Letter #161: You Keep Using that Word
Does it mean what I think it means?
Father Klavan,
Wait did you...did you just become a Mary enjoyer?
No joke, I’m not sure. I sit here reading over your last letter and I genuinely can’t tell what I would say if someone asked me whether you believe in Mary’s perpetual virginity. You write that even if Mary went on to bear children in the usual way, her virgin motherhood is preserved eternally from God’s point of view, where he presides over all moments “outside the logic of time and so beyond linearity and causation.”
I find this profoundly moving, imaginative, and even plausible. At the same time, it has to be said that it’s not what most believers or clerics have in mind when they say that Mary is “ever-virgin.” When I hear that phrase I usually take the speaker to mean that Mary not only never had known man when the angel visited her, but never would know man thereafter, so that the men called Jesus’ “brothers” in the Gospels are really his cousins, etc.
That’s not what I think, but judging from the arguments I read about the subject online, it’s very much what most people who take the Catholic position think. In respect of these details, you and they remain at odds.
Still and all...are there any traditional Marian prayers you couldn’t in good conscience pray, given what you do believe? It sounds like you’d be perfectly content to “ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin…to pray for [you] to the Lord our God.” You could even kneel in a Catholic pew and pray that same prayer, even if you would mean something very different by the words than the people on either side of you.
And here’s what really fascinates me: is there a certain extent to which every individual believer is in the same position? All of us who go to church repeat certain words together—the Nicene Creed, for instance. We have to be in broad agreement about what they mean, or else they would mean nothing. When you and I say Christ “rose from the dead,” we better both mean bodily, or something’s seriously wrong.
But do we both mean exactly the same thing by every word? Or does each of us also fill the ritual utterance with his own private understanding, the details of his personal history with God? When we say the name “Jesus” we all refer to the same man. But each of us who knows him has come to him for the healing of secret wounds, has seen perhaps a different side of him—the way I know a different version of you than mom knows. Same guy, different relationship.
This seems important. We desperately need orthodoxy; we rightly dread insincerity. But is it possible that each of us has to saturate the words of the creed with an understanding all his own, like a white stone bearing a name no man knows—except the one man named, and the one who names all men?
Love,
Spencer
 | A guest post by
|
I recommend a good reading of Tozer’s book The Knowledge of the Holy. In its first chapter it encourages us to get a right picture of God as our imagination makes way to idolatry. Which is quite humbling to say the least.
On another note, I don’t know much about Mary’s perpetual virginity as I’m not catholic. But I am a fervent believer of Christ and the Bible. But isn’t it stated in Mark 3 that his brothers and mother, and some versions and his sister, are looking for him? If it’s not in the Bible the perpetual virginity I don’t honestly see a real purpose in believing her virginity to be necessary. Do we need that to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, despite his many miracles, teachings, and resurrection? It’s a bit silly. Women are important, and we have a beautiful duty and role to fill in our lives for our husbands and children, but perpetually a virgin is definitely not one of them. And I think Mary and Joseph would feel the same way.
This is a great group, and an important group as it wrestles honestly with the underlying mystery of God's majesty and God's humility as he desires to reveal himself to us everyday. However, to make statements like: "It's a bit silly", or "It doesn't matter" sets a person immediately at odds with many many holy people throughout history that see very clearly why the doctrine of perpetual virginity does matter and isn't silly. I certainly have a tendency to be a reductionist....how is something going to impact me NOW.
After many years of study, and much prayer, once my mind fixed on the realtiy that to listen to the chuch IS to listen to Jesus I experienced (contrary to common wisdom) freedom not slavery. I can now relax and be confident that in God's time.... the beauty of this revealed truth will provide deeper insights to the reality of God himself (this is happened many times).
Chesterton from Orthodoxy: "I freely confess all the idiotic ambitions of the end of the
nineteenth century. I did, like all other solemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age.
Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I found that I was
eighteen hundred years behind it." Also from Chesterton: ~"I could have saved myself a lot of time if I would have read my catechism."
I didn't care to address the doctrine directly. There is more than enough beautiful reflections available which do this better than I can.......if someone want's to read and ponder them (ponder....a great Marian word).
Holiness is the Church's primary business. Everything else in her is a means to that end. Even the ministry of assuring unity and teaching authoratively in the Church, however essential, is but a means to the greater end of her holiness (and the holiness of her children); and therefore the catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 773) says that the "Marian dimension of the church (promoting holiness) precedes the Petrine (Peter and his successors)"
Let us all pray for each other that we grow in holiness today, and become more like Mary....filling with grace, and looking to her as humanity's hope for what God can do to those who love him.