In a letter dated September 6, 1955, Flannery O'Connor confessed that
though the truth "does not change according to our ability to stomach
it," there are periods in the lives of us all, even of the saints, "when
the truth as revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing,
[even] downright repulsive."(1)
I take solace in her unapologetic
confession. Here, a writer who viewed her faith not as a substitute
for seeing, but as the light by which she saw. And as I stared recently
at a painting of Mary and the infant Jesus by Giovanni Bellini, I knew
what she meant. I was suddenly but entirely disturbed by the story of
the Incarnation. In my mind the message and mystery of the Incarnation
was still a vast and hopeful notion, the character and complexity of a
Father who sends a Son into the world an unchanging, unfathomable
story. Yet in front of me was suddenly a different side of that story.
I was unexpectedly confronted with questions of the Incarnation I had
never considered. Would we label a father "loving" who gives a teenage
girl a task that devastates her future, destroys her reputation, and in
the end, mortally wounds her with grief? What kind of God asks for
servants like Mary?
Madeleine L'Engle reflects on faith and art
with words O'Connor would have affirmed and those of us with honest
questions embody. She reminds us that in all artful learning "either as
creators or participators, we are helped to remember some of the
glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we
are asked to endure."(2) I had recalled and retold the Christmas story
for years, but I had never remembered it like this. In the light and
shadows of Bellini's interpretation of this biblical scene, I was
startled in the call of Mary to bear the Son of God, the severe cost of
obedience and the complete disruption of a life.
In fact, it is
fairly easy to rush to the theological implications of the texts that
depict the role of Mary in the life of Jesus. We quickly move from
Mary's acceptance of Gabriel's words to the man who preformed miracles
and calmed storms in a way that made him seem motherless. While the
song of Mary recorded in Luke 1:47-55 slows readers down and bids them
to consider the young mother in her own words, it is easy to assume in
the ease of her praise of the Almighty a sense of ease for her situation,
to add to her cries of joy the assumption that she never wept. Mary
sings: "My spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with
favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all
generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great
things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear
him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has
brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away
empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his
descendants forever."
Luke depicts an image of Mary that is hard
to ignore, and Bellini follows his example. With one hand, Mary holds
Jesus securely to her side, while with the other she gently holds his
foot in a way that seems to communicate both her willingness to share
the child with the world and her suspicion that he will spring from her
care to lift the lowly as she herself has been lifted. Mary is seated
poised, stoic, and adult-like, which in some ways seems far from the
childlike Mary we encounter in Luke, and in other ways seems to reflect
the wisdom she was able to express far beyond her years. As one pledged
to be married in first century Nazareth, Mary would have been little
more than a child herself, a child who was perhaps able to respond to
Gabriel the way she did because "she had not lost her child's creative
acceptance of the realities moving on the other side of the everyday
world."(3) Bellini's Mary looks far more weathered, serious, and
austere, as if she is somehow aware of the fate of the child in her arms
and her utter helplessness to save him. In the face of the girl who
was somehow able to see beyond the great risk of being pregnant and
unwed, the weight of her yoke is here apparent in her tired, helpless
expression.
In front of this picture, I could not help but
remain at the level of the servant and the severe cost of discipleship.
Yet the longer I stared, the more grace seemed to permeate my deepest
reservations about the nature of God's calling and the often
unchallenged images of a Father with strange ways of showing love. The
longer I considered the song of Mary in light of all she would endure,
the more I heard in my disturbance the cry of Christ himself: My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me? How often it seems that the
glimpses of God's light which stay with us longest are not the glimpses
that are blinding and certain in their power, but those which are
compelling, mysterious, and steady in their invitation, emerging out of
dark questions and entirely disturbing moments.
In fact, there
are far worse things than being disrupted by the one who calls us to
follow, the once-fragile child who now asks that we put our hands on the
plow and not look back, let the dead bury the dead, take up our own
crosses, and bring with him good news to the poor. It is far worse to
be so at ease that we do not receive the graceful disturbance of a
Father who would offer his only Son, and a Son who would go willingly.
It is far worse to be so familiar with the story that we fail to see the
beautiful One disturbing this world, lifting up the lowly, sending the
rich away empty, and filling the hungry with good things.
Jill
Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias
International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
(1) Flannery O'Connor,
The Habit of Being, ed. Sally Fitzgerald
(New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1988), 100.
(2) Madeleine L'Engle,
Walking on Water:Reflections on Faith
and Art (New York: Bantam, 1982), 30.
(3)
Ibid., 18.