George T. Montague Sm - Marys Life in the Spirit: Meditations on a Holy Duet

Marys Life in
the Spirit

Meditations on a Holy Duet

Meditations on a Holy Duet

George T. Montague, SM

Copyright 2011 by George T. Montague, SM

All rights reserved

Published by The Word Among Us Press
7115 Guilford Drive
Frederick, MD 21704

15 14 13 12 11 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN: 978-1-59325-192-5
eISBN: 978-1-59325-414-8

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture translations are the authors own. Scripture texts marked NAB are taken from the New American Bible with Revised New Testament and Revised Psalms 1991, 1986, 1970, Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C., and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All rights reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Cover design by John Hamilton Designs

Front Cover Photo Credit: Jan van Eyck, c.1390-1441.

The Ghent altarPolyptych with the Adoration of the Lamb, 1432.

The Virgin Mary of the Annunciation, from the center of the workday panels.

Location: Cathedral of St. Bavo, Ghent, Belgium

Photo Credit: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the author and publisher.

Made and printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Montague, George T.

Marys life in the Spirit : meditations on a holy duet / George T. Montague.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-59325-192-5

1. Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint--Meditations. 2. Holy SpiritMeditations. 3. Catholic ChurchPrayers and devotions. I. Title.

BX2160.23.M66 2011

232.91--dc22

2011016223

R esting against a eucalyptus tree, you survey a lush green valley that runs like a carpet to a stairway of foothills. Your eyes climb the stairs to encounter a wall of snow-gowned mountains, high enough to challenge the jet routes. You feast on what the locals call the dwellings of the gods, the Himalayas.

You are in an October Nepal.

Before you take many breaths, your peaceful silence is broken by the bold song of the Himalayan barbet, a bright-green, dove-sized bird with scarlet underparts. As you listen intently, another song reaches your ears, as loud and as beautiful, but very different from the first. It is the female barbet singing her response. They continue to serenade each otherand you, as if to welcome you to the valley.

In the depth of the Trinity, there is such a duet, Father and Son, singing their mutual love, so perfect that the song itself is the Person of the Holy Spirit. But the divine Persons are not lost in solitary splendor. By their own free and loving choice, their song goes out and touches a human ear, as the barbets duet touched yours. The song came first to the ear, then to the heart, of a teenage girl in an obscure village called Nazareth. Would she not only hear the song but also learn it? Would she hear its invitation to be its mouthpiece, its yes from the yes of the Trinity? Fiat, let it be, Mary said. And through the Holy Spirit, her life became the Trinitarian duet in human tones. The song entered her mind when she questioned, her heart when she agreed, her womb when she consented. And the Word became flesh. When she arose from her prostration before the miracle, her life continued the song.

This book is about the duet that the Holy Spirit continues to sing with Mary. It assumes an intimate union of the Holy Spirit with her. Their harmony invites us to the garden of the King. The Spirit and the bride say, Come (Revelation 22:17). I invite you to walk with me in this garden and cherish each scene of Marys life and inhale there the fragrance of the Holy Spirit.

This is a book of meditative art. Those who know me for my biblical studies will be surprised, perhaps, by the approach of this book. I have spent much of my life in careful scientific study of the Scriptures, using the historical-critical method as a basis for what theological reflections it suggests or permits. However, this book is more a work of art than science, since in it I attempt to do in prose what painters and playwrights for two millennia have done with scenes from the Bible. Those scenes are skeletal texts that artists seek to bring to life by filling in the gaps. Thus, in Rembrandts famous scene of the father embracing his prodigal son, we see a wealth of detail that led Henri Nouwen to write an entire book about the painting, The Return of the Prodigal Son. And in dramatizing Jesus passion, Christians have done the same. In The Passion of the Christ, a film that had great impact on world audiences, Mel Gibson enhanced the basic story line with settings and additional scenes. So as I reviewed the few gospel scenes in which Mary plays a part, I have allowed my imagination to fill in the gaps in the same way that an artist might, while doing my best to be faithful to the general outline of the text.

Even the gospels themselves are works of art. This is not to say that they are not history; after all, a portrait of you will not look like someone else. But alternate portraits will differ in detail. Each Evangelist has put together his materials in an artistic way to help you identify with Jesus. The arrangement of the scenes, the plot, the characters, the settings, and other narrative tools tell us a lot about the theology of the Evangelist, that is, his particular take on the story of Jesus. Thus, in Matthew, Jesus appears especially as teacher; in Mark, as the hero who gives himself up to a sacrificial death; in Luke, as healer; in John, as the revealer of the Father. The Church listens to all of these voices as if to a symphony in which each instrument offers its own beautiful sound. This theological artistry is particularly true of the infancy gospels, which supply us with most of the narrative about Mary. The stories they tell are aimed primarily at affirming truths about Jesus, his divinity and his mission, and in regard to Mary, at showing her as the ideal responder and collaborator in Gods saving plan. They invite us to enter the drama and experience the revelation.

In studying individual gospels, biblical scholars tend to wear earphones so that they can listen to a particular gospel without hearing the accompaniment of the others. Well and good. But the Church listens to the symphony. And it is for that reason that I take the liberty of coalescing the infancy stories when necessary to follow the timeline of Jesus infancy. For example, Luke tells us that after Joseph and Mary have presented Jesus in the temple, they retire to Nazareth. But Matthew indicates that they spend some time in Bethlehem, long enough to let the Magi arrive and for Herod to plot to kill all the children up to the age of two. To tell the complete story of Jesus early years, we must insert Matthews account of the Magi and the massacre of the infants after Joseph and Mary have presented Jesus in the temple. This is, indeed, to run the risk of skewing Lukes portrait of the infancy. But we must keep in mind that the Church reads the Bible as one book, with an overarching theme that transcends the individual parts. When the Church put the parts together in the canon, she was saying that she is the ultimate and authoritative reader of the entire book. It is this ultimate level that is the finished work of the Holy Spirit.