WHO IS MY MOTHER?
Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is
my brother, and sister, and mother,
S. Matt. XII, 50.
Grant, we beseech thee, almighty God, that we may keep with an
immaculate heart the sacrament which we have received in honour of the
blessed virgin mother Mary; so that we who celebrate her feast now, may
be found worthy when we have left this life to pass into her company.
Through &c.
SARUM MISSAL.
Our Blessed Lord had begun his ministry of preaching. The mark of the
early days of that preaching was success. Crowds came about Him wherever
He taught. The fact that there were frequent miracles of healing no
doubt added to the popularity that He achieved. It was largely the
popularity of a new and strange movement, of a preaching cutting across
the normal roads of instruction to which the Jewish people were
accustomed. There was a fascination about its form, its picturesque way
of conveying its meaning, its use of the parable drawn from the everyday
circumstances of life. There was nothing of hesitation in the words of
the new Preacher, but the ring of a dogmatic certainty. "He taught as
one having authority, and not as the scribes." He pushed aside the
rulings of the traditional teaching with His, "Ye have heard it said ...
but I say." "Verily, verily, I say unto you." And yet there are people
who tell us that there was nothing dogmatic about our Lord and His
teaching! One would infer from much that is written upon the subject of
our Lord's teaching that He was a very mild giver of good advice but
evidently the Scribes and Pharisees did not think so. They saw in Him a
man who was setting himself to undermine their whole authority.
This popularity was at a high point when an interesting event happened
of which we have an account in the first of the Gospels. "His mother
and His brethren stood without, desiring to speak with Him." One gathers
from the whole tone of the narrative that they were anxious about Him,
that they looked with doubt upon this career of popular teacher that He
was launched upon and felt that He was going too far. He needed advice
and restraint, perhaps; it may be that there were already reports of
possible interference by the national authorities. The fact that His
"brethren" were present suggests the well meant interference of the
older members of the family, who must always have thought Jesus rather
strange. That they had induced His mother to come with them makes us
think that they were counting on the influence naturally hers, an
influence which must always have been apparent in their family
relations. So we reconstruct the incident.
No doubt S. Mary herself was anxious. She must always have been anxious
as to what would be the next step in the development of her mysterious
Child. And while there was one side of her relation to Jesus which would
always have run out into mystery, the mystery of the as yet unrevealed
will of God; on the other side she was no doubt a very real normal human
mother, with all a mother's anxiety and need of constant intervention in
the life of her Child. I do not suppose that S. Mary, any more than any
other mother, ever understood that her Son had grown up and could be
trusted to conduct the ordinary affairs of the day without her help. She
was no doubt as much concerned as any mother with the fact that His feet
might be wet, or that He might not have had any lunch, or that he might
have got run over by a passing chariot, or have been taken mysteriously
ill. It was, we may think, this mother-attitude which brought her along
with the brethren to give some advice as to how to carry on the
preaching mission and avoid getting into trouble with the religious
authorities. "One said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren
stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said
unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And
he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my
mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father
which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and
my brother."
Our Lord had a way of turning the passing incidents of the moment to
account in His preaching, making them the texts of moral and spiritual
teaching. One gathers that more than one of the parables and parabolic
sayings was suggested by something that was before the eyes of His
hearers. He was quick to seize any spoken word, any question, any
exclamation, and to turn it to immediate account. It was so now. The
report that His mother and His brethren were seeking Him, He made the
occasion of a statement of vast import. When we try to think it out, it
was not in the least, as it has been perversely understood, an impatient
rebuff of an untimely interference, an indication that He did not care
for their intervention in a work that they did not understand. There is
really nothing of all that, but a seizing of a passing incident as the
medium of an universal truth. It is the skill of one who knows that the
human attention is caught by a matter, however trifling, which is
vividly present. The scene is sharply defined for us: our Lord
interrupted in His talk; the report of the mother and the brethren
seeking Him; the obvious interest of the people as to how He will take
their intervention; and then the rapid seizing of this interest to make
His declaration: "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in
heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and my brother."
And what are we to understand Him to mean? Surely He is declaring that
through the revelation of God that He is, there is a new stage in God's
work for man being entered upon, and that this new stage will be
characterised by the emergence of a new set of relations, relations so
important that they throw into the background the ordinary relations of
life. He is proclaiming to them the advent of the Kingdom of God; and in
that Kingdom, the service of God will be put first, before all human
relations. It will not be antagonistic to human relations; indeed, it
will hallow them and raise them to a higher level; but in case they, as
not infrequently they will, decline to adjust themselves to the work of
the Kingdom, or set themselves in opposition to it, then will they be
brushed aside, no matter what they be. If we can consecrate our human
relations and bring them into God, then will they be ours still with a
vast enrichment and a rare spiritual beauty; but if they remain selfish,
insist on absorbing all attention and energy, then they must be broken.
The love of father and mother and children is an holy thing wherever we
find it, but it is capable of becoming a selfish and perverse thing,
insistent upon its own ends and declining wider responsibilities. In
that case it must be regarded from the standpoint of a higher good: if
it stand in the path of the Kingdom it must be swept aside. So our Lord
declared in one of the most searching of His utterances; one of the
utterances which we feel could come only from the lips of God: "Think
not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but
a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and
the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her
mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be those of his own household. He
that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he
that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."
That is the teaching of the incident before us. Our Lord's primary
mission is to declare the will of God, and to make known the mind of the
Father to all who will heed. Their acceptance of this will of the Father
will bring them into a new relation to Him more important than, and
transcending, all relations of flesh and blood. But--and this is
important to mark--it does not exclude relations of flesh and blood; but
it demands that they shall be put on a new basis and be assimilated to
the higher relation. In our Lord's case they were in fact so
assimilated. The blessed Mother and the brethren did not resist God's
will when they came to understand it. They were, we know, glad of the
higher relation, the new privilege. There is no ground at all for the
suggestion of any breach between them. They are of the inner circle
always in the Kingdom of the regenerate.
This fundamental truth of Christ's teaching, that through Him a new and
closer relation to the Father becomes possible, and that the Kingdom is
its embodiment, is one of the truths which have received constant
lip-service, but have never been really assimilated in the working life
of the Church. That the Church is the Body of Christ and we His members,
and that by virtue of this membership in Him we are also members one of
another; that we are, at our entrance into the Kingdom, made, as the
Catechism puts it, members of Christ, children of God, and heirs of the
kingdom of Heaven are truths of most marvellous reach and of splendid
social implications. But can we say that they have very wide or real
acknowledgment?
In face of a divided Christendom it seems almost farcical to talk of a
Christian Brotherhood. The baptismal membership of the Church of God has
fallen into group organisations whose mutual antagonism is of the
bitterest kind. The so-called "religious press" is perhaps the saddest
picture of modern Christian life. One could name a half dozen journals
off hand, organs of this or that group, every one a sufficient
refutation of the claim of the Christian Religion to be a Brotherhood of
the Redeemed. There is no possible excuse for the tone of such
publications.
No doubt it is an inevitable result of the state of a divided
Christendom that there should be disputes and controversies. We shall
never reach any expression of the Brotherhood that is the Church by
saying, Peace, Peace, where there is no Peace. The unity we look to must
be reached through painful sacrifice and through conflict; and we know
that the wisdom that is from above is "first pure, and then peaceable,"
But it is quite possible while holding with all firmness to the truth,
to hold it in the fear and love of God.
So long as Christendom is thus divided into hostile camps the ideal of
brotherhood is impossible of realisation. I do not want however to
discuss this matter from the point of view of Church unity. I want to
point out that within the groups themselves there is small vision of the
meaning of the oneness of Christ. For brotherhood is the expression of a
spiritual reality. It looked for a moment in the early days of the
Church as though the ideal would be realised. The description of the
Church was that "all that believed were together, and had all things in
common: and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all
men, as every man had need." That was, no doubt, a passing phase of the
life of the Church in Jerusalem, but we have evidence that elsewhere all
distinctions based upon social considerations were for the moment swept
away. There is "neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free,
there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."
Our glimpses of the congregations of the early Church are of men and
women of all classes held together by the bond of a common membership in
Christ, so strongly felt as to enable them to forget all worldly
distinctions. Their sense of redemption was strong. They thrilled with
the joy of deliverance from the old life "after the flesh." They knew
that they were regenerate, new creations, and that this was the
distinction of the brother who knelt beside them at their communions. It
mattered not at all what he was in the world, whether he were Greek or
Barbarian, whether he were patrician or freedman, whether he were of the
slaves of Rome or of Caesar's household. The man who knelt to receive
his communion might be a great nobleman, the priest who communicated him
might be a slave: that did not matter; the significant thing was that
they were both one in Jesus Christ.
That did not last. I suppose that it could not be expected to last in an
unconverted or half converted world. It could only last on condition of
the fairly complete isolation of the Christian group from the rest of
society, pending the conversion of society as a whole. But it proved
impossible to secure the isolation. The only real isolation was in
monastic groups which naturally could contain only such men and women as
God called to a special sort of life: the whole of society could not be
so organised. As the Church grew and took in the various social
constituents included in the Empire, it took them in differentiated as
they were. There seems to have been no real effort to break down race
distinctions or class distinctions. There were no doubt protests, but
the protests were as ineffective then as now. "You cannot change human
nature," men say; but that in fact is precisely what Christianity
claims to do. Unless it can change human nature it is a failure.
The ideal of Christianity is not the abolition of inequality (only a
certain sort of social theorists are insane enough to expect that). All
men are born unequal in a variety of ways, physical, intellectual,
moral; and under any form of society that so far has been invented they
are born in social classes which remain very hard realities in spite of
our theories. What Christianity aims at accomplishing is to transcend
these inequalities, natural and artificial, by raising men to a state of
spiritual equality, a state which ensures true and full enjoyment of all
the privileges of the child of God. In this state there is open to all
the gift of sanctifying grace which is the possession of God now, and in
the future will unfold into the capacity of the complete participation
of the life of heaven. This belongs to, is within the grasp of, any
child, any ignorant peasant, any toiler, as much as it is within the
grasp of bishop or priest or Religious. And this much--and how much it
is!--the Church has succeeded in accomplishing. It may be slow in
offering the riches of the Gospel to the unconverted world, but where it
has presented the Gospel, it presents it to all men as a Gospel of
salvation and sanctification. When tempted to discouragement let us
remember that whatever the shortcoming of the Church, it is yet true
that every man, woman and child in these United States of America can
through its instrumentality, become a saint whenever he desires. But,
naturally, to become a saint, effort is necessary.
Where the Church has failed is not in the offer of salvation and
sanctity, but in removing some of of the obvious obstacles to its
attainment by many to whom it appeals, to whom its divine mission is. It
has not succeeded in convincing us that we are members one of another,
that is, it has not succeeded in persuading us to act upon what we
profess in any broad way. The Church is not a fellowship in any
comprehensive sense. The divisions which run through secular society and
divide group from group run through it also. The parish which should be
the exemplification of the Christian brotherhood in action is not so.
Too often a parish is known as the parish of a certain social group.
There are parishes to which people go to get "into society." Very likely
they do not succeed, but that is the sort of impression that the parish
membership has made upon them. Then there are parishes to which people
"in society" would not be transferred. There are churches in which no
poor person would set foot, not that they would be unwelcome, but that
they would feel out of place. So long as such things are true, our
practice of brotherhood has not much to commend of it.
And when we go about setting things right I am not sure that we do not
mostly make them worse. I do not believe that it is the business of the
Church to set about the abolition of inequalities and the getting rid of
the distinctions between man and man. Apart from the waste of time due
to attempting the impossible, what would be gained? Pending the arrival
of the social millenium we need to do something; and that something, it
seems to me a mistake to assume must be social. "We must bring people
together": but what is gained by bringing people together when they do
not want to be together, and will not actually get together when you
force them into proximity. There is nothing more expressive of the
failure of well-meant activity than a church gathering where people at
once group themselves along the familiar lines and decline to mix,
notwithstanding the utmost endeavours of clergy and zealous ladies to
bring them together. The thing is an object lesson of wrong method.
Is there a right method? There must be, though no one seems to have
found it yet. There is in any case a right point of departure in our
common membership in Jesus Christ. Suppose we drop the supposition that
we make, I presume because we think it pious, that if they are both
Christians a dock labourer ought to be quite at home at a millionaire's
dinner party, or a scrub-woman in a box at the Metropolitan opera house.
Suppose we drop the attempt to force people together on lines which will
be impossible till after the social revolution has buried us all in a
common grave, and fasten attention on the one fact that, from our
present point of view, counts, the fact that we are Christians. Suppose
one learns to meet all men and all women simply on the basis of their
religion; when that forms the bond that unites us when we come together,
we have at once common grounds of interest in the life and activities of
the Body of Christ. Suppose the millionaire going down town in his motor
sees his clerk walking and stops and picks him up, and instead of
talking constrainedly about the weather or about business, he begins
naturally to talk to him about spiritual matters. Why could they not
talk about the Mission that has just been held, or the Quiet Day that is
in prospect? One great trouble, is it not? is that we fight shy of
talking to our fellow-Christians of the interests that we really have in
common and try to put intercourse on some other ground where we have
little or nothing in common. The things that should, and probably do,
vitally interest us, we decline to talk about at all. We are so stiff
and formal and restrained in all matter of personal religious experience
that we are unable to express the fact of Christian Brotherhood. The
fact that you smile at the presentment of the case, that you cannot even
imagine yourself talking about your spiritual experience with your clerk
or your employer, shows how far you are from a truly Christian
conception of Brotherhood.
Our Lord's words that we are making our subject indicate the paramount
importance that He laid upon the acceptance of God's will as the
ultimate rule of life. "Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which
is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and my brother." "Ye
are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." That is the common
ground on which we are all invited to stand, the ground of a common
loyalty to God, of intense zeal for the cause of God. Our Lord gave His
whole life to that cause. As His disciples watched Him on an occasion,
they remembered that it was written: "The zeal of thine house hath
eaten me up." Zeal is not a very popular quality because it is always
disturbing the equanimity and self-complacency of lukewarm people. And
then, we dislike to be thought fanatics. But I fancy that there will
always be a touch of the fanatic about any very zealous Christian, and
it is not worth while to suppress our zeal for fear of the world's
judgment upon it. What we have to avoid is the misdirection of zeal.
There is, no doubt, a zeal which is "not according to knowledge." We
need to be sure, in other words, that our zeal is a zeal for God, and
not a zeal for party or person or cause. It is no doubt quite easy to
imagine that we are seeking to do God's will when we are merely seeking
to impose on our own will. Self-seeking is quite destructive of the
friendship and service of God. The Kingdom whose interests we are
attempting to forward may turn out to be a Kingdom in which we expect to
sit on the right hand or the left of the throne because of the
brilliance of the service rendered.
Life is simplified very much when the will of God thus becomes its
guiding principle, and all other relations of life are subordinated to
our relation to our heavenly Father. Then have we brought life to that
complete simplicity which is near akin to peace. When we have learned in
deciding any line of action not to think what our neighbours and friends
will feel, or what the world will think, but only what God will think,
we have little difficulty in making up our minds. Suppose that a boy has
to make up his mind whether he will study for the priesthood, the vital
thing on which to concentrate his thought and prayer is whether God is
calling him to that life, and if he is convinced that he is being called
the whole question should be settled. In fact in most cases it is far
from being settled because this simplicity has not been attained. There
is a whole social circle to be dealt with, who urge the hardness of the
life, the scant reward, the greater advantages of a business career, and
so on; all of which have absolutely nothing to do with the question to
be decided. It is so all through life. In most questions of life's
decisions, no doubt, there is no sense of any vocation at all, of a
determining will of God; but is not that because we assume that God has
no will in such matters, and leaves us free to follow our own devices?
Such an assumption is hardly justified in the case of One to Whom the
fall of a sparrow is a matter of interest. It is our weakness, or the
sign of our spiritual incompetence, that we have unconsciously removed
the greater part of life from the jurisdiction of the divine will. We do
not habitually think of God as interested in the facts of daily
experience; we do not take Him with us into offices and factories.
Perhaps we think that they are hardly fit places for God, and I have no
doubt that He has many things to suffer there. But He is there, and will
suffer, until we recognise His right there, and insist upon His there
being supreme.
Let us go back for a moment to Our Lady standing outside the place where
Jesus was preaching, perplexed and worried at the course He was taking.
I suppose that it is always easier to surrender ourselves unreservedly
into God's hands than it is to so surrender some one we love. I suppose
that S. Mary so trusted in God that she never thought with anxiety of
what His providence was preparing for her; but she would not quite take
that attitude about her Son; or rather, while she did intellectually, no
doubt, take that attitude, her feelings never went the whole distance
that her mind went. But surrender to the will of God means complete
surrender of ourself and ours. It means absolute confidence in God, it
means lying quiet in his arms, as the child lies still in the arms of
his mother. It means that we trust God.
Rose-Mary, Sum of virtue virginal,
Fresh Flower on whom the dew of heaven downfell;
O Gem, conjoined in joy angelical,
In whom rejoiced the Saviour was to dwell:
Of refuge Ark, of mercy Spring and Well,
Of Ladies first, as is of letters A,
Empress of heaven, of paradise and hell--
Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway.
O Star, that blindest Phoebus' beams so bright,
With course above the empyrean crystalline;
Above the sphere of Saturn's highest height,
Surmounting all the angelic orders nine;
O Lamp, that shin'st before the throne divine,
Where sounds hosanna in cherubic lay,
With drum and organ, harp and cymbeline--
Mother, of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
O Cloister chaste of pure virginity,
That Christ hath closed 'gainst crime for evermo';
Triumphant Temple of the Trinity,
That didst the eternal Tartarus o'erthrow;
Princess of peace, imperial Palm, I trow,
From thee our Samson sprang invict in fray;
Who, with one buffet, Belial hath laid low--
Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
Thy blessed sides the mighty Champion bore,
Who hath, with many a bleeding wound in fight,
Victoriously o'erthrown the dragon hoar
That ready was his flock to slay and smite;
Nor all the gates of hell him succour might,
Since he that robber's rampart brake away,
While all the demons trembled at the sight--
Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
O Maiden meek, chief Mediatrix for man,
And Mother mild, full of humility,
Pray to thy Son, with wounds that sanguine ran,
Whereby for all our trespass slain was he.
And since he bled his blood upon a tree,
'Gainst Lucifer, our foe, to be our stay,
That we in heaven may sing upon our knee--
Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
Hail, Pearl made pure; hail, Port of paradise;
Hail, Ruby, redolent of rays to us;
Hail, Crystal clear, Empress and Queen, hail thrice;
Mother of God, hail, Maid exalted thus;
O Gratia plena, tecum Dominus;
With Gabriel that we may sing and say,
Benedicta tu in mulieribus--
Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway.
William Dunbar,
XV-XVI. Cents.
PART TWO