Something about Mary

I was on a silent retreat for three days, on the holy ground of missionaries, the Sisters of Mercy. I sat crisscross at the feet of a Mary statute that stretched 50 inches towards the sky.  I noticed on Mary’s right hand she was missing her thumb and index finger – and the others digits were glued back as best as it could be.  But it’s broken, and pieces are missing – true to us all.  She is standing forcefully on a snake, wrenching an apple out of his mouth. This is my courageous Mary – where evil can’t be fruitful or have any fruit. The Mary that kept many things in her heart like God’s favor, Joseph, angel visit, mother to the most High, immaculate conception, leaving home, stellar birth witnessed by shepherds/kings, anxiety of losing Jesus for 3 days, watching Jesus’ wisdom grow, miracles multiply, believers banded and disciples chosen. It was all harbored in her heart as she lived in full belief and obedience. Her heart knew that Jesus was the Son of God but it didn’t know that he would be tortured, put to death on a cross, and then rise from the dead.

I stare at the casual smile that adorns her face. After all that she’s been through its no wonder she’s unfazed by the reptile that’s under toe. The back of her cover head is now being warmed by a sun that slightly tilted on this first day of fall. It creates a shadow on the pavers and sets a scene in black with just the silhouette of Mary and I.  I beg the scene to come alive and for her to speak to me – mother to mother.

I begin to reflect on her suffering. As she watched her son carry a heavy wooden cross up the hill of Golgotha, did she have the deepest desire to pick up the back of the wooden beam, wipe his sweaty face, clean his wounds with her spit, shout words of defense to all the slander, search for his scattered followers to help overturn his sentence, throw stones at those that drove in each nail or shake a fist to the heavens to ask why a Father would do this to His one and only Son?

Even as the cross bears down all its weight on a heart of a mother, she didn’t give in to its temptations. She didn’t feed the snake the fruit.

Her faith would find her at His footrest of the cross, under a Friday’s dark sky with the only thing that she could provide – her sacred presence.  While Jesus hung under the heavens, stretching his sinless hands out for salvation - I wondered if they prayed.   Did she reassure Him of His righteousness? Did she speak of her love, a Mother’s unyielding love?  How did she comfort him from his excruciating pain and his fleeting feeling of abandonment?

She knew that Jesus’ yes to God was as absolute as her yes to the Angel Gabriel.

Mary kept many things in her heart.  In the brokenness of it, she waited for God to do the impossible.

As I sit at the feet of Mary, I see white feathers blow across her limestone bare feet from the wild turkeys that are pruning the grass for next season. I feel my spirit being prune, my heart pieces being glued together.  I wait.