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Thursday, January 01, 2004
Mercado: A second spring?
By Juan L. Mercado
FEATURE
The banner, on the New Year issue, caught the eye scanning the news kiosk: “Mary, Star of Both Bible and Koran.”
This was no religious pamphlet. Rather, it was the cocky, thoroughly secular British magazine: Economist. Backed by formidable research staffs, it’s reporters start interviews thus: “So, Mr. President, how many dissidents have you tortured today?”
“A Mary for All” is the title for the Economist’s cover story. It probes links between Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
“Christians and Muslims alike see in Mary an affirmation that there is no limit to proximity of God that any human can attain,” it concludes. “Surely, that is reason enough, for people of any faith, to feel reverence for history’s foremost Jewish mother.”
The article is anchored to many sources: the Koran, “wisdom” texts in Jewish and Christian scriptures, the lesser-known Gospel by James of the eastern church, studies by Margaret Barker, Methodist writer and Hebrew scholar, to religion and psychology writer Jaime Moran.
Mary is Islam’s most honored woman, the article notes. She’s “the only one to have an entire chapter named after her in the Koran.”
Muslim understanding of Mary is close that of eastern Christians. “Both cherish the story of Mary’s childhood in a place of supreme holiness. Both name Mary’s guardian as the priest Zechariah or Zakariya.”
Muslim beliefs about Mary also are close to that of Roman Catholics, the article adds. “A well-instructed Roman Catholic or eastern Christian believer would tell you, rather firmly, about the limits of Mary’s veneration. Mary is not a goddess. She is not worshipped but rather venerated: a human being with a unique role in praying for and protecting the human race.”
And down the centuries, “heart-stopping turns of phrase” have been applied to Mary, the Economist states: from the 8th century Byzantine sermon on “the treasure of innocence and ornament of modesty” to the medieval song of “a lily whose perfume scents the faithful” and Tennyson’s “our tainted nature’s solitary boast.”
The Economist article follows an earlier Life magazine cover story: “The Mystery of Mary.” Shortly thereafter, Time did a two-page spread: “Mary, So Contrary.”
These articles on a woman “clothed with the sun” led the Filipino theologian, Catalino Arevalo, SJ of Ateneo, to recall, in an earlier New Year feature: “Shortly after Vatican II, a period of Marian silence descended.”
“We, in the Philippines, did not go through that phase. Churches in former communist Eastern Europe have not experienced the “eclipse of Mary” either. What strikes a mainland China visitor, who gets in contact with Catholics there, is that the veneration of Mary has never been stronger.
“In 1968, the late German theologian Karl Rahner wrote: “Many Catholics today are going through a winter of belief--an experience not unlike those spoken of by the mystics.
“In the dark night of faith, we must do what the mystics taught us: change nothing of what we’ve seen in the light or believed in the calm day; to pray without ceasing; to do penance; to stand fast.
“When the new springtime of faith comes, and it will return, the cult of Mary the Mother of God, will return. In fact, it will be its surest sign. Its form may perhaps be different, but if Christian tradition is valid, it will return.
“Those of us, who have been nourished by it, in our youth, as in the ages of faith, must keep it alive in our hearts. Christian hearts can bring Mary, once again, to the place that is rightfully hers in the holy Church.
“Now—nearly 35 years later--this appears a remarkably prophetic text,” Fr Arevalo notes.
“For this comeback of Our Lady, we have to thank her first of all. Of late, she has been appearing, we are told, in many places: Medjugorge in Yugoslavia; Akita in Japan; Kibeho in Rwanda and Cuenca in Ecuador.
“The Church takes decades before she gives even a very guarded recognition of such phenomena. But the news accounts have fueled renewed interest in the Marian movement.
“Then, there is Pope John Paul II to thank also. No Roman pontiff in the entire history of Catholicism has had so strong and articulate a devotion to the Mother of the Lord. Every visit of Pope John Paul II to a country includes a pilgrimage to a local Marian shrine.
“If Karl Rahner was right, then perhaps the current which Life and Time (and now the Economist) issues may be more significant than it appears.
“The Freiburg theologian predicted, on the basis of his broad knowledge of, and confidence in, the Christian (and Muslim as well) that veneration or Mary would return where it has been lost or nearly forgotten...Is this the new springtime of faith, which Rahner foresaw, about to begin?”
On New Year’s day, Catholics mark the feast of Divine Motherhood. They address the Lady, along with Muslims and that Jewish-mother-to be: Benedicta tu en mulieribus (“Blessed are you among women”).
(e-mail: juan_mercado@ pacific.net.ph)
(January 1, 2004 issue)
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