sub Mariae nominae

sub Mariae nominae

Simone Martini, segment of the Annunciation. 1333. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, IT. 

“Just for this evening, won’t you put me before you

Until I’m far enough away you can

Believe in me?

Then try, try to come closer--

My wonderful and less than.”

Contemporary poet Mary Szybist captures at once the mythology and humanity of Mary, as she reflects on the coincidence of their shared name and their discrepancies in virtue. Her work, a series of re-workings of the ‘Annunciation’, reflect in turn both the human nervousness of girlhood and the divine courage channeled through the Virgin, particularly in the moment when she announces that she is the ‘handmaid of the Lord’. We, or I, are drawn to Mary as the greatest intercessor because she has experienced the minutiae of life: held a squalling child, given birth in indignity, been married, prayed, been humble and died -- yet we are all distant from her, stand in front of her, conscious of our imperfection in the face of her unknowable goodness. She draws us all, wonderful/and less than, near to her -- she has birthed our salvation and therefore invited us with her into God’s eternal kingdom.

I never feel so small as I do when I think and write about the Blessed Virgin. When I was young, steeped in Marian Catholicism, the sisters taught me to ‘be like Mary/ act like Mary/ and think like Mary’, and reminded me that all of my actions were done ‘sub Mariae nominae’, in Mary’s name, for better or for worse. Her stories shaped my girlhood, my womanhood, and most of all the fragile in-between space of the two, her ever-present image keeping a (stern) watch over me. While she could be virgin and mother both, the implication of age is the transition from one state to another, Mary’s perfection residing in part in her ability to live through this contradiction of age and being.

But, as Simone Weil says, ‘the mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation’. The Blessed Virgin’s paradoxical nature as virgin/mother circumvents this desire to confine, to place labels of true/untrue, divine/mortal, holy/human. She is both, and all, and, as Clairvaux says, “Truly full of grace, because from her fullness all captives receive redemption, the sick receive healing, the sorrowful consolation, sinners forgiveness, the righteous grace, the angels joy, and finally the whole Trinity receives glory and the Son of man the substance of human flesh” (197, Bernard). All, even God, receive from her goodness.

The Golden Legend describes, with joyful detail, the life-long piety of Mary: she habitually interacts with angels in the temple, weaves the veil for the temple, resides there until her marriage. When she leaves the temple to marry, she does so to demonstrate her ultimate capacity for all varieties of human life: she is wife, mother and virgin, woman and girl, the holiest of holies and a human woman. Her body is beyond her; it is a sacred vessel, and yet she works, pains and dies in keeping with human kind. She is the mother of God but also the mother of Jesus, a child, she has both nourished the Creator within her womb and watched, struck with sadness, as her Lord and her Son suffer and die on the cross. For this she is the ultimate intercessor -- Bernard of Clairvaux writes:

“Oh, if any of you recognizes that he is caught between storms and tempests, tossed about in the flood of this world, instead of walking on dry land, keep your eyes fixed on the glow of this star, unless you want to perish, overwhelmed by the tempest!

If the winds of temptations surge, if you run aground on the shoals of troubles, look to this star, call upon Mary!

If you are tossed by the winds of pride or ambition or detraction or jealousy, look to this star, call upon Mary!

If anger or greed or the allurements of the flesh dash against the boat of your mind, look to Mary!

And if you are troubled by the enormity of your sins, confused by the foulness of your conscience, terrified by the horror of the Judgment, so that you begin to be swallowed up by the pit of sadness, the abyss of despair, think of Mary!

In dangers, in straits, in perplexity, think of Mary, call upon Mary. Let her name be always in your mouth and in your heart, and, if you would ask for and obtain the help of her prayers, do not forget the example of how she lived.

If you follow her, you will not go astray. If you pray to her, you will not despair. If you think of her, you will not be lost. If you cling to her, you will not fall. If she protects you, you will not fear; if she is your guide, you will not tire; if she is favorable to you, you will reach your goal. Thus you will experience personally how rightly it was spoken: "And the Virgin's name was Mary."

He uses the language of the storm and the tempest because she is Mary, the Star of the Sea. She is virtue, purely, lifted from the sea of human kind to shine above them; she illuminates its depths and reflects light upon it, fosters warmth and light and goodness within it. She is a guiding point, a source of constant illumination, remaining eternally bright and untarnished through the darkest of storms. She is called ‘star’ apart from the hosts of the Blessed because she is not only the perfect mirror of the Lord, like the sea on still day, she holds his light within her, as she held Christ within her. She who mothered God has within her heart and mind the capacity to mother all Creation, such that, as Bernard writes, the constant invocation of her name will serve as a path out of the sea and into the Kingdom of God.

Quivi perdei la vista e la parola; nel nome di Maria fini’, e quivi

caddi, e rimasa la mia carne sola.

Io dirò vero, e tu ‘l ridi tra ‘vivi:

l’angel di Dio mi prese, e quel d’inferno

gridava: “O tu del ciel, perché mi privy?

Tu te ne porti de costui l’etterno

per una lagrimetta che ‘l mi toglie.

(Purg. 5.100-107)

Dante, in the second Canto of his Purgatorio, addresses specifically the redemptive quality of the name of the Virgin: the soul of Buonconte, an unrepentant sinner and solider from the battle of Campaldino, is spared Hell because he utters the name of the Virgin on his dying breath. The saying of her name alone is enough to redeem him to the mount of Purgatory, to expel the angel of Hell and bring for the Angel of the Lord.

Szybist gives us a very different invocation of the name of the Virgin, perhaps because of the incidence of their shared name:

Mary, what word, what dust

Can I look behind? I carried you a long way

Into my mirror, believing you would carry me

Back out. Mary, I am still

For you, I am still a numbness for you.

She, too, speaks of ‘carrying’ the Virgin with her, the same action that Clairvaux advocates for. Her language melds the language of reflection and this notion of carrying, breaching the perfect/imperfect reflective quality of souls and shifting the weight of the carried from the carrying of the name to the carrying nature of the Virgin, i.e., as womb. Szybist looks towards Mary as an intercessor that has lived through human experience - paradoxically, a myriad of experiences - who has died and been ‘dust’, who has moved in and out of the divine and has had the divine inside and outside of her. That she is numb for the Virgin - I think we  all feel numb in the face of the Virgin’s life, her incredible grief and astonishing compassion. You do not open yourself to one who has had all within her - you make yourself numb, and in that way, a canvas to her ultimate love.

Peace & Blessings,

Joan

[1] Incarnardine: Poems, Mary Szybist, 2013
[2] Gravity and Grace, Simone Weil, 1947
[3] The Golden Legend: Readings On The Saints, Jacobus de Voragine ; translated by William Granger Ryan. Citing Bernard of Clairvaux. 
[4] The Name of Mary, Bernard of Clairvaux
[5] Purgatorio, Dante Alighieri
[6] Incarnardine: Poems, Mary Szybist, 2013