Advent has
passed—the season in which we gaze into the sky,
looking for a star to appear to show us where we
might go to worship the Holy Child. Four weeks of
gazing in preparation for that night when heaven and
earth collide in a manger. We sing, we wait, we
wonder: What was that night like? Was it cold? Was
it really ‘silent’ as the carol suggests, or did the
cries of the Christ-child awaken and provoke a
chorus comprised of heaven, man and beast? Did Mary
and Joseph exchange words, glances? Or could they
even take their eyes off of the child- the Messiah?
Truly,
Advent more than any other season in our liturgical
calendar so deeply and intimately engages our
imagination. During this season we begin to see the
proliferation of images that has accumulated over
the centuries since Christ’s departure. Images of
the Annunciation, the Nativity, images of Mary
holding her newborn child become so commonplace
during this season that I wonder if we don’t take
them for granted. Indeed, it is truly astonishing
that this narrative, perhaps only second to that of
the crucifixion, is the most frequently depicted
scene in the gospel by artists throughout history.
Why is it, then, that most of us only contemplate
these images four weeks out of the entire year? The
sheer volume of Marian representations suggests that
the role of her image goes far beyond providing an
attractive subject matter for our annual Christmas
cards. Indeed the history of Marian piety and art
reflects a longstanding yet tumultuous role the Holy
Mother has played in shaping the life and worship of
the church.
This
presentation is intended to be more of an invitation
to meditate for a brief moment on Mary, who by her
humble obedience to God’s call invites us into
embrace the life she carried. I invite you to ponder
the role Mary plays, not only in the life of our
Savior or his extended body the church, but in your
own life of devotion. Has she been absent? Has she
been avoided? Has she been beckoning?
My own journey
with Mary began five years ago. During my first
semester at Duke Divinity School I had decided to
take Dr. Hauerwas’ course in Catholic Moral
Theology. The course ended with a text entitled,
“Mary: Mirror of the Church” by Fr. Raniero
Cantalamessa. Perhaps it was the stressful end of
the semester that made for such a dramatic ending to
the class, but I will never forget what I witnessed
that day. When Professor Hauerwas opened the class
for discussion I was absolutely amazed by the
silence that was quite uncharacteristic for this
group of young, eager theologians who all semester
prior to this moment had not hesitated to vocalize
their profound findings in the week’s readings. But
on this day I witnessed a group of men- I believe
there was one other woman in the course besides
myself- sitting in utter silence staring down at the
book’s cover which displayed an image of Mary’s
face. Finally, while looking at the image on the
book, a young man broke the silence, “I have to
admit,” he started, “I just don’t know what to do
with Mary.” He continued to attempt an explanation
for this and admitted, among other things, that her
image made him quite uncomfortable because it evoked
in him emotions and sensations that he normally
would not consider consonant with holiness. “She is
beautiful,” he exclaimed, “and I simply don’t know
what to do with that.” This confession provided an
opportunity for others to express similar reactions
to this figure who undeniably plays an integral role
in the narrative of our faith. I found myself
burning inside. It took every ounce of strength I
had to not shout out what I so deeply felt at that
moment. I believe my hesitation was partly because I
had not said a word in class prior to this moment,
and partly because I was filled with so many mixed
emotions that I feared opening my mouth would mean
sure embarrassment. On the one hand, I was overjoyed
to hear the confessions of my classmates because
they were articulating the fears and barriers that
had so definitively shaped my own experience in the
protestant church. But I was also angry- not so much
at my brothers who, quite frankly, possessed on this
day a humility I had rarely witnessed in this
particular setting, but more so because of the
implications engendered by these observations. “It
is because beauty has become a vice in the church
today,” I wanted to suggest. “Perhaps the church has
forsaken the possibility and actuality of
incarnation. Beauty, as we now encounter it,
solicits our objectification of it. When we
encounter something or someone who is beautiful, we
either want to own it or destroy it. But Mary is
both intangible and indestructible. And as such we
perceive her to be a threat.”
This moment
became a catalyst for my simultaneously pursuing the
questions: why have Protestants largely abandoned
Mary? And why have so many Protestant churches
similarly abandoned the arts? Clearly two very
different questions but in seeking to answer the
former, I realized these two issue are inextricably
linked.
Trying to determine the origins of Marian piety in
the Church is a bit like trying to determine which
came first the chicken or the egg? The early
proliferation of her image indicates that early on
followers of Christ revered Mary as Jesus’ mother.
But it is difficult to determine whether this
reverence was the impetus for the depictions or
whether the depictions became a catalyst for what
eventually led to the inclusion of Mary in Christian
liturgy. What is clear, however, is that at some
point the veneration of Mary necessarily involved
the presence of her image. Intrigued by this
observation I sought to understand why this was the
case. I found the answer by looking at the
Christological debates of the early Church.
Indeed Mary
played an integral role in the Christological
debates in that it was largely the issue of proper
attributions for Mary that led to the Church’s
affirming the doctrine of the Incarnation. The
Council of Ephesus was called in response to a
growing division in the church between Cyril,
Archbishop of Alexandria, and Nestorius, Archbishop
of Constantinople. The main issues were the title of
Mary as Theotokos (God-Bearer) and the two natures
of Christ that the title implied. Whereas the school
of Alexandria stressed the unity of the subject of
Christ, the school of Antioch emphasized the
differences between Christ’s divinity and humanity.
Nestorius argued that the proper title for Mary
would be Christotokos, which he felt better
explained the proper differentiations between the
two natures of Christ. Cyril of Alexandria argued
just the opposite. For him the title Theotokos
affirmed the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. To
say that Mary is anything less than the Mother of
God is to deny Christ his divinity.
The two
eventually reached a unified statement known as the
Antiochian Confession which is reflected in the
following homily:
For the
Theotokos Mary gave birth among us to Emmanuel, and
Emmanuel is God who became man. For God the Word was
born of the Father before all ages ineffably and
inexpressibly, is also born of the woman in the last
days. For having taken up our nature completely, and
making familiar to himself the human form and
conception, and making our body a temple for
himself, he came from the Theotokos perfect God and
perfect human, one and the same. (Homily I § 3)
The unified statement enabled Mary to maintain a
prominent role in the church but did not mark an end
to her tenuous position in orthodox worship. Some
were not content with the confession and continued
to take issue with it. Those who celebrated the
affirmation of the Theotokos did so by creating more
images of her and even began building churches in
her name. This led to what some consider the
conclusion of the Christological debates, namely the
iconoclast controversy of the eighth century. Once
again, the central issue was the Incarnation and its
implications for Christian worship. Those who
opposed the invocation of images argued such a
practice was against the Old Testament condemnation
of idolatry. Those who upheld the use of images in
Christian worship argued it was an inevitable result
of the Incarnation. St. John of Damascus was a
champion iconodule who wrote a number of treatises
in defense of the divine images. He wrote:
When he who is
bodiless and without form, immeasurable in the
boundlessness of His own nature, existing in the
form of God, empties Himself and takes the form of a
servant in substance and in stature and is found in
a body of flesh, then you may draw His image and
show it to anyone willing to gaze upon it. Depict
his wonderful condescension, His birth from the
Virgin, His baptism in the Jordan, His
transfiguration on Tabor, His sufferings which have
freed us from passion, His death, His miracles which
are signs of His divine nature, since through divine
power He worked them in the flesh. Show His saving
cross, the tomb, the resurrection, the ascension
into the heavens. Use every kind of drawing, word,
or color.—On the Divine Images
There is much
at stake here. The means of revelation have changed
now that God has revealed himself to us in the
flesh. Images are now not only appropriate but
ordained as a means by which we might understand the
mystery of the Incarnation.
Thus, art i.e., the making of images, is
inextricably linked to the Theotokos insofar as she
is the one through whom we witness and experience
the mystery of God Incarnate. Mary is the original
paradox whereby our faith is born.
The end of my
exploration looked surprisingly like the beginning.
Just as I struggled with the which comes first
question when looking for the origins of Marian
piety in the Church, I found myself faced with a
similar conclusion. I was surprised to discover that
Mary was not abandoned by the Reformers. Although by
their time certain Mariological doctrines had
developed that they could not abide, in the end
Zwingli, Luther, even Calvin, in the very least
acknowledged Mary’s significance as the Theotokos. I
wonder then, has she disappeared from the doxology
of the church because of the absence of her image?
My painting is my own response to this question. I
wrote a proposal for a thesis project, and sought
permission to do a painting, not because I didn’t
feel like writing any more papers, but because I
felt it necessary that the form and content of the
thesis be consonant. A painting affirms the
conclusions of the Christological debates, including
the iconoclast controversy. To confirm Mary as
Theotokos is to celebrate the life, death, and
resurrection of the God who imagined himself for our
sake. For this reason the Christological debates of
the early church are pertinent for the Church today.
For much is at stake when we rely too heavily on the
immaterial to experience an embodied God.
Looking down
at the image of Mary the young man confesses, “She
is beautiful, and I simply don’t know what to do
with that.” I wonder, is our aversion to Mary really
about Mary? Is it Mary’s beauty, or the beauty of a
transcendent God incarnate in flesh that frightens
us? I think if we were honest, most of us would
admit that when we are encountered by beauty, we too
find that we do not know what to do with it.
I fear this is a symptom of a Church who has, for
too long, relied solely on the intellectual worship
of God. We have forgotten what it means to be
confronted by the God who came in the flesh so that
we might see him, touch him, feed him, and hear him.
Our foremothers and fathers understood that the
inevitable result of the Incarnation is the divine
invitation to encounter God through all of our
senses.
Creating this painting gave me the opportunity to
affirm for myself, and I hope for the community,
that in order for the Church to truly be the
embodiment of a God who became flesh we must
recognize that not all theologians use words. When
we are able to embrace this we will no longer fear
beauty as something counter to holiness. But until
we embrace the fullness of our faith we will
continue to walk in darkness having eyes that do not
see and ears that do not hear.
I close with this exhortation from St. John of
Damascus and ask that you would join me in a brief
meditation on the One who gave birth to our Lord:
If you say that only intellectual worship is worthy
of God, then take away all corporeal things: lights,
the fragrance of incense, prayer made by the voice.
Do away with the divine mysteries which are
fulfilled through matter: bread, wine, the oil of
chrism, the sign of the cross. All these things are
matter! Take away the cross and the sponge of the
crucifixion, and the spear which pierced his
lifegiving side. Either give up honoring all these
things, or do not refuse to honor images.
The original presentation concluded with a visual
collage comprised of images of Mary from various
eras and cultures set to the hymn, “Veni Veni
Emmanuel” (“O Come, O Come Emmanuel”).
