By chhotebhai
Kanpur: Why was Mary missing from what Christians consider the most momentous event in salvation history and the most defining moment in human history – the Resurrection? Was it an oversight on the part of the four evangelists reporting the event?
In my book “Beyond 2000” written for the third millennium of Christianity I had termed the Resurrection the biggest “blunder” by God. It was so poorly managed! Any shaadiwallah event manager would have done a far better job – with thousands of exultant witnesses shouting Alleluia/ Hosanna.
There would have been lights, cameras, action, with media crews and reporters buzzing like flies. Nothing of the kind happened. Was that why Mary was disappointed, and “boycotted’ the mega event? Food for thought, or a slanderous sacrilege, to even suggest such a thing?
The four “reporters”, the evangelists, were not much better, with their contradictory reports (cf Mat 28:1-8,Mk 16:1-8, Lk 24:1-8, Jn 20:1-2). The only one with a touch of drama is Mathew, who reports that there was a violent earthquake, after which an angel descended from heaven and rolled away the tombstone in the presence of Mary of Magdala and the other Mary (identified by the other reporters as the mother of James and Salome). Mathew goes on to say that the angel tells the women to go to Galilee to meet Jesus. In the very next sentence he reports that Jesus met the women there itself in the garden.
The other three reporters all state that the stone had already been rolled away before the women arrived, and not in their presence, as stated by Mathew! While Mathew and Mark report one angel (man) being present Luke reports that there were two. While three of the reporters mention the two other Marys being present, Luke adds Joanna to the scene, while John only mentions one Mary – of Magdala. So did Mary the mother of Jesus, deliberately avoid going to the tomb, to avoid any future controversy? I have a different take on this Resurrection “scene”. I am choosing my words with utmost care.
Firstly, it was not a scene or an event that required physical presence. When something physical, like a dead body, transcends the physical (time and space dimensions) then anything physical can become redundant. Mary knew what was happening. She had already experienced the Resurrection deep in her being, so she did not need to rush to the tomb. She already knew that Jesus had risen. This is because of the unique bond that she shared with her son that transcended the merely physical, to a higher level, that defies human definition.
To understand this we need to go back to see how the relationship between Jesus and Mary evolved. It began with the Annunciation by the Angel Gabriel (cf Lk 1:26-38). Here again we find that Mark and John do not even mention it, and Mathew looks at it from Joseph’s point of view. What we do know from Luke is that the incarnation (becoming flesh) took place because of Mary’s unconditional “Yes” to the Word of God addressed to her. That is what John meant when he said “The Word became flesh” (Jn 1:13). This was just the beginning of an amazing relationship between God and man, as experienced in Jesus and Mary.
The second stage is equally unique, the Visitation. Mary is the first evangelist, the bearer of good news. “As soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting the child leapt in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit” (Lk 1:41). So now the word becomes flesh in Elizabeth and her son, John the Baptist. The evangelical journey has begun. The Catholic Church is justified in calling Mary the “Queen of Apostles”. She led from the front.
She was beginning to understand her role in the economy of salvation. That is why she “treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Lk 2:19). It was not just the child growing physically in her womb, it was God’s plan of salvation that was unfolding, that required her deep meditation and contemplation. Lest she got inflated with pride in God’s choice of her, she received a sombre warning from the Prophet Simeon that “a sword will pierce your soul too” (Lk 2:35). Mary was destined to share totally in the redemptive suffering of her son.
But Mary was not a superhuman, she was plain human. That is why when she and Joseph were separated from the boy Jesus on returning from the Temple in Jerusalem, she reprimanded him for staying back in what he then termed his Father’s house. She was at a loss, and did not as yet comprehend Jesus’ own self-realization (cf Lk 2:50).
Nevertheless she had a mother’s intuitive instinct of how much she could demand of her son, as evidenced at the wedding feast at Cana. Despite Jesus’ protests that his time had not yet come, she asserted her authority, expecting him to do something (cf Jn 2:5). Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t address her as his biological mother now. He calls her “woman”, the same term he uses from the cross, while committing her to the care of John (cf Jn 19:26-27). Exegetes tell us that he is now positioning her as the new woman, the new Eve (cf Gen 3:15), just as he was the new Adam. The mother-son relationship is gradually being raised to a higher level. In fact he negates the merely biological dimension. When a person in the crowd calls out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that suckled you” he was quick in his rejoinder, “Blessed rather is the one who hears the word of God and keeps it” (cf Lk 11:27-28).
So it is not at all surprising that the womb was not at the tomb. The mother-son relationship had already transcended to that higher indefinable plane, being completed fused into the plan of salvation; through redemptive suffering, spiritual growth and ultimate fusion in the Divine. The evangelical reporters may have been confused about the numbers and sequence of “events’ at the Resurrection. Not so for her who was fused with the Redeemer.
Peter, who had at that time, rushed to the tomb, later had a far more tempered approach. While explaining God’s plan of salvation at the house of Cornelius he says, “On the third day God raised him to life and allowed him to be seen, not by the whole people, but only by certain witnesses that God had chosen beforehand” (Acts 10:40). This was God’s way, which Mary understood.
I will now digress to mention that my father was appointed as the first ever Envoy of the Legion of Mary way back in 1944, and it was he who built up this very effective spiritual organisation all over north India. Something of that must have rubbed off on me, because I too joined the Legion as soon as I turned 18. It was my initiation into a long journey of spirituality and service.
For the last 42 years I have been wearing a wooden rosary around my neck, and I do pray the decades every morning, before starting work. But I find the Angelus (a devotion begun by my favourite, St Francis of Assisi) the most meaningful prayer, even more than the Our Father (which in its present format is in any case a distortion of what the Gospels record). For me the Angelus is the prayer of the incarnation, of the Word becoming flesh, the fusion of God and man that can remove much of our confusion.
As another expression of my Marian devotion I constructed a Grotto in the front of my house with a granite plaque that says in Hindi, Latin and Urdu “Ave Maria” (see pic).
As for evangelisation, foreign missionaries of yesteryear recognised the Indian yearning for the mother figure (mata) and successfully propagated Marian devotions among the catechumens. It had greater appeal to them than the Judaic concept of a Messiah and redemption from the bondage to sin.
However, with the passage of time, these devotions became an end in themselves, cultic; overshadowing the core message of Jesus. Excessive cultic Marian devotions were anathema to our Protestant brethren, who saw only the cult, not the unique bond of Jesus and Mary. We Catholics are ourselves to blame for this excess.
I am far from cultic about Mother Mary. I prefer to address her as the Mother of Jesus, rather than the more common Mother of God, a term that I feel is rather superlative. That is also why I don’t attend novenas or feel the need to go on a pilgrimage to Lourdes or Vailankanni. Nor do I like to recite the Litany which has some quaint eulogies to Mary like “Tower of Ivory” or “House of Gold”. Am I living in an ivory castle?
As a true devotee I would rather believe that Mary was one with Jesus, hence did not find it necessary to rush to the tomb on what we now call Easter morning. If we still think that she was missing in action then I think that it is we who have missed the redemptive wood because of the cultic trees.