knowledge through beauty
Mary and I have a troubled history. By Mary, I mean the Blessed Mother, Queen of Heaven, Theotokos. Maybe you know her simply as Mary from the Gospels, which is how I first knew her.
As a child, I remember the Nativity set that came out every Christmas—the carved, wooden pieces booby-trapped on that angel-hair decorative down that would delicately slit your finger, as though to say, “Do not touch these—they’re from Bethlehem!” That’s the only time of year I really thought of Mary, or any of the other figures—Joseph, the shepherds, wisemen, and Christ as a child. The whole Nativity scene was a thing of beauty, peace, and calm; thus Mary remained in my mind, a lifeless figure, but very beautiful and peaceful.
As an older, little girl, I wanted to be her in the Christmas play, partly because she was the only girl (if you weren’t Mary, you had to be a cross-dressing shepherd). But I think I also wanted to play her because she was the ideal ingénue: a young, beautiful small-town girl gets her fortune turned around and becomes the star of the story, looking beautiful in blue and oddly luminous post-labor at the cradle. You could say that as a little girl, around Christmas and only then, I was drawn to what I perceived to be a kind of girlish, whimsical charm in Mary.
I thought of her a little more around the age of 13 and 14 since it’s believed she gave birth to Jesus around that age, which was difficult for me to comprehend in the midst of my early teenage angst. I had recently become a member of the Quaker church and I was ready to take my faith seriously. I loved Jesus and wanted to commit myself to Him in a powerful way (“missionary in Africa” was how I interpreted that). I thought of Mary briefly in context of my own desire to be thought of as remarkable in God’s eyes, so remarkable as to be given a great commission. But as far as the person of Mary, the Gospels were the only place I could encounter her; I strove to become the Biblical scholar all we young church-goers were encouraged to be, so it didn’t escape my notice that post-Nativity story, Mary all but vanished from the Gospels.
Somehow, and I don’t know how this happens, I absorbed the anti-Mary-ness of my Protestant tradition. It wasn’t as though I heard a sermon against Mary; it’s just that she was never talked about, while other exemplary followers of God—Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets—were talked about at length.
Many converts from Protestantism have had the same experience and shared similar stories; mine is unoriginal in that way. Let it suffice to say, Mary was little more than a nativity figurine, or felt character on the board in a Sunday school room; her silence rendered her dumb, her absence rendered her unimportant.
Then she quietly showed up when I was 16 years old. I had just started dating a Catholic. He wasn’t really practicing his faith at the time, but was offended when I nonchalantly referred to how he wasn’t really a Christian, and worshiped Mary. (I guess I hadn’t quite mastered the subtlety of evangelization.) It wasn’t that he said or did anything that convinced me otherwise (at least, at that time), but the very fact that I knew a Catholic forced me to re-examine my perception.
That summer, I went on a tour of the Iberian Peninsula with my grandparents. The final aim of this tour was to meet up with old friends in Valencia for a week; the weeks preceding were for sheer pleasure and education. This was my first experience with cathedrals: Madrid, Segovia, Toledo, oh the cathedrals! And religious art… There’s a lot of stories there, but the main drive of this little story is our first stop in Portugal: Fátima.
I knew nothing of Fátima. Before we got off the tour bus, our tour guide gave us a brief history of how, in 1917, three shepherd children had claimed to see Mary, and that she allegedly appeared on the 13th of every month for five consecutive months and gave the children three secrets, the last of which had not yet been revealed (in 1998). This last bit was said like we were in a late-night crime show, “… had not yet been revealed…”. “But,” the tour guide added with relish, “many speculate that the third secret tells of the fall of the Catholic Church.” The fall of the Catholic Church? Let’s go see this place! No, I wasn’t that enthusiastic, but I was definitely intrigued.
There was a part of me that wanted it to be true—not the destruction of the Catholic Church—but that Mary had appeared there. I loved the mystery of God. As a Quaker, I had been taught to pray contemplatively. I had tasted the power of God in prayer; I had sensed Him intimately, in a way that I could not explain. I knew inexplicable mystery was possible.
But via Maria?
It was a beautiful afternoon; it was pleasantly warm, the sun reflected off of the bright stone and marble, and the sky was blue. It was a very peaceful place, this Fátima. I walked the grounds and observed the penitent: one man was walking on his knees towards the church. I was in awe. My grandmother’s voice behind me broke the mood as she quietly said, “It’s so sad Catholics think they need this.” I was aggravated by her words, but I wasn’t sure why. I knew I should technically have agreed with her. But there was something greater happening, something I knew I didn’t quite understand. I walked the long path towards the church in prayer. Instead of closing my heart to the foreignness of that place, I opened it.
I spent a good chunk of time in the gift shop, oddly enough, and snapping photos of elderly Portuguese women dressed in black, carrying their purses on their heads. As the tour guide hailed everyone back to the bus, I was pressed with this sudden urge to run into the chapel. I ran as fast as I could and squeezed through the crowds just to get one glimpse inside, then I ran back to the bus. I didn’t get to see much because of the crowds. But
Fátima is one of the most distinct memories I have of that month-long trip.
I was still a long way off from becoming Catholic, and an even longer way from making my peace with Mary and her role in the Church, but it was a worthwhile introduction, one that gave me pause, and very Marian: one of contemplation, peace, and beauty.