On Mother's Day

Mary's Magnificat in May

Dear Friends,

This letter, coming to you on Mother’s Day,¹ comes with a tenderness. It comes, too, in the spirit of wonder and praise. For so many of us, today is a day we remember our mothers who have passed on. For all of us, it is a day in which the exquisite humanness of the mother–child act shines through and echoes in the hearts of both.

Mother’s Day was born out of remembrance. Anna Jarvis, in 1907, in honor of her deceased mother, Ann, called forth a holiday to remember and celebrate our mothers. But we must go back decades if we are to recall the beginning. Mother’s Day was conceived not by children honoring mothers as we do today but by mothers mourning the loss of their sons to the ravages of the American Civil War. Mothers’ Day was their outcry. It was a day born of brokenheartedness. As such, this day bears the mark of the Sacred Heart of infinite Love—a theme we have been spiraling hermeneutically for several months.

We see the image of Mary, mother of Jesus, earthly soul of Sophia, of Wisdom, the maternal principle in all that is, eternal fount of life.

In the Catholic tradition, not just one day, but the entire month of May is devoted to Mary. Statues of Mary are crowned with flower garlands. Their fragrance intoxicating, the garlands image forth a poetics of the flowering forth of life. If Jesus is the resurrection of life,² Mary is life’s fecund outpouring. Mother and child are one act. Mary’s crown of flowers and Jesus’ crown of thorns are the seamless whole of being. Mother and child are united in the infinite unfolding of life.

In a poem I wish to share with you today, nineteenth-century poet and Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, with a certain delighted wonder, dances wordplay with Mary’s Magnificat and the fact that Mary’s month is May .³ The setting of the Magnificat is the feast of the Visitation, that being Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth, both with child. Mary sings a song of praise, the Magnificat, in celebration of the mercy and blessing of the coming birth of her Son: Magnificat anima mea Dominum (My soul magnifies the Lord). In her native Aramaic, Mary would have praised Elaha, God, not Dominus, Latin for Lord. My soul, as the essence that guides the life of me and that which is becoming through me, magnifies God as the Reality giving itself as all that is.

Did she know in those tender moments of spring that in giving birth to life, her life would be laid bare? Would she have held back her love in all hope it would not hurt so much? Does the pregnant bud know in flowering forth its petals not yet bathed in the light of day that the petals it unfolds will fall, that behind them will come fruit plump with seed soon scattered for the bugle blue eggs in the Throstle’s nest next spring? Does the blossom swell so lured into being remember Nature’s motherhood? With an almost ecstatic flair, Hopkins invites us to wonder at the marvel, and in marveling, magnify the ever-unbroken stride.

Happy Mother’s Day to you, dear friends, in celebration and tender remembrance,

Renée

The May Magnificat

May is Mary's month, and I 
Muse at that and wonder why : 
        Her feasts follow reason, 
        Dated due to season –

Candlemas, Lady Day : 
but the Lady Month, May,
       Why fasten that upon her,
       With a feasting in her honour ? 

Is it only its being brighter
Than the most are must delight her ? 
       Is it opportunist
       And flowers finds soonest ? 

Ask of her, the mighty mother : 
Her reply puts this other
       Question: What is Spring? –
       Growth in every thing –

Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,
Grass and green world all together ; 
       Star-eyed strawberry-breasted
       Throstle above her nested

Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin
Forms and warms the life within ; 
       And bird and blossom swell
       In sod or sheath or shell. 

All things rising, all things sizing
Mary sees, sympathizing
       With that world of good
       Nature's motherhood.

Their magnifying of each its kind
With delight calls to mind
       How she did in her stored
       Magnify the Lord.

Well but there was more than this : 
Spring's universal bliss
       Much, had much to say
       To offering Mary May. 

When drop-of-blood and foam-dapple
Bloom lights the orchard-apple
       And thicket and thorp are merry
       With sliver-surfèd cherry

And azuring-over greyball makes
Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes
       And magic cuckoocall
       Caps, clears, and clinches all –

This ecstasy all through mothering earth
Tells Mary her mirth till Christ's birth
       To remember and exultation
       In God who was her salvation. 

~Gerard Manley Hopkins

Forthcoming:

Next Sunday: The Matter of the Heart – Part II

It’s been a few weeks since Part I. If you wish to refresh before next week, please click this link.

The Matter of the Heart – Part I

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Next Gathering: Sunday, May 18, noon–1:30 pm ET, via Zoom.

What began a year ago as an experiment has become an intimate Sanctuary of Silence.

All are Welcome. Space is limited. Please email me to register for the Zoom link: reneeeliphd [AT] gmail [DOT] com.

Notes + References

1. In an email to some of you last week, I shared that this week, we would return to our series, The Matter of the Heart. My mind was mush with the recent passing of my father, and I did not see Mother’s Day on the horizon. So, we will return to that series next week.

***To you who emailed me, I have been so touched by your kind words and loving presence. Thank you. On Friday morning, I learned that many of your emails landed in my junk folder. If you emailed me and did not hear from me, please accept my apologies and feel free to email me directly: reneeeliphd [AT] gmail [DOT] com.

2. Resurrection derives from the Latin, resurgere. See the verb resurge in the noun form in English, resurrection.

3. The Magnificat, also called the Song of Mary or Canticle of Mary, is in the Byzantine Right, the Ode of the Theotokos, (Greek: Ἡ ᾨδὴ τῆς Θεοτόκου). Theotokos is Greek for “Mother of God.”