Our Lady Saint Mary

by J. G. H. Barry

Although we are told nothing of these days that S. Mary spent with her cousin Elizabeth, we do gather that she remained with her until her child was born and that she saw S. John in his mother's arms, and was a partaker in the joy of the aged parents. She was present when Zacharias, his speech restored, uttered the Benedictus in thanksgiving for the birth of his son. It was then, having seen her own Son's Forerunner that S. Mary went back to Nazareth filled more than ever with the sense that God's hand was in the events that were taking place, and of the approach of some crisis in her nation's history. It must have been that she talked intimately with Zacharias and Elizabeth and with them tried to imagine what was the future in which these two children were so closely concerned. When we consider the Magnificat and the Benedictus not as the "Gospel Canticles" to be sung in Church but as the utterances of pious Israelites under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, we feel how very vivid must have been their expectation of God's action in the immediate future, and with what intense love and interest they thought of the parts to be taken by their children in the deliverance God was preparing. How often they must have pondered the God-inspired saying: "He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end." "And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the Dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace."

We think too of a more intimate sympathy that there would have been between these two women, drawn now so close together, not only by the blood bond, but by the bond of a common experience. What wonderful hours of communing during these three months! The peace of the hills of Judah is all about them and the peace of God is in their souls. What ecstatic joy, what ineffable love was theirs in these moments as they thought of the children who were God's precious gift to them. I fancy that there were many hours when they ceased to think of the mystery that hung over these children's destiny, and became just mothers lost in love of the coming sons.

As we try to think out their relation to each other it presents itself to us as a relation of sympathy. Sympathy is community of feeling; it is maimed and thwarted when there is feeling only on one side. We speak of our sympathy in their affliction for others whom we do not know and who do not know us, but that is a very imperfect rendering of the perfect thing. No more than love does sympathy reach its perfection in solitude. But here in this village of Judah we know that we have the perfect thing--sympathy in its most exquisite form.

This capacity for sympathy is one of the greatest of human endowments, and, one is glad to think, not like many human endowments, rare in its manifestation. In its ordinary manifestation it is instinctive, is roused by the spectacle of need calling us to its aid. There come to our knowledge from time to time instances of what seem to us very grievous failures in sympathy, but investigation shows that ignorance is very commonly at the bottom of them. When human beings are convinced of a need they are quite ready to respond. Indeed this readiness to respond makes them the easy victims of all sorts of impostures, of baseless appeals which play upon sentiment rather than convince the understanding. And just there lies the weakness of sympathy in that it is so easily turned to sentimentality. But the sentimentalist who gushes over ills, real or imaginary, can commonly be brought to book easily enough. For one thing the sentimentalist is devoted to publicity. He loves to conduct campaigns and drives, to "get up" a demonstration or an entertainment. I do not mean that he is a hypocrite but only that he loves the lime-light. When any tragedy befalls man his impulse is to organise a dance in aid of it. It is extraordinary how many people there are who will aid a charity by dancing to whom one would feel it quite hopeless to appeal for the amount of the dance tickets. And yet they are not wholly selfish people; there does lie back of the dance a certain sympathetic impulse. We easily deceive ourselves about ourselves, and it is well to be sure that we have true sympathy and not just sentiment. It is not so difficult to find out. We can test ourselves quickly enough by examining our giving. Do we give only when we are asked? Do we yield to spectacular appeals or only to those that we have examined and found good? Do we put the spiritual interests of humanity first? Is there any appreciable amount of quiet spontaneous giving which is known to no one? Do we prefer to be anonymous? Such tests soon reveal what we are like. One who never gives spontaneously, without being asked, we may be sure is lacking in sympathy.

But of course one does not mean that sympathy is so closely related to what we call charity as what I have just said, if left by itself, would seem to imply. That is indeed the common form assumed by sympathy which has to be called out. But the best type of sympathy is the expression of our knowledge of one another; it is based on our knowledge of human nature and our interest in human beings. Because it is based on knowledge it is not subject to be swept away by the sweet breezes of sentimentalism. To its perfect exercise it is needful to know individuals not merely to know about them. The ordinary limitations of sympathy come from this, that we do not want to take time and pains to know one another. That, for example, is where the Church falls short in its mission to constitute a real brotherhood among its members--they have no time nor inclination really to know one another, or they find the artificial walls that society has erected impassable. It is, in fact, not very easy to know one another, and it is impossible to develop the complete type of sympathy with a crowd. For one must insist that this highest type of sympathy requires, what the word actually does mean, mutual sharing in life, the participation in the lives of our fellows and their partaking in our lives.

So we understand why perfect sympathy is conditioned on spirituality. Unless we are spiritually developed and spiritually at one we cannot share in one another's lives fully. Where there are lives separated by a gulf of spiritual differences the completest sympathy is impossible. And we understand why Incarnate seems so much nearer to us than God unincarnate. It is true that "the Father Himself loveth you"; it is true that it is the love of the Blessed Trinity that is expressed in the Incarnation. The Incarnation did not create God's love and sympathy, it only reveals it. Yet it is precisely the Incarnation that enables us to lay hold on God's sympathy with a certainty and sureness of grasp that we would not otherwise have. The sight of "God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself" is more to us in the way of proof than any amount of declaration can be. To be told of the sympathy of God is one thing, to see how it works is another.

Our personal need in this matter is to find the sympathy that will help us in something outside ourselves, outside the limitations of human nature. Much as we value human sympathy, precious as we find its expression, yet we do find that it has for the higher purposes of life serious limitations. It has very little power to execute what it finds needs to be done. A man may understand another's weakness and may utterly sympathise with it; he may advise and console, but in the end he finds that he cannot adequately help. The case is hopeless unless he can point the sufferer to some source outside himself on which he can draw, unless he can lead him to the sympathy of God. God can offer not only consolation, not only the spectacle of another life which has triumphed under analogous circumstances, but He can give the power to this present weak and discouraged life to triumph in the place where it is. He can "make a way of escape."

But there is another form of sympathy which we crave and need which is just the communion of soul with soul. We are not asking anything more or other than to show ourselves. We are overwhelmed with the loneliness of life. It comes upon us in the most crowded places, this sense of separation from all about us. Oh, that I might flee away and be at rest, is our feeling. It is here that we specially need our Lord. Blessed are we if we have learned to find in Him the rest we need for our souls, if we have learned to open the door that leads always to Him; or, perhaps to knock appealingly at that door which He will never fail to open. It is then that we find the joy of the invitation "Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest."

But Christ, the perfect Sympathiser, has associated others with Himself. If we can go to him, so can others; the Way is open to all. And those who go and are associated with Him are gathered into a family. Here among those who have followed the interests which are ours, and have pursued the ends that we are pursuing, and cultivated the qualities which we value, we feel sure of that sympathetic understanding of life which we seek. And especially among those members of the Body who have gone on to the end in fidelity to the ideals of the life which is hid with Christ in God shall we look for understanding and help. It is from this point of view that the Communion of Saints will mean so much to us. We value the strength of mutual support which inevitably grows out of associated life. We cannot think of the saints of God as having passed beyond us into some place of rest where they are content to forget the problems of earth: rather we are compelled to think of them as still actively sharing in those interests which are still the interests of their divine Head. Until, Jesus Himself cease to think of us who are still in the Pilgrim Way, and cease to offer Himself on our behalf, we cannot think of any who are in Him as other than intensely interested in us of the earthly Church, or as doing other than helping by prayer for us that we with them may attain our end. And especially shall we feel sure that at any moment of our lives we may turn to the Mother in confident expectancy of finding most helpful sympathy and most ready aid. Her life to-day is a life of intercession, of intercession which has all the power of perfect understanding and perfect sympathy. Let us learn to go to her; let us learn that as God is praised and honoured in His saints, as our Lord choses to work through those who are united to Him, so it is His will that great power of prayer shall be hers of whom He assumed our nature, that nature through which He still distributes the riches of His grace.

As I lay upon a night,
My thought was on a Lady bright
That men callen Mary of might,
Redemptoris Mater.
To her came Gabriel so bright
And said, "Hail, Mary, full of might,
To be called thou art adight;"
Redemptoris Mater.
Right as the sun shineth in glass,
So Jesus in His Mother was,
And thereby wit men that she was
Redemptoris Mater.
Now is born that Babe of bliss,
And Queen of Heaven His Mother is,
And therefore think me that she is
Redemptoris Mater.
After to heaven He took His flight,
And there He sits with His Father of might,
With Him is crowned that Lady bright,
Redemptoris Mater.
English, Fifteenth Century.