heaven would blush,” Houselander writes. “But even if I faced a blank future shackled with respectability, it was still impossible to imagine Our Lady doing anything that I would do, for the very simple reason that I simply could not imagine her doing anything at all.” As a cradle Catholic, I remember Mary in the same way, as a figure who was always around in images on our walls, in statues and stained-glass windows in our churches and imprinted on the many rosaries scattered on end tables and nightstands. She was close by, but not completely accessible, almost frozen in a downward, contemplative gaze. Emulating her felt like an impossible task, as did drawing close to her through prayer. It wasn’t until I became a mother that I began to more seriously engage in a relationship with Mary. To be sure, it wasn’t the images of her holding the infant Jesus that did the trick — any mother of young children, especially those of boys, knows that they never sit as serenely in their mother’s arms as Jesus did for Mary.
