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The cover of the December 2015 edition of National Geographic features a close up of the face of Mary from Botticelli’s “The Virgin and Child” and the headline reads: “Mary: The Most Powerful Woman in the World.” I had heard about this edition on social media and searched all the stores in Hood River for a copy to no avail. It took traveling to a nearby city during the Thanksgiving holiday to finally obtain a copy…a small pilgrimage if you will. I was immediately captivated by her image. I could have never read the accompanying article and been fulfilled just by seeing her on the cover of a popular magazine at the end of two semesters of work exclusively studying her. In some way it felt like a cosmic affirmation that I am on “the right track” with my studies—that she is and was and will be important in the lives of women and men the world over, regardless of their religious affiliation. It also felt like a moment of synchronicity between myself, the blessed Mother, and the world; that she is calling to us through art, media, apparitions, locutions, scripture, signs and wonders to pay attention to each other and to her. As I often tell friends who are making this journey with me, she just keeps showing up.
Seeing Mary is a process. Every time I think I’ve seen all the art, read all the books, and heard all the stories, I realize that there’s still more. She is not done with me. She continually invites me to look, explore and listen. This small and humble reflection of texts from the semester is yet another step in the process. From sacred sites, an art exhibit and an elderly nun’s journey, from the whisperings and appearances to children in France and crying statues in Lake Ridge, Virginia, to a complex family story in Phoenix, Arizona, Mary empowers, challenges, liberates and comforts us along our journey to see her.
The Abrahamic faith traditions (Judaism, Islam and Christianity) have been engaging in pilgrimage practices as part of their spiritual disciples for centuries. According to the Gospel of Luke (2:41-52), when Jesus was about 12 years old, he and his parents made pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Festival of Passover. The historical account of Egeria set in the early 380s is a record of her pilgrimage to the Holy Land; it contains not only an account of her travels to various sacred sites, but also a detailed account of the liturgical practices and observances of Church in Jerusalem. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is the story of pilgrims on the way to Canterbury Cathedral to visit the shrine of the martyred Archbishop Thomas a Becket. According to the website On Pilgrimage, “a pilgrimage is a journey inward as well as outward. Pilgrims seek to strengthen and renew their faith through travel….Pilgrims travel with a clear intention, to draw closer to God.”
The story of the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham (OLW) begins with a widow—Richeldis de Faverches. While J.C. Dickinson reports little about who this woman was or the origins of the shrine itself, according to the shrine’s official website, she was “a Saxon noblewoman… [with] a deep faith in God and devotion to Mary… [she had a] reputation for good works in care and generosity towards those around her.” Furthermore, it is reported that in 1061, Richeldis had a vision of Mary leading her to her house in Nazareth where the biblical story of the Annunciation is said to have taken place. In this vision, Mary also asked Richeldis to build this house in Walsingham. According to legend, this vision occurred three times. The account of this vision was retold in the Pynson ballad, to which Dickinson often makes reference.
While Dickinson never mentions the visions that Richeldis had of Mary, he does posit that the shrine was never intended to be a pilgrimage site; that it was meant to be a place of private devotion for Richeldis. However he believes it developed as a pilgrimage site for three reasons: 1) attraction to the Holy House, 2) attraction to the wells near the original chapel, and 3) devotion to the statue of Our Lady. In the text, Dickinson reports that there was a growing interest in pilgrimage to the Holy Land thanks to the sermons of Saint Bernard. Whether St. Bernard’s sermons are the reason for these pilgrimages, we know from other journal accounts and reports (i.e., Egeria) that prior to the Crusades pilgrimage to the Holy Land was popular.
The wells of the shrine have been historically connected to healing miracles. Dickinson references the report of Thomas Gatele, a fifteenth-century sub prior of Walsingham, who “as a boy fell into ‘the well of Blessed Mary’ and, after being taken out as dead, was restored to life by a miracle of Our Lady.” He also notes that according to the Roman Catholic priest, Erasmus, the wells were “sacred to the Holy Virgin. The water is wonderfully cold, and efficacious in curing pains of the head and stomach… [and that] the spring burst suddenly from the earth at the command of the most Holy Virgin”. While the Pynson ballad also notes that healing was connected to the shrine, Dickinson argues that it does not explicitly say that this healing was connected to the wells.
Devotion to the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham was also an important part of the rise in pilgrim visits to the shrine, making it the most important of its kind in medieval England. Dickinson reports that “Almost every church at this time had such a statue…but it is difficult to get any very clear idea as to how it attained this ascendancy.” While records do not indicate the number of people who visited the shrine, they do report the royal patronage of the shrine. As Dickinson notes, “Walsingham’s rise to national fame was due more to Henry III than to anyone else.” Through the historical records, it is indicated that Henry III not only visited the shrine about a dozen times, but gave very generous financial gifts as well, including “20 marks to make a golden crown and place it on the image of St. Mary of Walsingham.” His son, Edward I, reported not only a miracle at Walsingham, but is recorded to have visited at least twelve times as well. By the late 14th century, the shrine at Walsingham was of national importance. With the receiving of financial gifts and other treasures, the canons constructed the Slipper Chapel, where it is reported that pilgrims would take off their shoes and continue the journey barefoot.
While Henry VIII began his reign devoted to the shrine; Dickinson suggests that this devotion was “intimately bound up with his passionate desire for a son and heir.” However, with the Reformation, the development of the Church of England (Henry VIII becoming head of both church and state), and the suppression of monasteries in England, Dickinson notes that in July of 1538, the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, along with the treasures that had been gifted to the priory, had been removed from the chapel and sent to London. By the end of the month, her image, along with Our Lady of Ipswich and other famous statues of her, had been burned. After the burning of the statue at Walsingham, a new statue was created and installed in 1922, and renovations and improvements continue at the site—even with online opportunities to assist in the care and continuity of the shrine.
The events of December 1531 are known in the Roman Catholic community as the “Guadalupan Event”. According to the reports of Juan Diego, which have been passed down through family and friends, and then the Church, Mary appeared to him asking for a temple to be built at Tepeyac. After repeated visits to Bishop Zumarraga trying to convince him of this vision and request, Juan Diego returned to the hilltop to request a sign from Mary to take back to the bishop. Having been instructed to gather flowers in his tilma, Juan Diego returned to Mary and she instructed him:
…these various flowers are the proof, the sign which you will take to the Bishop. On my behalf you will tell him to see in them my desire, so that he will fulfill my wish, my will…so that then he will do his part to build my temple.
When Juan Diego opened his tilma, the flowers fell on the floor and the image of Mary was all that was there. This is the story that has been passed down through the generations since the 16th century that almost everyone who knows of Our Lady of Guadalupe has heard. However, there is much more to this story.
In his book, Our Lady of Guadalupe and Saint Juan Diego, Eduardo Chavez provides a context for which to situate this story of the “Guadalupan Event”. The Franciscan priests who first arrived as missionaries in Mexico in 1524 had great difficulty in Christianizing the Indigenous peoples. After much agonizing on how to convert these peoples, on January 1, 1525, several of the friars took it upon themselves to destroy the temples and idols of the native peoples in Texoco. As Chavez explains, “…if the Indigenous continued the adoration of false gods, their efforts to evangelize would be in vain.” At the same time that these events were occurring, some of the Spanish explorers were enslaving the Indigenous peoples, believing that they were less than human and objects to be used in their own fortune making. It is in these conditions that we find Bishop Zumarraga located. In August 1529, he wrote to King and Emperor Carlos V explaining the devastation that the Indigenous faced at the hands of the Spanish, asking for help and also offering prayers for divine intervention. It is also during this time that Juan Diego converts to the Catholic faith.
Was the apparition of Mary to Juan Diego the answer to Bishop Zumarraga’s prayers? Was the “Guadalupan Event” a combining of earlier Indigenous religious practices and Catholicism to make it easier to convert the native peoples? While Franciscan Friars Antonio de Huete believed that it was dangerous for the Indigenous peoples to venerate the image because they would adore her as an idol, from Chavez’s perspective:
The Guadalupan Event was the response from God to a humanly impossible situation: the relationship between the world of the Indigenous and that of the newly arrived Spaniards. The Christian Indigenous, Juan Diego, was the link between the non-Christian, old Mexican world and the Christian missionary proposition which arrived through the Hispanic mediation. The result was the enlightenment of a new Christianized people. Juan Diego was neither a Spaniard arriving with Cortes, nor a Spanish Franciscan missionary; he was a native belonging to that old world rich in culture.
Perhaps her appearance to Juan Diego is a miracle in and of itself. However, what seems to draw the attention of pilgrims and scholars to the sacred site—the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe—is her image on Juan Diego’s tilma. The tilma itself is made of a vegetal material known as agave, and it was both an article of clothing and a means for carrying materials.According to records, the image was exposed to environmental changes in temperature and humidity for 116 years before being placed behind glass; it’s self-preservation in these conditions is miraculous.Examination of the tilma began in 1666, with the results indicating, “It is humanly impossible that any artist could paint and work something so beautiful, clean, and well-formed on a fabric which is as rough as is the tilma.” Similar conclusions were made after an examination in 1787. Even after a bomb went off in the basilica in 1921, the tilma remained undamaged.
After the appearance of the Virgin to Juan Diego and the building of her Hermitage at Tepeyac, Juan Diego moved to a little house near the Hermitage in order that he could devote his life to the Sanctuary. According to testimonies found in Informaciones Juridicas de 1666, people from the village would work on the construction of the temple, the women would sweep and perfume it, and the people would offer prayers to Mary so that they would have good seasons. Miles Philips reported in his travel diary that when travelling through Mexico, people would not only stop at the church to pray before the image to keep them from evil, but also that there were two cold water baths which were “very good for those who have wounds or sores, because it is said many have been healed.”
Devotion to the image of Our Lady continued to grow with the ongoing conversions of Indigenous peoples to Christianity. In 1599 a pilgrimage was organized by Jesuits in order to offer up prayers for rain during a severe drought. With the influx of pilgrims into Tepeyac, and the financial support of these pilgrims, Philip III, the King of Spain, and others devoted to Our Lady, in 1609 the first stone was placed for a new Church of the Sanctuary of Guadalupe. By 1616, ordinations and other great liturgical celebrations were occurring at the Sanctuary, thus promoting the continuation of pilgrimages and increased offerings. By the beginning of the 20th century, Our Lady of Guadalupe was named the Patroness of America by Pope Pius X, and by 1999, Pope John Paul II had declared her the Queen of all America.
While these two sacred sites are different, they both originated with a vision of Mary. According to Catherine M. Odell, Mary appears to people as a way of connecting the world’s needs with Mary’s heart. Throughout her text, Those Who Saw Her: Apparitions of Mary¸ Odell connects the apparitions of Mary to moments in history in three ways: 1) when people or communities needed to be strengthened or revitalized in their faith, 2) to provide a warning of future events/to serve a prophetic function, or 3) to offer comfort. Odell also points to the work of French theologian and authority on Marian apparitions, Father René Laurentin, who posited that there are five intentions of apparitions:
In my own experience of leading worship, I have found that often Episcopalians regard those who have extraordinary experiences as “witnesses of the faith” but then tread lightly around the actual experience. Like the unofficial motto of the Episcopal church--“all may, none must, some should”--Odell highlights the “Lambertini guidelines” developed in the eighteenth century by Propsero Lambertini (who later became Pope Benedict XIV) which explains the relationship between the church and approved apparitions: “believers could certainly and legitimately refuse to believe in apparitions ‘provided this is done with suitable modesty, for good reasons and without contempt’.” This guideline allows for those of the faith to choose whether or not to believe in Marian apparitions and other supernatural events that have been approved by the Roman church.
In considering the various cases reported in Catherine Odell’s Those Who Saw Her, there are a few observations I have made. In Odell’s work, there seems to be a theme of those on the margins (the poor, the uneducated, children) being the ones to whom Mary appears. While this is not always the case, the events surrounding the apparitions at sites such as Guadalupe, La Salette, Lourdes, Fatima, Beauraing, and Mejugorje for example, all seem to share this foundational element of Our Lady appearing to the most unsuspecting and vulnerable members of a community which is also experiencing some kind of distress—be it political, economic, or general well-being (i.e., famine). In the case of Mejugorje, Mary appeared for several years to teenagers in a communist country as the Queen of Peace and spoke words of “faith, peace, prayer, fasting, [and] reconciliation.”
However, Mary is also reported to appear to adults and others deeply devoted to the Christian faith. In these accounts, Mary again is the Mother of all, but also sends a powerful message of reconciliation. In the case of Laus, Mary appeared to the deeply devout Benoîte, who later became a nun. In this instance, Mary asked Benoîte to have a chapel built in her honor and to help bring reconciliation and repentance of sin into the world. Similarly, in Paris, Catherine was committed not only to the church, but to Mary in bringing about healing and protection to those who wore Mary’s “miraculous medal.” In Akita, Japan, Sister Agnes Sasagawa experienced not only the stigmata (corresponding wounds in his wrists, feet and side to those of Jesus at the Crucifixion), but also was the recipient of messages from Mary to call the church back to “prayer, penance, honest poverty, and courageous acts of sacrifice” in order to appease God who had been angered by the sins of the unrepentant. While all of these accounts have been investigated and approved by the church as “worthy of belief,” there are the events that took place at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (SEAS) Catholic Church in Lake Ridge, Virginia in the 1990s that have yet to be approved by the Roman Catholic Church.
The story of SEAS Catholic Church and the Associate Pastor, Fr. James Bruse began on Thanksgiving Day, 1991 with a weeping statue at his parents’ house. Over the course of almost a year (the last reported weeping was July 1992), Marian statues at SEAS and statues that Fr. Bruse had blessed wept tears regularly. During this time and continuing on until the summer of 1993, there were also reports of rosaries that Fr. Bruse had blessed changing colors, of healings, the smell of roses when none were present and the “miracle of the sun”—“the ability to gaze directly into the daytime sun and see it spinning, often throwing off a multitude of colors, perhaps pulsating, and not uncommonly accompanied by other patterns or silhouettes.” Also during this time, Fr. Bruse reported experiencing the miracle of stigmata.
What is curious about the events at SEAS is the fact that the Catholic Church has never seriously investigated the claims of Fr. Bruse or the eye-witnesses. While the events got media attention beginning on March 6, 1992 and Frs. Hamilton and Bruse conducted a press conference on March 12 of that year, the Diocese of Arlington’s then Bishop Keating issued a statement on March 5, 1992 that the diocese would not be investigating the reported events because there was “no determined message attached to the physical phenomena, and thus there is no ecclesial declaration to be made at this time.” However, the legacy of these events has not completely faded. According to an article dated April 6, 2012 by Michelle Boorstein, there is a petition circulating asking for the diocese to formally investigate the supernatural events that occurred at SEAS. Boorstein also notes that in 2010, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, called the skepticism surrounding and rejection of the Seton Miracles “irrational” and that as of the writing of the article, the Diocese of Arlington had no intention of opening an investigation into the matter. A quick Google search of “Seton Miracles” also leads an inquiring mind to Care2Petitions’ grassroots petition to the Diocese of Arlington to open an investigation into the events, citing former Pope John Paul II’s statement, “weeping by statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary is clear: ‘She is a mother crying when she sees her children threatened by a spiritual or physical evil.’”
To continue to visit these sacred sites and tell these stories speaks not just of the events—those moments when the Holy broke into linear time and space to make a connection with humanity—but these stories are about real people. Whether the story is about a nun in Japan, a child in France, a Native man in Mexico, or a priest in Virginia, these people had an extraordinary engagement that changed their lives. The individuals often report a deepening in their faith, as well as a sense of peacefulness and love. As Fr. Bruse reflected on his own experience, six years after the events at SEAS, “My own faith was a little shaky at the time…I know I will never have any doubts again.” As I read through the accounts, I was deeply moved when Mary appeared and asked for people to pray and to work together for peace and reconciliation.
Peace and reconciliation are the foundation to liberation and social justice work. Ivone Gebara, a Latin American theologian explains, that the contribution of liberation theology to theological debate was the “attention on the plight of the poor as a fundamental theological issue, and its encouragement of a spirituality centered on the struggle for liberation from the various oppressions, especially from so-call social sin.”
In the almost ten year ethnographic study of the Ruiz family by Kristy Nabhan-Warren, the Mary of liberation and social justice is revealed as the Virgin of the Americas. Beginning on December 3, 1988, Estela Ruiz began to have a relationship with the Virgin of the Americas that led her and her family not only to a place of healing and reconciliation, but ultimately to the forming of Mary’s Ministries evangelism group and the ESPIRITU Community Development Corporation. According to Nabhan-Warren, what is unique about the Ruiz family (unlike other visionaries) is that they were inspired to act because of the messages from Mary by creating grassroots initiatives in their community to respond to “neighborhood violence, high school dropout rates, and crime.” For Estela, the Virgin of the Americas is not the passive, disempowering figure that has passed along through church dogma; instead, Estela is encouraged by Mary to be a “wife, mother, educator, public visionary, and evangelizer.” Furthermore, for Estela and the other women of the community, Mary is a “counselor, mother, spiritual role model, and example of Catholic womanhood.”
While some of Estela’s story resonates with me, I find Sally Cunneen’s assessment of re-visioning Mary as a liberator more in line with my own spirituality and vocation. In the chapter “The Liberation of Mary,” Cunneen interviews Protestant and Catholic women about their experiences with Mary in scripture, art and music and who are seeking to redefine the “false associations” of Mary from the Catholic tradition. What Cunneen discovers is that for some women Mary’s assent to God’s messenger “meant accepting a mysterious new life, enduring great suffering and humiliation, and taking a public role as witness for a cause the authorities considered unlawful,” and that furthermore, Mary is understood as “open, adventurous, willing to risk and tolerate uncertainty, able to weather great suffering graciously…[and that for women, she serves as a reminder that] we are all life-bearers.”
Cunneen concludes that Mary’s “yes” was also a call to action for others. Perhaps this is part of my own vocational calling, as well as the calling of Estela, the Ruiz family and the people of Mary’s Ministries. Our own “yes” to lives devoted to God is also a response to the Magnificat’s call to liberation. As life-bearers with Mary as the icon of liberation and social justice, women (and men) are called to a new experience of the Divine through relationship based service. Unlike the powerful on their thrones who oppress the lowly, Mary points the way to a different kind of power and strength:
She doesn’t seem comfortable trying to control events or push people around; her strength consists in accepting reality and responding to it thoughtfully and compassionately. Her power is based on relationship to nature and to others…. A strong woman whose example helps us break through any identity that defines us only as separate individuals, who helps us see that we are related to one another.
In his book Mary and Human Liberation, Fr. Tissa Balasuriya also argues that Marian devotion rests in liberation theology. By situating her in a time of Roman occupation, corrupt religious and political institutions, and the anxiety of rebellion, Balasuriya believes that modern “Marian devotion…can motivate us towards new ministries required for our times: commitment to justice, inter-faith dialogue, action for peace, the liberation of women, caring for nature.” For Balasuriya, Mary is more than the timid young peasant woman who said yes to God’s messenger, she is a mature woman who is aware of the conditions in which she lived; “a woman of real life, involved in the day-to-day struggles of ordinary people at individual and community levels.”
Through this lens, Mary’s song in her cousin Elizabeth’s house takes on new meaning; God is doing something new in the world through the birth of her son that will bring down the rich and powerful and raise up the poor and marginalized. For Balasuriya, the Magnificat speaks to three revolutions—political, cultural and economic. No longer is Mary the “comforter of the disturbed, rather… [she is the] disturber of the comfortable.” In Mary’s song, the proud and powerful are rejected, there is a shift in power, and the hungry and poor are filled. Like Balasuriya, I believe that the ministry of Jesus—his attention to the poor, the widowed and orphaned, his open table fellowship, his healings and miracles—was shaped by this moment of praise from his mother to God.
Looking towards liberation for all of the world’s children, Balasuriya suggests that Mary is not just the mother of Jesus, but “a universal mother of all humanity…concerned most with those who suffer so much physically and psychologically.” He suggests that a new understanding of Marian devotion and theology focused on human redemption through liberation could revision her shrines as places of reflection and dialogue for understanding “the causes of the growing gap between the affluent and the poor, and to take steps to remedy the situation.” He goes further to say that liberation theology grounded in the Magnificat “must involve an approach which declares that the goods of the earth are for everyone…[and] bring about changes in the political and economic order that would see to it ‘that there is no one in need’.” He concludes that it is through the Magnificat that we learn that Mary is “not neutral in relation to social injustice and discrimination….She is co-redemptrix of humanity in intimately sharing with Jesus in his life mission and message and in the life of the early Church.”
Classical Marian icons situate Mary at three points in the life and ministry of Jesus—his birth (including the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Adoration and Flight into Egypt), the wedding at Cana, and the crucifixion. At his birth, Mary is often portrayed as thoughtful, reflective, and passive; there is no sense of the messiness and pain of the birth process. For Balasuriya, these moments speak to the relationship that was shared between Mary and Jesus. Balasuriya understands the Mary of the birth narratives as one who was physically strong, but rejected by others. Like the women of her time, the birthing process would have been perilous and life-threatening for Mary.
While “Mother and Child” images are not always placed within the nativity/birth events, they are one of the most often depicted images in Western art. In her book, Encounters with God, Sister Wendy Beckett recounts her experience of pilgrimage that took her from London to Rome to the Ukraine and then to Egypt with the purpose of seeing the eight remaining Byzantine Marian icons.
Sister Wendy begins her travelogue with the Icon of Virgin and Child which is dated to be from the sixth or seventh century. While its origins are assumed to be Egypt, the icon was discovered in a French auction house in 2003 and now resides in the Temple Gallery in London. Sister Wendy’s description of the icon is that Mary is “aware of our presence…but all that matters to her is that we should regard the little Jesus.” She goes further to say that the mandorla emphasizes Mary’s significance—“in her, God, the Word, became flesh." While I certainly do not dispute the theology of the Incarnation implied in this icon, I also acknowledge that Sister Wendy is a product of her culture; she is of the Roman church, which historically and theologically has considered Mary’s primary role to be that of the vessel for the Incarnation.
Sister Wendy continues her travels in Rome to Santa Maria in Trastevere to see the Madonna of Clemency adorned as the Queen of Heaven, to the Pantheon to see the Icon of Santa Maria ad Martyres, then to Santa Francesca Romana to see the Icon of Santa Maria Nova, possibly the oldest surviving Marian icon in existence. What is unique about this icon is that the original Christ child is barely recognizable after years of being painted over, yet his hand is raised “to bless not us, the onlookers, or the world beyond, but to bless His Mother.” While even Sister Wendy admits to being more drawn to Mary than the Child in this particular icon, she attributes that feeling of relationship to a sense of “tranquil joy that is unique and comes solely from her [Mary’s] closeness to her God” that perhaps resonates with her own experience as nun.
The Virgin of Kiev written sometime in the sixth or seventh centuries is the only one of the Byzantine Madonnas that is currently housed in a museum. Sister Wendy notes that unlike the other Mary’s, this Mary is fierce; that her eyes are “fixed with frightening force upon what would seem a danger that Mary alone can see,” and that “Mary is His [the Christ child] protector, protecting Him against His infinite capacity to love, His guileless readiness to trust, His sweetness, His goodness.” Further emphasizing this sense of fierce protectiveness, Sister Wendy concludes that “Mary is urgent with the need not to protect us, but to protect Jesus from us, to show us our own inner destructiveness.” What is Sister Wendy had not interpreted the icon in this way, but as a mother devoted to protecting and liberating all of humanity from itself?
The final leg of Sister Wendy’s travelogue is to the Sinai desert—to the Monastery of St. Catherine. Here a majority of the pre-iconoclastic icons are held in trust by the community of monks who have lived within the walls of the monastery since the third century. Along with other amazing icons and works of religious art housed in the monastery, Sister Wendy encountered the last of the Marian icons—Icon of the Enthroned Virgin. Here Mary is pictured as an empress, and she holds the Christ child on display for the viewer. Surrounded by martyred saints and angels, the hand of God reaches down from the Heavens. Sister Wendy interprets this icon to teach the viewer that Mary and Jesus belong to both the spiritual realm and the ordinary realm; “Mary and Jesus are of time-in-eternity.”
Given all of Sister Wendy’s travels to see the Marian icons, I believe the most fascinating one to be the Madonna of San Sisto. While the legendary stories of supernatural travel of the icon are interesting in and of themselves, what I find so intriguing (as did Sister Wendy) is that Mary is alone. Of the eight remaining pre-ninth century Byzantine Madonnas, this is the only one that does not include the Christ child. Here Mary’s hands are raised in the orans position and there is a sense of inner strength and peace in her eyes. Sister Wendy attributes this peacefulness to being united in “her humanity to the holiness of the Godhead.”
Between the time of the two iconoclast periods of the eighth and sixteenth centuries, there was a shift in the world of religious art. No longer were images created by only those within religious professions, but there was an increase in the number of works created by lay persons. Along with this was the rise of monastic communities, which also aided in the increased production of devotional images to “enhance liturgy and aid the spiritual growth.” As more monasteries were built within towns and communities with the purpose of ministering to local peoples, these pieces of religious art helped to provide focus for “prayers and encouraged a personal identification with God that helped one achieve a higher state…viewers would strive to imagine and internalize Christ’s sufferings and Mary’s sorrows.” There was also an increase in the production of smaller artworks/icons intended for personal use in the home, as well as illustrated Bibles featuring pictures of Bible stories, and illuminated Books of Hours (collections of prayers, psalms, readings) which were created with the intention of assisting individuals with “instruction, veneration, and remembrance.” However, with the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, and the push of Roman Catholic clergy to end private piety and return to formalized liturgy, these types of artwork came to an end.
In her work as curator for the “Divine Mirrors” exhibit at the Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Melissa Katz through text Divine Mirrors: The Virgin Mary in the Visual Arts, follows the trajectory of how Mary is portrayed as the “Ideal Woman” in religious art. In pieces depicting the visitation between Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, Mary’s youth and purity are key elements in the construction of the “Ideal Woman”. In many of these pieces, not only is Mary identifiable from Elizabeth by her youthfulness, but she is portrayed with her hair loose; she is simultaneously an adult and a child. While the issue of hairstyles may seem inconsequential to viewers in 2015, at the time of the production of such pieces, this loose hair was also a theological statement; Mary’s un-bonneted hair “was an indication of her perpetual virginity, which they [the artist and original viewers] believed persisted throughout her married life and exempted her…from the social conventions [of marriage].”Not only was Mary’s hairstyle a reflection of theological beliefs, so was the artistic renderings of her facial expressions. Mary is often depicted with closed lips and a downward glance as a way of subduing her sexuality, but also to highlight her submissive and quiet demeanor. This may be part of what Sister Wendy found so compelling about the Virgin of Kiev—Mary’s presentation is one of fierce protectiveness, not submissive quietness.
Another piece from Katz’s essay on the idealization of womanhood through Marian images was the discussion of the “Holy Family”. The church was challenged by incorporating Mary’s perpetual virginity with the concept of the nuclear family of mother, father, and children. While it wrestled with teachings around Joseph’s life prior to his marriage to Mary, and the teaching of the kinship of Christ, the church ultimately resolved to make marriage a sacrament, thus allowing it to be a “viable path to holiness.” In response to the sanctification of marriage, Mary was domesticated in artistic representations; “The regal, dignified, yet distant Madonnas…evolved into tender, nurturing figures.” Now the ideal woman was not only young, pure, submissive and quiet, but Mary also served as a model for women who were fulfilling their duties of motherhood.
In the wedding of Cana icons, Mary is often standing/sitting near Jesus, but is located on the perimeter of the wedding celebration and the miracle that takes place. Fr. Tissa Balasuriya suggests that Mary, like other women who followed Jesus, supported his ministry, however “perhaps more than anyone else, she understood the meaning of the life and message of Jesus…that for him his mission was of paramount importance.” The wedding at Cana isn’t just a miracle story; it is also a “teachable moment” between Mary and Jesus. Mary’s awareness that there is no more wine and her instruction to Jesus to remedy the situation teaches him (and us) to be sensitive to others; “to resolve the great inequalities in the world. It is the way of unselfishness and sharing.”
In contrast to the idealization of youthful womanhood, Mary’s range of sorrow depicted in art is also a fascinating study. Crucifixion depictions show Mary in various stages of grief ranging from swooning, collapsing and protesting, to noble suffering. According to Katz, these images of the suffering Mary, “helped viewers achieve the heightened emotional state thought to bring one closer to God in prayer.” Throughout Spain, Italy and England, the rise in the cult of the Sorrowful Mother coincided with times of plague and famine, and according to Katz, because of a sense of identification with Mary’s maternal anguish, “lamentation images were often commissioned by women and for women.” At the foot of the cross, Balasuriya positions Mary not only as powerless and suffering, but also self-sacrificing. Through Jesus’ sacrifice for the liberation of others, Mary is left alone in a hostile world. In his critique of traditional Marian theology, Balasuriya believes that the idea that Mary was more a heavenly being than an ordinary woman separates Mary from the liberation of “millions of contemporary mothers and children” who are faced with very challenging and oppressing life circumstances.
What is the legacy of Marian art today? Does the “Ideal Woman” or “Sorrowful Mother” resonate with women in 2015, or have these renderings lost their power? Can her image be reinterpreted through the lens of liberation theology and have new meaning for women? And what of the Protestant women who did not (and do not) have access to these private or church-based devotions due to the Reformation?
When I started my personal journey with Mary many years ago, it began as a result of encountering an image and saying the Angelus. Since then, my curiosity and devotion to Mary has grown. I feel like while I have a fair understanding of scholarly and theological knowledge of the topic of Marian devotion and art, I still have many unanswered questions. In my notes for this paper, I found myself coming full circle—why do people make pilgrimage to see these sacred sites and works of art; what meaning do these images hold for contemporary viewers? How else can Mary be seen and heard in the world for those of us who aren’t gifted with apparitions and locutions? In my limited experience of pilgrimage this summer, I traveled to both New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and Washington DC’s National Art Gallery for the purpose of spending time with specific pieces of Marian art. I felt compelled to go—both because I felt like she was calling me, and because it felt like the next appropriate step in my study. Would my academic work be different without that trip to see her image in various depictions? I don’t know. Is there a way to study Mary without being in relationship with her? Can one only study the theology, or the church history, or the art, or the apparitions, and still get a complete picture of who Mary is and what she means?
Final thoughts…
Just when I thought I had seen it all, another popular magazine appeared in the grocery store featuring Mary on the cover. Inside the pages were not only the stories and art of the Annunciation, the Wedding at Cana and the Crucifixion, and The Virgin of Vladimir, but the story of the events Lourdes, Guadalupe, Fatima, the creation of the Miraculous Medal, and even a mention of Fr. Bruse in Virginia. Now as I sit here reflecting on Mary appearing near springs of water, on hill tops, and little villages while wearing my own miraculous medal and surrounded by her image, I feel connected to all those who have seen her, who have prayed to her for intercession, and who have heard her voice reassuring them of her love. Balasuriya believes that Mary must be liberated from traditional theology and art, and that through this liberation:
…we are called to understand her as a loving mother and sister of all, a woman
among women, a human being among us, one who faced the difficulties of life…In understanding her in this way, we can…encourage her devotees to be better disciples of Jesus and better human beings.
Bibliography
Balasuriya, Fr. Tissa. Mary and Human Liberation: the story and the text. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International. 1997.
Beckett, Sister Wendy. Encounters with God: In Quest of the Ancient Icons of Mary. New York: Orbis Books, 2009.
Boorstein, Michelle. “’The Seton Miracles’: Pr. William church weeping statue reports continue to spark interest—but no official inquiry.” Faithstreet, April 6, 2012. Accessed October 27, 2015.
http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/2012/04/06/the-seton-miracles-pr-william church- weeping-statue-reports-continue-to-spark-interest-but-no-official-inquiry/11004.
Care2Petitions. “Diocese of Arlington—Please investigate the Seton Miracles.” Accessed October 27, 2015.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/931/951/273/diocese-of-arlington-investigate-the-seton- miracles/.
Carney, James L. The Seton Miracles: Weeping Statues and Other Wonders. Woodbridge, Virginia: Mystical Rose Press, 1998.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Translated by Nevill Coghill. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003.
Chavez, Eduardo. Our Lady of Guadalupe and Saint Juan Diego: The Historical Evidence. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006.
Cunneeen, Sally. In Search of Mary: the Woman and the Symbol. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996.
Dickinson, J.C. The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. Cambridge: University Press, 1956.
Gebara, Ivone. Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999.
Katz, Melissa R. “Regarding Mary.” In Divine Mirrors: The Virgin Mary in the Visual Arts, edited by Melissa R. Katz, 19-110. Oxford: University Press, 2001.
Odell, Catherine M. Those Who Saw Her: Apparitions of Mary. Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 2010.
On Pilgrimage: Transformative Journeys to Sacred Centers. “What is a Pilgrimage.” Accessed September 16, 2015. http://www.onpilgrimage.com/id2.html.
Orth, Maureen. “The Virgin Mary: The World’s Most Powerful Woman.” National Geographic, December 2015.
“Miracles of Faith: Inspiring Stories from the Bible, History, and the Lives of Saints.” Time Life, December 2015.
Nabhan-Warren, Kristy. The Virgin of El Barrio: Marian Apparitions, Catholic Evangelizing, and Mexican American Activism. New York: New York University Press, 2005.
The Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. “The Shrine: The Story so Far.” Accessed September 16, 2015. http://walsinghamanglican.org.uk/the_shrine/the_story_so_far.htm.
___________. “What’s New.” Accessed September 16, 2015. http://walsinghamanglican.org.uk/welcome/what's_new.htm#top.
Wilkinson, John. Egeria’s Travels. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1999.
The cover of the December 2015 edition of National Geographic features a close up of the face of Mary from Botticelli’s “The Virgin and Child” and the headline reads: “Mary: The Most Powerful Woman in the World.” I had heard about this edition on social media and searched all the stores in Hood River for a copy to no avail. It took traveling to a nearby city during the Thanksgiving holiday to finally obtain a copy…a small pilgrimage if you will. I was immediately captivated by her image. I could have never read the accompanying article and been fulfilled just by seeing her on the cover of a popular magazine at the end of two semesters of work exclusively studying her. In some way it felt like a cosmic affirmation that I am on “the right track” with my studies—that she is and was and will be important in the lives of women and men the world over, regardless of their religious affiliation. It also felt like a moment of synchronicity between myself, the blessed Mother, and the world; that she is calling to us through art, media, apparitions, locutions, scripture, signs and wonders to pay attention to each other and to her. As I often tell friends who are making this journey with me, she just keeps showing up.
Seeing Mary is a process. Every time I think I’ve seen all the art, read all the books, and heard all the stories, I realize that there’s still more. She is not done with me. She continually invites me to look, explore and listen. This small and humble reflection of texts from the semester is yet another step in the process. From sacred sites, an art exhibit and an elderly nun’s journey, from the whisperings and appearances to children in France and crying statues in Lake Ridge, Virginia, to a complex family story in Phoenix, Arizona, Mary empowers, challenges, liberates and comforts us along our journey to see her.
The Abrahamic faith traditions (Judaism, Islam and Christianity) have been engaging in pilgrimage practices as part of their spiritual disciples for centuries. According to the Gospel of Luke (2:41-52), when Jesus was about 12 years old, he and his parents made pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Festival of Passover. The historical account of Egeria set in the early 380s is a record of her pilgrimage to the Holy Land; it contains not only an account of her travels to various sacred sites, but also a detailed account of the liturgical practices and observances of Church in Jerusalem. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is the story of pilgrims on the way to Canterbury Cathedral to visit the shrine of the martyred Archbishop Thomas a Becket. According to the website On Pilgrimage, “a pilgrimage is a journey inward as well as outward. Pilgrims seek to strengthen and renew their faith through travel….Pilgrims travel with a clear intention, to draw closer to God.”
The story of the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham (OLW) begins with a widow—Richeldis de Faverches. While J.C. Dickinson reports little about who this woman was or the origins of the shrine itself, according to the shrine’s official website, she was “a Saxon noblewoman… [with] a deep faith in God and devotion to Mary… [she had a] reputation for good works in care and generosity towards those around her.” Furthermore, it is reported that in 1061, Richeldis had a vision of Mary leading her to her house in Nazareth where the biblical story of the Annunciation is said to have taken place. In this vision, Mary also asked Richeldis to build this house in Walsingham. According to legend, this vision occurred three times. The account of this vision was retold in the Pynson ballad, to which Dickinson often makes reference.
While Dickinson never mentions the visions that Richeldis had of Mary, he does posit that the shrine was never intended to be a pilgrimage site; that it was meant to be a place of private devotion for Richeldis. However he believes it developed as a pilgrimage site for three reasons: 1) attraction to the Holy House, 2) attraction to the wells near the original chapel, and 3) devotion to the statue of Our Lady. In the text, Dickinson reports that there was a growing interest in pilgrimage to the Holy Land thanks to the sermons of Saint Bernard. Whether St. Bernard’s sermons are the reason for these pilgrimages, we know from other journal accounts and reports (i.e., Egeria) that prior to the Crusades pilgrimage to the Holy Land was popular.
The wells of the shrine have been historically connected to healing miracles. Dickinson references the report of Thomas Gatele, a fifteenth-century sub prior of Walsingham, who “as a boy fell into ‘the well of Blessed Mary’ and, after being taken out as dead, was restored to life by a miracle of Our Lady.” He also notes that according to the Roman Catholic priest, Erasmus, the wells were “sacred to the Holy Virgin. The water is wonderfully cold, and efficacious in curing pains of the head and stomach… [and that] the spring burst suddenly from the earth at the command of the most Holy Virgin”. While the Pynson ballad also notes that healing was connected to the shrine, Dickinson argues that it does not explicitly say that this healing was connected to the wells.
Devotion to the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham was also an important part of the rise in pilgrim visits to the shrine, making it the most important of its kind in medieval England. Dickinson reports that “Almost every church at this time had such a statue…but it is difficult to get any very clear idea as to how it attained this ascendancy.” While records do not indicate the number of people who visited the shrine, they do report the royal patronage of the shrine. As Dickinson notes, “Walsingham’s rise to national fame was due more to Henry III than to anyone else.” Through the historical records, it is indicated that Henry III not only visited the shrine about a dozen times, but gave very generous financial gifts as well, including “20 marks to make a golden crown and place it on the image of St. Mary of Walsingham.” His son, Edward I, reported not only a miracle at Walsingham, but is recorded to have visited at least twelve times as well. By the late 14th century, the shrine at Walsingham was of national importance. With the receiving of financial gifts and other treasures, the canons constructed the Slipper Chapel, where it is reported that pilgrims would take off their shoes and continue the journey barefoot.
While Henry VIII began his reign devoted to the shrine; Dickinson suggests that this devotion was “intimately bound up with his passionate desire for a son and heir.” However, with the Reformation, the development of the Church of England (Henry VIII becoming head of both church and state), and the suppression of monasteries in England, Dickinson notes that in July of 1538, the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, along with the treasures that had been gifted to the priory, had been removed from the chapel and sent to London. By the end of the month, her image, along with Our Lady of Ipswich and other famous statues of her, had been burned. After the burning of the statue at Walsingham, a new statue was created and installed in 1922, and renovations and improvements continue at the site—even with online opportunities to assist in the care and continuity of the shrine.
The events of December 1531 are known in the Roman Catholic community as the “Guadalupan Event”. According to the reports of Juan Diego, which have been passed down through family and friends, and then the Church, Mary appeared to him asking for a temple to be built at Tepeyac. After repeated visits to Bishop Zumarraga trying to convince him of this vision and request, Juan Diego returned to the hilltop to request a sign from Mary to take back to the bishop. Having been instructed to gather flowers in his tilma, Juan Diego returned to Mary and she instructed him:
…these various flowers are the proof, the sign which you will take to the Bishop. On my behalf you will tell him to see in them my desire, so that he will fulfill my wish, my will…so that then he will do his part to build my temple.
When Juan Diego opened his tilma, the flowers fell on the floor and the image of Mary was all that was there. This is the story that has been passed down through the generations since the 16th century that almost everyone who knows of Our Lady of Guadalupe has heard. However, there is much more to this story.
In his book, Our Lady of Guadalupe and Saint Juan Diego, Eduardo Chavez provides a context for which to situate this story of the “Guadalupan Event”. The Franciscan priests who first arrived as missionaries in Mexico in 1524 had great difficulty in Christianizing the Indigenous peoples. After much agonizing on how to convert these peoples, on January 1, 1525, several of the friars took it upon themselves to destroy the temples and idols of the native peoples in Texoco. As Chavez explains, “…if the Indigenous continued the adoration of false gods, their efforts to evangelize would be in vain.” At the same time that these events were occurring, some of the Spanish explorers were enslaving the Indigenous peoples, believing that they were less than human and objects to be used in their own fortune making. It is in these conditions that we find Bishop Zumarraga located. In August 1529, he wrote to King and Emperor Carlos V explaining the devastation that the Indigenous faced at the hands of the Spanish, asking for help and also offering prayers for divine intervention. It is also during this time that Juan Diego converts to the Catholic faith.
Was the apparition of Mary to Juan Diego the answer to Bishop Zumarraga’s prayers? Was the “Guadalupan Event” a combining of earlier Indigenous religious practices and Catholicism to make it easier to convert the native peoples? While Franciscan Friars Antonio de Huete believed that it was dangerous for the Indigenous peoples to venerate the image because they would adore her as an idol, from Chavez’s perspective:
The Guadalupan Event was the response from God to a humanly impossible situation: the relationship between the world of the Indigenous and that of the newly arrived Spaniards. The Christian Indigenous, Juan Diego, was the link between the non-Christian, old Mexican world and the Christian missionary proposition which arrived through the Hispanic mediation. The result was the enlightenment of a new Christianized people. Juan Diego was neither a Spaniard arriving with Cortes, nor a Spanish Franciscan missionary; he was a native belonging to that old world rich in culture.
Perhaps her appearance to Juan Diego is a miracle in and of itself. However, what seems to draw the attention of pilgrims and scholars to the sacred site—the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe—is her image on Juan Diego’s tilma. The tilma itself is made of a vegetal material known as agave, and it was both an article of clothing and a means for carrying materials.According to records, the image was exposed to environmental changes in temperature and humidity for 116 years before being placed behind glass; it’s self-preservation in these conditions is miraculous.Examination of the tilma began in 1666, with the results indicating, “It is humanly impossible that any artist could paint and work something so beautiful, clean, and well-formed on a fabric which is as rough as is the tilma.” Similar conclusions were made after an examination in 1787. Even after a bomb went off in the basilica in 1921, the tilma remained undamaged.
After the appearance of the Virgin to Juan Diego and the building of her Hermitage at Tepeyac, Juan Diego moved to a little house near the Hermitage in order that he could devote his life to the Sanctuary. According to testimonies found in Informaciones Juridicas de 1666, people from the village would work on the construction of the temple, the women would sweep and perfume it, and the people would offer prayers to Mary so that they would have good seasons. Miles Philips reported in his travel diary that when travelling through Mexico, people would not only stop at the church to pray before the image to keep them from evil, but also that there were two cold water baths which were “very good for those who have wounds or sores, because it is said many have been healed.”
Devotion to the image of Our Lady continued to grow with the ongoing conversions of Indigenous peoples to Christianity. In 1599 a pilgrimage was organized by Jesuits in order to offer up prayers for rain during a severe drought. With the influx of pilgrims into Tepeyac, and the financial support of these pilgrims, Philip III, the King of Spain, and others devoted to Our Lady, in 1609 the first stone was placed for a new Church of the Sanctuary of Guadalupe. By 1616, ordinations and other great liturgical celebrations were occurring at the Sanctuary, thus promoting the continuation of pilgrimages and increased offerings. By the beginning of the 20th century, Our Lady of Guadalupe was named the Patroness of America by Pope Pius X, and by 1999, Pope John Paul II had declared her the Queen of all America.
While these two sacred sites are different, they both originated with a vision of Mary. According to Catherine M. Odell, Mary appears to people as a way of connecting the world’s needs with Mary’s heart. Throughout her text, Those Who Saw Her: Apparitions of Mary¸ Odell connects the apparitions of Mary to moments in history in three ways: 1) when people or communities needed to be strengthened or revitalized in their faith, 2) to provide a warning of future events/to serve a prophetic function, or 3) to offer comfort. Odell also points to the work of French theologian and authority on Marian apparitions, Father René Laurentin, who posited that there are five intentions of apparitions:
- To manifest the hidden presence of God;
- To renew community life;
- To convert hearts;
- To reawaken and stimulate faith; and
- To renew hope and dynamism in the Church.
In my own experience of leading worship, I have found that often Episcopalians regard those who have extraordinary experiences as “witnesses of the faith” but then tread lightly around the actual experience. Like the unofficial motto of the Episcopal church--“all may, none must, some should”--Odell highlights the “Lambertini guidelines” developed in the eighteenth century by Propsero Lambertini (who later became Pope Benedict XIV) which explains the relationship between the church and approved apparitions: “believers could certainly and legitimately refuse to believe in apparitions ‘provided this is done with suitable modesty, for good reasons and without contempt’.” This guideline allows for those of the faith to choose whether or not to believe in Marian apparitions and other supernatural events that have been approved by the Roman church.
In considering the various cases reported in Catherine Odell’s Those Who Saw Her, there are a few observations I have made. In Odell’s work, there seems to be a theme of those on the margins (the poor, the uneducated, children) being the ones to whom Mary appears. While this is not always the case, the events surrounding the apparitions at sites such as Guadalupe, La Salette, Lourdes, Fatima, Beauraing, and Mejugorje for example, all seem to share this foundational element of Our Lady appearing to the most unsuspecting and vulnerable members of a community which is also experiencing some kind of distress—be it political, economic, or general well-being (i.e., famine). In the case of Mejugorje, Mary appeared for several years to teenagers in a communist country as the Queen of Peace and spoke words of “faith, peace, prayer, fasting, [and] reconciliation.”
However, Mary is also reported to appear to adults and others deeply devoted to the Christian faith. In these accounts, Mary again is the Mother of all, but also sends a powerful message of reconciliation. In the case of Laus, Mary appeared to the deeply devout Benoîte, who later became a nun. In this instance, Mary asked Benoîte to have a chapel built in her honor and to help bring reconciliation and repentance of sin into the world. Similarly, in Paris, Catherine was committed not only to the church, but to Mary in bringing about healing and protection to those who wore Mary’s “miraculous medal.” In Akita, Japan, Sister Agnes Sasagawa experienced not only the stigmata (corresponding wounds in his wrists, feet and side to those of Jesus at the Crucifixion), but also was the recipient of messages from Mary to call the church back to “prayer, penance, honest poverty, and courageous acts of sacrifice” in order to appease God who had been angered by the sins of the unrepentant. While all of these accounts have been investigated and approved by the church as “worthy of belief,” there are the events that took place at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (SEAS) Catholic Church in Lake Ridge, Virginia in the 1990s that have yet to be approved by the Roman Catholic Church.
The story of SEAS Catholic Church and the Associate Pastor, Fr. James Bruse began on Thanksgiving Day, 1991 with a weeping statue at his parents’ house. Over the course of almost a year (the last reported weeping was July 1992), Marian statues at SEAS and statues that Fr. Bruse had blessed wept tears regularly. During this time and continuing on until the summer of 1993, there were also reports of rosaries that Fr. Bruse had blessed changing colors, of healings, the smell of roses when none were present and the “miracle of the sun”—“the ability to gaze directly into the daytime sun and see it spinning, often throwing off a multitude of colors, perhaps pulsating, and not uncommonly accompanied by other patterns or silhouettes.” Also during this time, Fr. Bruse reported experiencing the miracle of stigmata.
What is curious about the events at SEAS is the fact that the Catholic Church has never seriously investigated the claims of Fr. Bruse or the eye-witnesses. While the events got media attention beginning on March 6, 1992 and Frs. Hamilton and Bruse conducted a press conference on March 12 of that year, the Diocese of Arlington’s then Bishop Keating issued a statement on March 5, 1992 that the diocese would not be investigating the reported events because there was “no determined message attached to the physical phenomena, and thus there is no ecclesial declaration to be made at this time.” However, the legacy of these events has not completely faded. According to an article dated April 6, 2012 by Michelle Boorstein, there is a petition circulating asking for the diocese to formally investigate the supernatural events that occurred at SEAS. Boorstein also notes that in 2010, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, called the skepticism surrounding and rejection of the Seton Miracles “irrational” and that as of the writing of the article, the Diocese of Arlington had no intention of opening an investigation into the matter. A quick Google search of “Seton Miracles” also leads an inquiring mind to Care2Petitions’ grassroots petition to the Diocese of Arlington to open an investigation into the events, citing former Pope John Paul II’s statement, “weeping by statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary is clear: ‘She is a mother crying when she sees her children threatened by a spiritual or physical evil.’”
To continue to visit these sacred sites and tell these stories speaks not just of the events—those moments when the Holy broke into linear time and space to make a connection with humanity—but these stories are about real people. Whether the story is about a nun in Japan, a child in France, a Native man in Mexico, or a priest in Virginia, these people had an extraordinary engagement that changed their lives. The individuals often report a deepening in their faith, as well as a sense of peacefulness and love. As Fr. Bruse reflected on his own experience, six years after the events at SEAS, “My own faith was a little shaky at the time…I know I will never have any doubts again.” As I read through the accounts, I was deeply moved when Mary appeared and asked for people to pray and to work together for peace and reconciliation.
Peace and reconciliation are the foundation to liberation and social justice work. Ivone Gebara, a Latin American theologian explains, that the contribution of liberation theology to theological debate was the “attention on the plight of the poor as a fundamental theological issue, and its encouragement of a spirituality centered on the struggle for liberation from the various oppressions, especially from so-call social sin.”
In the almost ten year ethnographic study of the Ruiz family by Kristy Nabhan-Warren, the Mary of liberation and social justice is revealed as the Virgin of the Americas. Beginning on December 3, 1988, Estela Ruiz began to have a relationship with the Virgin of the Americas that led her and her family not only to a place of healing and reconciliation, but ultimately to the forming of Mary’s Ministries evangelism group and the ESPIRITU Community Development Corporation. According to Nabhan-Warren, what is unique about the Ruiz family (unlike other visionaries) is that they were inspired to act because of the messages from Mary by creating grassroots initiatives in their community to respond to “neighborhood violence, high school dropout rates, and crime.” For Estela, the Virgin of the Americas is not the passive, disempowering figure that has passed along through church dogma; instead, Estela is encouraged by Mary to be a “wife, mother, educator, public visionary, and evangelizer.” Furthermore, for Estela and the other women of the community, Mary is a “counselor, mother, spiritual role model, and example of Catholic womanhood.”
While some of Estela’s story resonates with me, I find Sally Cunneen’s assessment of re-visioning Mary as a liberator more in line with my own spirituality and vocation. In the chapter “The Liberation of Mary,” Cunneen interviews Protestant and Catholic women about their experiences with Mary in scripture, art and music and who are seeking to redefine the “false associations” of Mary from the Catholic tradition. What Cunneen discovers is that for some women Mary’s assent to God’s messenger “meant accepting a mysterious new life, enduring great suffering and humiliation, and taking a public role as witness for a cause the authorities considered unlawful,” and that furthermore, Mary is understood as “open, adventurous, willing to risk and tolerate uncertainty, able to weather great suffering graciously…[and that for women, she serves as a reminder that] we are all life-bearers.”
Cunneen concludes that Mary’s “yes” was also a call to action for others. Perhaps this is part of my own vocational calling, as well as the calling of Estela, the Ruiz family and the people of Mary’s Ministries. Our own “yes” to lives devoted to God is also a response to the Magnificat’s call to liberation. As life-bearers with Mary as the icon of liberation and social justice, women (and men) are called to a new experience of the Divine through relationship based service. Unlike the powerful on their thrones who oppress the lowly, Mary points the way to a different kind of power and strength:
She doesn’t seem comfortable trying to control events or push people around; her strength consists in accepting reality and responding to it thoughtfully and compassionately. Her power is based on relationship to nature and to others…. A strong woman whose example helps us break through any identity that defines us only as separate individuals, who helps us see that we are related to one another.
In his book Mary and Human Liberation, Fr. Tissa Balasuriya also argues that Marian devotion rests in liberation theology. By situating her in a time of Roman occupation, corrupt religious and political institutions, and the anxiety of rebellion, Balasuriya believes that modern “Marian devotion…can motivate us towards new ministries required for our times: commitment to justice, inter-faith dialogue, action for peace, the liberation of women, caring for nature.” For Balasuriya, Mary is more than the timid young peasant woman who said yes to God’s messenger, she is a mature woman who is aware of the conditions in which she lived; “a woman of real life, involved in the day-to-day struggles of ordinary people at individual and community levels.”
Through this lens, Mary’s song in her cousin Elizabeth’s house takes on new meaning; God is doing something new in the world through the birth of her son that will bring down the rich and powerful and raise up the poor and marginalized. For Balasuriya, the Magnificat speaks to three revolutions—political, cultural and economic. No longer is Mary the “comforter of the disturbed, rather… [she is the] disturber of the comfortable.” In Mary’s song, the proud and powerful are rejected, there is a shift in power, and the hungry and poor are filled. Like Balasuriya, I believe that the ministry of Jesus—his attention to the poor, the widowed and orphaned, his open table fellowship, his healings and miracles—was shaped by this moment of praise from his mother to God.
Looking towards liberation for all of the world’s children, Balasuriya suggests that Mary is not just the mother of Jesus, but “a universal mother of all humanity…concerned most with those who suffer so much physically and psychologically.” He suggests that a new understanding of Marian devotion and theology focused on human redemption through liberation could revision her shrines as places of reflection and dialogue for understanding “the causes of the growing gap between the affluent and the poor, and to take steps to remedy the situation.” He goes further to say that liberation theology grounded in the Magnificat “must involve an approach which declares that the goods of the earth are for everyone…[and] bring about changes in the political and economic order that would see to it ‘that there is no one in need’.” He concludes that it is through the Magnificat that we learn that Mary is “not neutral in relation to social injustice and discrimination….She is co-redemptrix of humanity in intimately sharing with Jesus in his life mission and message and in the life of the early Church.”
Classical Marian icons situate Mary at three points in the life and ministry of Jesus—his birth (including the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Adoration and Flight into Egypt), the wedding at Cana, and the crucifixion. At his birth, Mary is often portrayed as thoughtful, reflective, and passive; there is no sense of the messiness and pain of the birth process. For Balasuriya, these moments speak to the relationship that was shared between Mary and Jesus. Balasuriya understands the Mary of the birth narratives as one who was physically strong, but rejected by others. Like the women of her time, the birthing process would have been perilous and life-threatening for Mary.
While “Mother and Child” images are not always placed within the nativity/birth events, they are one of the most often depicted images in Western art. In her book, Encounters with God, Sister Wendy Beckett recounts her experience of pilgrimage that took her from London to Rome to the Ukraine and then to Egypt with the purpose of seeing the eight remaining Byzantine Marian icons.
Sister Wendy begins her travelogue with the Icon of Virgin and Child which is dated to be from the sixth or seventh century. While its origins are assumed to be Egypt, the icon was discovered in a French auction house in 2003 and now resides in the Temple Gallery in London. Sister Wendy’s description of the icon is that Mary is “aware of our presence…but all that matters to her is that we should regard the little Jesus.” She goes further to say that the mandorla emphasizes Mary’s significance—“in her, God, the Word, became flesh." While I certainly do not dispute the theology of the Incarnation implied in this icon, I also acknowledge that Sister Wendy is a product of her culture; she is of the Roman church, which historically and theologically has considered Mary’s primary role to be that of the vessel for the Incarnation.
Sister Wendy continues her travels in Rome to Santa Maria in Trastevere to see the Madonna of Clemency adorned as the Queen of Heaven, to the Pantheon to see the Icon of Santa Maria ad Martyres, then to Santa Francesca Romana to see the Icon of Santa Maria Nova, possibly the oldest surviving Marian icon in existence. What is unique about this icon is that the original Christ child is barely recognizable after years of being painted over, yet his hand is raised “to bless not us, the onlookers, or the world beyond, but to bless His Mother.” While even Sister Wendy admits to being more drawn to Mary than the Child in this particular icon, she attributes that feeling of relationship to a sense of “tranquil joy that is unique and comes solely from her [Mary’s] closeness to her God” that perhaps resonates with her own experience as nun.
The Virgin of Kiev written sometime in the sixth or seventh centuries is the only one of the Byzantine Madonnas that is currently housed in a museum. Sister Wendy notes that unlike the other Mary’s, this Mary is fierce; that her eyes are “fixed with frightening force upon what would seem a danger that Mary alone can see,” and that “Mary is His [the Christ child] protector, protecting Him against His infinite capacity to love, His guileless readiness to trust, His sweetness, His goodness.” Further emphasizing this sense of fierce protectiveness, Sister Wendy concludes that “Mary is urgent with the need not to protect us, but to protect Jesus from us, to show us our own inner destructiveness.” What is Sister Wendy had not interpreted the icon in this way, but as a mother devoted to protecting and liberating all of humanity from itself?
The final leg of Sister Wendy’s travelogue is to the Sinai desert—to the Monastery of St. Catherine. Here a majority of the pre-iconoclastic icons are held in trust by the community of monks who have lived within the walls of the monastery since the third century. Along with other amazing icons and works of religious art housed in the monastery, Sister Wendy encountered the last of the Marian icons—Icon of the Enthroned Virgin. Here Mary is pictured as an empress, and she holds the Christ child on display for the viewer. Surrounded by martyred saints and angels, the hand of God reaches down from the Heavens. Sister Wendy interprets this icon to teach the viewer that Mary and Jesus belong to both the spiritual realm and the ordinary realm; “Mary and Jesus are of time-in-eternity.”
Given all of Sister Wendy’s travels to see the Marian icons, I believe the most fascinating one to be the Madonna of San Sisto. While the legendary stories of supernatural travel of the icon are interesting in and of themselves, what I find so intriguing (as did Sister Wendy) is that Mary is alone. Of the eight remaining pre-ninth century Byzantine Madonnas, this is the only one that does not include the Christ child. Here Mary’s hands are raised in the orans position and there is a sense of inner strength and peace in her eyes. Sister Wendy attributes this peacefulness to being united in “her humanity to the holiness of the Godhead.”
Between the time of the two iconoclast periods of the eighth and sixteenth centuries, there was a shift in the world of religious art. No longer were images created by only those within religious professions, but there was an increase in the number of works created by lay persons. Along with this was the rise of monastic communities, which also aided in the increased production of devotional images to “enhance liturgy and aid the spiritual growth.” As more monasteries were built within towns and communities with the purpose of ministering to local peoples, these pieces of religious art helped to provide focus for “prayers and encouraged a personal identification with God that helped one achieve a higher state…viewers would strive to imagine and internalize Christ’s sufferings and Mary’s sorrows.” There was also an increase in the production of smaller artworks/icons intended for personal use in the home, as well as illustrated Bibles featuring pictures of Bible stories, and illuminated Books of Hours (collections of prayers, psalms, readings) which were created with the intention of assisting individuals with “instruction, veneration, and remembrance.” However, with the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, and the push of Roman Catholic clergy to end private piety and return to formalized liturgy, these types of artwork came to an end.
In her work as curator for the “Divine Mirrors” exhibit at the Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Melissa Katz through text Divine Mirrors: The Virgin Mary in the Visual Arts, follows the trajectory of how Mary is portrayed as the “Ideal Woman” in religious art. In pieces depicting the visitation between Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, Mary’s youth and purity are key elements in the construction of the “Ideal Woman”. In many of these pieces, not only is Mary identifiable from Elizabeth by her youthfulness, but she is portrayed with her hair loose; she is simultaneously an adult and a child. While the issue of hairstyles may seem inconsequential to viewers in 2015, at the time of the production of such pieces, this loose hair was also a theological statement; Mary’s un-bonneted hair “was an indication of her perpetual virginity, which they [the artist and original viewers] believed persisted throughout her married life and exempted her…from the social conventions [of marriage].”Not only was Mary’s hairstyle a reflection of theological beliefs, so was the artistic renderings of her facial expressions. Mary is often depicted with closed lips and a downward glance as a way of subduing her sexuality, but also to highlight her submissive and quiet demeanor. This may be part of what Sister Wendy found so compelling about the Virgin of Kiev—Mary’s presentation is one of fierce protectiveness, not submissive quietness.
Another piece from Katz’s essay on the idealization of womanhood through Marian images was the discussion of the “Holy Family”. The church was challenged by incorporating Mary’s perpetual virginity with the concept of the nuclear family of mother, father, and children. While it wrestled with teachings around Joseph’s life prior to his marriage to Mary, and the teaching of the kinship of Christ, the church ultimately resolved to make marriage a sacrament, thus allowing it to be a “viable path to holiness.” In response to the sanctification of marriage, Mary was domesticated in artistic representations; “The regal, dignified, yet distant Madonnas…evolved into tender, nurturing figures.” Now the ideal woman was not only young, pure, submissive and quiet, but Mary also served as a model for women who were fulfilling their duties of motherhood.
In the wedding of Cana icons, Mary is often standing/sitting near Jesus, but is located on the perimeter of the wedding celebration and the miracle that takes place. Fr. Tissa Balasuriya suggests that Mary, like other women who followed Jesus, supported his ministry, however “perhaps more than anyone else, she understood the meaning of the life and message of Jesus…that for him his mission was of paramount importance.” The wedding at Cana isn’t just a miracle story; it is also a “teachable moment” between Mary and Jesus. Mary’s awareness that there is no more wine and her instruction to Jesus to remedy the situation teaches him (and us) to be sensitive to others; “to resolve the great inequalities in the world. It is the way of unselfishness and sharing.”
In contrast to the idealization of youthful womanhood, Mary’s range of sorrow depicted in art is also a fascinating study. Crucifixion depictions show Mary in various stages of grief ranging from swooning, collapsing and protesting, to noble suffering. According to Katz, these images of the suffering Mary, “helped viewers achieve the heightened emotional state thought to bring one closer to God in prayer.” Throughout Spain, Italy and England, the rise in the cult of the Sorrowful Mother coincided with times of plague and famine, and according to Katz, because of a sense of identification with Mary’s maternal anguish, “lamentation images were often commissioned by women and for women.” At the foot of the cross, Balasuriya positions Mary not only as powerless and suffering, but also self-sacrificing. Through Jesus’ sacrifice for the liberation of others, Mary is left alone in a hostile world. In his critique of traditional Marian theology, Balasuriya believes that the idea that Mary was more a heavenly being than an ordinary woman separates Mary from the liberation of “millions of contemporary mothers and children” who are faced with very challenging and oppressing life circumstances.
What is the legacy of Marian art today? Does the “Ideal Woman” or “Sorrowful Mother” resonate with women in 2015, or have these renderings lost their power? Can her image be reinterpreted through the lens of liberation theology and have new meaning for women? And what of the Protestant women who did not (and do not) have access to these private or church-based devotions due to the Reformation?
When I started my personal journey with Mary many years ago, it began as a result of encountering an image and saying the Angelus. Since then, my curiosity and devotion to Mary has grown. I feel like while I have a fair understanding of scholarly and theological knowledge of the topic of Marian devotion and art, I still have many unanswered questions. In my notes for this paper, I found myself coming full circle—why do people make pilgrimage to see these sacred sites and works of art; what meaning do these images hold for contemporary viewers? How else can Mary be seen and heard in the world for those of us who aren’t gifted with apparitions and locutions? In my limited experience of pilgrimage this summer, I traveled to both New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and Washington DC’s National Art Gallery for the purpose of spending time with specific pieces of Marian art. I felt compelled to go—both because I felt like she was calling me, and because it felt like the next appropriate step in my study. Would my academic work be different without that trip to see her image in various depictions? I don’t know. Is there a way to study Mary without being in relationship with her? Can one only study the theology, or the church history, or the art, or the apparitions, and still get a complete picture of who Mary is and what she means?
Final thoughts…
Just when I thought I had seen it all, another popular magazine appeared in the grocery store featuring Mary on the cover. Inside the pages were not only the stories and art of the Annunciation, the Wedding at Cana and the Crucifixion, and The Virgin of Vladimir, but the story of the events Lourdes, Guadalupe, Fatima, the creation of the Miraculous Medal, and even a mention of Fr. Bruse in Virginia. Now as I sit here reflecting on Mary appearing near springs of water, on hill tops, and little villages while wearing my own miraculous medal and surrounded by her image, I feel connected to all those who have seen her, who have prayed to her for intercession, and who have heard her voice reassuring them of her love. Balasuriya believes that Mary must be liberated from traditional theology and art, and that through this liberation:
…we are called to understand her as a loving mother and sister of all, a woman
among women, a human being among us, one who faced the difficulties of life…In understanding her in this way, we can…encourage her devotees to be better disciples of Jesus and better human beings.
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