In recent days, I have been interested to read in different publications various reflections on Mary. What has caused this new interest? One reason is the popular new book by Dan Brown, The DaVinci Code. In the book, Brown combines some fact and a good bit of fiction to make a compelling case for the missing feminine in the traditions passed down through the ages. I find myself almost more intrigued by the interest his book has created than I am by the debate about its accuracy. Why is it that the eternal feminine (represented by Mary, Mother of God and also by Mary of Magdala) has caused such intense interest? In these difficult times, where do we find the preciousness of life, the vibrant energy of love, and the life-giving qualities of hope that she represents?

One Sunday during this past Advent, I was at my local parish. A sister, assistant in the parish, had given a reflection on forgiveness and repentance. Shortly after returning to her pew another woman entered the church. Clearly she was a woman who had suffered economically, physically and emotionally during her life. She began to shout out about the abuses she had seen. She cried out about her children and how much they had to suffer, and how helpless she was to provide for them. Her shouting turned into a raving grief. The sister who had given the reflection quietly left her pew and moved next to this woman. The suffering woman began to cry out and scream with her face only an inch or so away from the sister. But the sister just stood there, very composed, taking into herself all the rage and sorrow and suffering of this woman whose circumstances had turned her heart cold. Gradually, a few other women, from some seemingly innate instinct, came and stood next to the sister. Certainly all of us were worried there would be blows soon to follow. But gradually the woman, surrounded by other women, calmed down and left the church. Later she returned, and I was stunned to see her approach communion. The priest gave her communion and all of us prayed from the deepest place in our hearts for forgiveness and repentance (for us, for her, for whatever in society had caused such pain). On her way back from communion she came into my pew. As we prayed side by side, I felt deep within me a need to absorb into my own heart the pain and suffering of this one, lonely woman. I learned that day, what it means to be nonviolent in the face of violence, and finally what it means to be a woman supporting other women in their need of healing.

As I was driving home, I said to myself, “Perhaps that is why there is such a renewed interest in Mary.” That is why there is such a longing for comfort, consolation, and acknowledgement of the grief (and the hope) that each one of us lives with. Mary, the mother of God, the anonymous woman in church, and that sister, all taught me what it means to love another into life…what it means to be nonviolent in these violent times and what it means to take into myself (as Christ did) the sufferings of others.

Black Madonna: Czestochowa Basilica in the Jasna Gora monastery, the Virgin of Czestochowa, lime-wood, painting attributed to St. Luke, restored 1433

I am reminded of a quotation from another popular book called The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (Penguin Books, 2002). Her book too, has as an underlying image of Mary, as the Black Madonna, or as she calls it “the divine Mother.”

Each day I visit black Mary, who looks at me with her wise face, older than old and ugly in a beautiful way. It seems the crevices run deeper into her body each time I see her, that her wooden skin ages before my eyes. I never get tired of looking at her thick arm jutting out, her fist like a bulb about to explode. She is a muscle of love this Mary. I feel her in unexpected moments, her Assumption into heaven happening in places inside me. She will suddenly rise, and when she does, she does not go up, up into the sky, but further and further inside me…she goes into the holes life has gouged out of us.

Mary’s role as life giver to each one of us compels me to reflect even more deeply on Mary’s place in my own life and in our current troubling times. As we celebrate Mary and World Day of Peace on Jan. 1, perhaps we might want to reflect deeply on the gentle, suffering one who brings peace to our hearts and the Prince of Peace to our world.