Judas, the Lost Disciple

On Good Friday, April 6, 2012, I preached a sermon on Judas. It is posted here by the request of a member of the parish.

When I was in seminary, my mother sent me a poem for Good Friday. It is called “Old Tears in Galilee”, and was written by Georgia Starbuck Galbraith.

No woman has ever borne a child,

And worshipped his eyes and the way he smiled,

And reacted with pride at his first clear word;

Who bound up his hurts and loved his absurd

Fierce concentration, watching a spider;

Who saw him grow till he stood beside her,

Straight and tall as a mountain pine;

No woman who had a son like mine

Ever believed that aught than good

Could come to this fruit of her motherhood—

No woman ever believed—not I!

That this life of her life was born to die

As mine, going down from Nazareth

to Jerusalem and sorrow and death.

Some say he was wrong, some say he was right

In the way he did that dark spring night.

I only know what is done is done,

And I weep for Judas ... I weep for my son.

The first time I read this poem, I wept. It forced me with a stunning and sudden shock to see Judas the Ultimate Traitor as having been, at one time, a loved human being. I had never seen him that way before, but I knew then that if his mother had seen him so, this is undoubtedly how Jesus had seen him.

There are two accounts in the New Testament of how Judas Iscariot met his end. Matthew’s Gospel tells us that he hanged himself (Matthew 27:5); Luke says that he fell down and burst open (Acts 1:18). Whatever the manner of his death, it is clear that Judas died at the same time Jesus did.

It is generally assumed that Judas is forever condemned and lost. Jesus said, “Woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed. It would have been better for that man if he had not been born” (Matthew 26:24). There can indeed be no doubt that it would have been better not to have lived at all than to live through the events of Jesus’ last night, knowing that you were responsible for putting those events into motion. But this feeling of terrible anguish to the point of self-destruction could be possible only if you truly loved the one you had betrayed.

We are nowhere in the Bible given a reason for Judas’ decision to betray Jesus. Luke and John attribute it to Satan’s entering into him. One or two writers have surmised that it was a misguided effort to force Jesus’ hand to reveal himself as the Messiah through a supernatural intervention. Whatever the reason, it is probable that Judas did not dislike Jesus, nor was he out to “get him,” nor I think was he out to earn an easy thirty silver pieces—if any of these possibilities had been true, he would not have angrily thrown the money down in the temple after he saw how he had been used by the authorities.

Judas was one of the Twelve; he did not leave off from following Jesus during the three years of public ministry when many others did; he was almost certainly one of the seventy trusted followers sent out on a successful mission to preach, heal, teach, anoint the sick, and cast out demons. Judas received the piece of bread dipped in the bowl at the Last Supper—traditionally a sign of affection. And Judas identified Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane with a kiss, a sign possible because the embrace or kiss might have been a familiar gesture for him—he may have kissed Jesus often.

One can only wonder at what Judas was thinking and feeling at the Last Supper, knowing that he had already set events in motion that would lead to Jesus’ arrest. As the account in Matthew says,

When evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the Twelve. And while they were eating, he said, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me.”

They were very sad and began to say to him one after the other, “Surely not I, Lord?”

Jesus replied, “The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”

Then Judas, the one who would betray him, said, “Surely not I, Rabbi?” Jesus answered, “Yes, it is you.” (Matthew 26:20-25)

What was going through his mind as he came to the Passover table with the other disciples and Jesus presiding? Surely a chill must have gone through him when Jesus said, “Yes, it is you.” And yet he still dipped the bread, and then went out into the night to keep his assignation. Why? Who knows? No one on earth, then or now, but Judas himself.

We cannot overlook Judas’ sin. He betrayed Jesus, who was his Lord and his friend. He did not trust or understand Jesus at the end. He left him in the middle of the Last Supper where he had been made welcome, and never saw the others again except in the Garden of Gethsemane, and then not to speak to them.

Judas was a weak person at a time when strength was called for. Of course, he was not alone in that. Peter denied Jesus publicly three times after saying he would go with Jesus even to death. When Jesus was determined to return to Bethany near Jerusalem where his life had recently been threatened, Thomas said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him (John 11:16), but he joined all the others who fled in the Garden, leaving Jesus to his fate. They all fled. Judas was merely the weakest knot in a net of weaklings.

But Judas was loved by someone—his mother at least, if we consider the poem with which this sermon began. Presumably he had friends among the disciples. He was entrusted with the money box by Jesus. He must have been concerned about the poor, misguided though that concern may have been at times. He was close enough to Jesus at the Last Supper to have received the bit of bread. Above all, Jesus loved him.

When he saw the consequences of his actions, he was outraged. It is easy to guess that he had never intended that Jesus die. He went to the Temple authorities, proclaimed that Jesus was innocent, threw down the silver in fury, shame, guilt, despair, and anguish. The words of Matthew’s Gospel are, “He repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, ‘I have sinned in betraying innocent blood’” (Matthew 27:3-4). Judas said, “I have sinned.” He repented. These are words of remorse—perhaps even salvation.

Judas bears not only his own name. He bears the name of his people: Judah, the Jews. But he could just as well have been named Adam. He bears the stigma of the human race. He represents all Jewish and Gentile, all human unbelief, half-belief, misunderstanding, failure, and betrayal. All people are like Judas. The Bible is unequivocal about that.

The entire human race is marked by sin: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Genesis 6:5-6).

Paul wrote: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

Jesus said: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not” (Luke 13:34).

Judas is one sinner among a raceful of sinners: “Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve; he went away and conferred with the chief priests and captains how he might betray [Jesus] to them” (Luke 22:3-4).

Judas was not special among human beings, except in that his sin was pivotal for the salvation of sinners. His story is the story of every tragic failure of someone who lets down those who love them, of potential horribly lost at the last minute when the potential was greatest and the stakes highest.

Judas was chosen by Jesus and numbered among the twelve—as John says, Jesus “knew all men and needed no one to bear witness of man; for he himself knew what was in man” (John 2:25). Judas’ fury in his last hour obviously shows that he became aware of his failure and knew that it was great. His perception of the immensity of his failure is the measure of the greatness that he knew could have been his, and is therefore the measure of the vast despair to which he succumbed.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, in his great work The Brothers Karamazov, said, “The secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for.” When Judas fell from grace, he lost his reason to live—this was possible only because Jesus had been his reason to live. Judas made a bad decision and then knew that he had chosen emptiness. This is the state of the human race apart from God: emptiness, meaninglessness, despair.

When Jesus said to the disciples, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me,” they all asked, “Surely not I, Lord?” Each one believed that he might do so. Judas is unique not in his sin, but only in what his sin did.

And it is for this that Jesus came to be born, and to die, and to rise again. On Good Friday, the price of our salvation was paid. What made that price necessary is human sin, the sin of all people. The sins we ourselves commit. As our lesson from Isaiah said,

“He was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:5-6)

We know of the resurrection and the salvation. We know that when Jesus overcame the sharpness of death, he opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. The Gospels repeatedly say that the disciples understood various integral matters only after the resurrection. The burden of our sins is perhaps easier for us who know of the resurrection, though it ought not to be.

Judas did not know of the resurrection. He knew only the tragic death of Jesus and that he had been solely responsible for it. Jesus asked those who arrested him why they had not arrested him while he was in the Temple teaching openly. This question indicted them in their cowardice, for they wanted only to take him in the darkness, without witnesses, without any possibility of the crowds of people who loved him from rising up. So Judas’ betrayal was essential; he, and only he, could lead them to where Jesus would be at night, when there would be no crowds.

We who claim salvation in the name of Jesus are like Judas, his failed disciple. We have walked with Jesus devotedly, coming to church and giving money and serving in high places, but when we are put to a test, we have at times defaulted to worldly standards and believed and acted as if there were no such thing as faith. We have at times walked in the ways of the world rather than according to the will and command of Jesus.

At times we also have “stolen from the money box” by squandering the gifts which the Lord has entrusted to us, using them selfishly rather than for God’s glory. We also at times have refused to sit at the table with the saints, but rather, even after being given the sign of affection (a bit of bread from his own altar), we have preferred to get up and walk out into the night, alone, on our own errands. We also at times have “kissed the Lord” in sham affection for our own selfish purposes, rather than offered a full embrace of heartfelt, sacrificial love.

Above all, when our sins confront us and forgiveness is offered, we have at times preferred self-pity and despair, thinking ourselves beyond even the love and forgiveness of God. Surely this is the greatest sin that Judas committed—thinking himself beyond forgiveness. And this is one of the most pervasive sins in the human condition. I have found it often in the hearts of Christians. I have seen it at times in my own heart.

But our inheritance is the forgiveness of sins and salvation, the peace of God that passes understanding. Good Friday’s cross for Jesus meant death, but for us it means life. It is reconciliation with God for all sinners who look to him for forgiveness. While on the cross, Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). For whom did Jesus beg this forgiveness? The soldiers who wielded the hammer and nails? The members of the Jewish council who turned him over to the Romans? Pilate, who condemned him? Could the prayer have included Judas, who was the pawn of these authorities? The Biblical witness is clear that Judas, among all those who had a part in Jesus’ death, clearly “did not know what he did.” In fact, is there anyone for whom Jesus was not praying at that time?

Regarding the fate of Judas, George MacDonald wrote, “Must we believe that Judas, who repented even to agony, who repented so that his high-prized life, self, soul became worthless in his eyes and met with no mercy at his own hand—must we believe that he could find no mercy in such a God [as ours]? I think, when Judas fled from his hanged and fallen body, he fled to the tender help of Jesus, and found it—I say not how. He was in a more hopeful condition now than during any moment of his past life, for he had never repented before. But I believe that Jesus loved Judas even when he was kissing him the traitor’s kiss; and I believe that he was his Savior still.” [Unspoken Sermons, quoted in The Wind from the Stars, edited by Gordon Reid, Harper Collins, 1992, selection number 173]

On May 13, 1981 a Muslim assassin named Mehmet Ali Agca shot Pope John Paul II four times during a public appearance in the square outside the Vatican. Though the assassin’s intentions was obviously to kill, the Pope survived. The assailant was arrested, tried, and sentenced to a 19-year term in an Italian prison. Two years after the assassination attempt, the Pope visited the man who shot him. No one knows for sure what transpired between the men, other than that the Pope forgave his assailant. Here is one example of Christian mercy shown to a great sinner, a mercy that overwhelms great sin, showing a pattern that began with Jesus.

I have heard a folk tale that offers an answer to the question of the eternal destiny of Judas. According to this tale, a long time after Judas’ death, he gradually came to consciousness and found himself in utter darkness, lying flat on his face on dank ground oozing with filth. He was exhausted. For a thousand years he lay there, agonizing over what he had done. Then with a groan he rolled over. He saw a tiny point of light away high above him, and he realized that he was in a deep, deep pit—a hole with sheer sides made of slime and mud. For three thousand years he contemplated that hole and the pinpoint of light high up. Then he dragged himself to his feet and began to try to climb out. For five thousand years he climbed, groping upward and sliding back down. At the end of the five thousand years his hand gripped the top edge of the hole, and he pulled himself out and lay gasping on the ground above. After a thousand years he had regained his strength and looked up. He saw Jesus and the Eleven, sitting at table, radiant with glory. There was one seat vacant. Jesus said, “What took you so long?”

It is only a story. We don’t know, and cannot know, what Judas’ eternal destiny is. It is not really our business. Jesus, probably referring to Judas, says that “the son of perdition” is lost “that the scripture might be fulfilled” (John 17:12), but even this passage does not make clear the irrevocable condemnation of the son of Simon Iscariot. Peter said merely that Judas “turned aside, to go to his own place” (Acts 1:25). What these things mean, what Judas’ eternal destiny is, is not our business.

But it is obvious that the story of Judas is also the personal story of each Christian and every human being. And this is our business.

No woman has ever borne a child,

And worshipped his eyes and the way he smiled,

And reacted with pride at his first clear word;

Who bound up his hurts and loved his absurd

Fierce concentration, watching a spider;

Who saw him grow till he stood beside her,

...

Some say he was wrong, some say he was right

In the way he did that dark spring night.

I only know what is done is done,

And I weep for Judas ... I weep for my son.

The story of Judas is the story of horrible sin and sacrificial love, forgiveness, and reconciliation—the true story in which Jesus’ love is proven stronger than the worst sin of all time. That is everyone’s business. In the end it is the only business that matters.

Skin As Canvas

A few months ago I had the privilege and joy of bathing a child, and I admired her flawless skin. There were no scars, no wrinkles, no blemishes, no outstanding marks. But then I thought that there had been no stories yet in her life that had left visible signs.

Later I reflected on my own 63-year-old body with its scars and marks, each with a story. The broken and capped front tooth is the result of an accident that occurred in 1955. I still remember the two boys who started a foot race and watched each other instead of where they were going. Just five feet from their starting line one of them cracked his head on my tooth. He reared back, stunned, and a small corner of my tooth was broken off. In those days, bonding was unknown; rather than patch a small bond to my tooth which would have been an easy procedure today, my tooth was ground down to a small stub and a heavy cap put over it.

On my left inside forearm there is a white scar a half inch long and an eighth of an inch wide—the only remnant of a deep rip I sustained while scaling a chain link fence. That was about 1958.

In the summer of 1963, at Scout camp I fell into the stream and gashed my right knee. The camp doctor sewed it up and I had to walk with a stiff leg for a week or more. There are two scars there now.

On the ring finger of my left hand is a dark line from when a dirt-caked mirror broke and slashed my hand. When the wound healed, some of the dirt remained in the skin and is there to this day. That was in the fall of 1973.

The last joint of my left little finger doesn’t lie straight any more; it was damaged when I was holding a board in 1994 for someone in the karate class to break with a kick. He broke my finger instead.

On the same hand, the pointing finger has a long thin scar, the remnant of a slash from drawing a sword too quickly in 2002. I slashed it across the length of the finger deep enough to cut the tendon. Fortunately I cut the tendon lengthwise rather than severed it. It took nine stitches and gave me a great story. I applied for Worker’s Compensation for that $3,000, one-hour visit to the Emergency Room, and no one ever questioned why a priest could claim a sword cut as a job-related injury.

Between the thumb and forefinger on my right hand is a burn scar. I burned it when I reached into an oven in 2007. I was on retreat and was not familiar with the oven, and the top burner charred the skin several layers deep.

Apart from these scars, marks, and injuries, there are now age spots on my hands, arms, and face. I don’t plan to cover or remove them; they tell stories of adventures, misadventures, and skills that are part of my life’s history, and provide the unique tales told on the canvas of my skin. I look with pleasure at the faces of old people with many wrinkles, each visage unique and, like a canvas, telling a person’s story in visible marks.

I can only imagine what Jesus’ body was like. It is easy to assume that his hands bore calluses and scars from carpentry, that his feet were hard from much walking, his muscles were corded, and his skin darkened by frequent exposure to the sun.

The skin of a young child is like a blank canvas. Life’s adventures are few at that age. Human skin is a medium on which is written the tales of one’s life. Take the thought deeply enough and one can become immersed in the meaning of Jesus’ incarnation—the word, literally translated, means “in the meat”. God himself took our flesh, and had skin as we have, and it came to bear the marks of his divine life on earth. Go even farther, and one comes to resurrection—the destiny of the believer’s body on the far side of death. The resurrected body becomes perfect, yet surely will be recognizable through its direct connection with this life.

Once my skin was as flawless as that of the child I bathed, but now my scars, wrinkles, and blemishes tell the unique tale of my life, every mark on my body evidence of some adventure or escapade, even if just the adventure of living for more than six decades in the world. “My body shall rest in hope,” says Psalm 16:9b. My body, such as it is, also lives in hope. Jesus shared my human nature, and shares it still. In my love for him, I await the consummation in the greatest adventure of all.

The Ends of the Earth

Jesus told his disciples, “You will bear witness for me in Jerusalem, and all over Judea and Samaria, and away to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

The ends of the earth. The preaching of the Gospel began in Jerusalem and within a generation, churches had been formed throughout the Roman Empire: throughout the Holy Land, across the northern coast of Africa, throughout what is now Turkey, over into Greece, certainly in Rome. Before long the Gospel had spread as far west as Spain and the British Isles. By the end of the first millennium it had covered all of Europe including Scandinavia.

In the sixteenth century as Europeans began to explore and make homes in the New World, the Gospel came to the eastern parts of North America. In the eighteenth century Franciscans under Father Junipero Serra established missions in Mexico and eventually moved northward into what is now the State of California. They built missions approximately one day’s journey apart, from San Diego up beyond San Francisco.

In the meantime, the Gospel had also moved eastward from Jerusalem. Armenia became the first officially Christian nation. Ancient traditions tell how the Gospel came into India. It moved into Russia and crossed the vast spread of that country. In the eighteenth century the Gospel came into Alaska and began to move down the western coast of North America.

About 1833, 1,800 years after the Day of Pentecost, not far from what is now Fort Bragg, California, Russian Orthodox missionaries coming south from Alaska met Franciscan missionaries coming north. The Gospel had circled the globe, and “the ends of the earth” turned out to be California.

“All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God” (Psalm 98:4b).

Adoration

For many years, on the first Sunday of each month I have presided at Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. This service of pure worship contains a space of silent adoration of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. As the years have passed, I have come more and more to find immense solace and peace as I gaze upon the consecrated Host.

Jesus gave the Church the command to celebrate what later came to be called the Mass and to receive Holy Communion. The faithful quickly discerned that Jesus is truly and objectively present in the consecrated Bread and Wine. Eventually there developed devotions to Jesus in the Sacrament apart from the Mass. One of the most moving and beautiful is the service of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. The consecrated Host is placed before the faithful in a monstrance, a decorated stand with a glass display case for the Host.

Jesus taught, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28-29).

Considering this passage, I am reminded of the story of Saint Jean Vianney, the Cure d’Ars, who noted that there was a little French farmer who visited his chapel every day at about noon. After a while the Cure became curious as to what the farmer was doing in the chapel. One day he decided to ask him. The farmer responded that he came in to visit Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. His style of prayer was simple. He said, “I just look at him, and he looks back at me.”

It sounds so simple, but in Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament I have come to see the profound reality of what the French farmer tried to explain: “All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

When one gazes upon the host, on the one hand, one can see only a wafer of unleavened bread. On the other, by faith one may gaze upon that which is most beautiful. In adoration, there is no sense of time passing. As I kneel before the monstrance I am altered, and can even feel my face change its expression in response to what I see, discern, and feel.

Recently as I was drawn to the Beloved and allowed myself simply to look with adoration, I noted the various changes in my countenance that washed over and through me. Without plan or will, they simply moved through me, passing easily from one to the other, in the order below. I felt:

Joy

There was the rapture of feeling my entire self lifted up, almost swelled with delight, for I knew that what I saw was close to the vision of God himself, the creator and source of all that is beautiful. “Look upon him and be radiant” (Psalm 34:5).

Awe

Joy moved to awe at what I was discerning. “Please show me your glory,” begged Moses of God (Exodus 33:18), who responded, “My face you cannot see, for no human being can see me and survive” (Exodus 33:20b). Yet he allowed Moses to see a part of his glory (Exodus 33:21-23). Primitive and anthropomorphic as this narrative is, it contains an essence of profound truth that I find even more moving than the theophany at the Burning Bush (Exodus 3:1-6).

Unworthiness

“Moses covered his face, for he was afraid to look at God” (Exodus 3:6). Awe led me quickly to a sense of my unworthiness to see such beauty and glory; I was overwhelmed by the immensity of what was before my face, as if a passage to infinity had been opened in the ordinariness of the day.

Penitence

"When Simon saw the miracle of the great draft of fish, he fell on his knees before Jesus and said, ‘Leave me, Lord; I am a sinful man’” (Luke 5:8). Unworthiness led quickly to penitence, the realization that I am a sinner.

Receiving Love

An assurance of being loved followed upon my penitence and overrode a sense of unworthiness. Anglican priest George Herbert wrote a poem called “Love bade me welcome”. Its first line is, “Love bade me welcome yet my soul drew back, guilty of dust and sin.” The theme of the poem is that though one is indeed unworthy to be a guest at the banquet of Love, yet Love Himself bids you to be seated. When love is offered so firmly and unhesitatingly after one sees and acknowledges one’s unworthiness, then the love is life-changing.

Contentment

Having received that welcoming love, which at first was uncomfortable, without any sense of hurry I felt the contentment of the present moment, resting comfortably in the presence of the Beloved. “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:11a).

Desire/Longing

Eventually, the enjoyment of being in the presence of the Presence moved me gradually from simple contentment to a desire and longing for more. I knew that “once perfection comes, all imperfect things will be done away with” (1 Corinthians 13:10), and that the Blessed Sacrament, glorious as it is, is still a “veil”, a mediated thing by which Jesus comes to those who love him. “O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a barren and dry land where there is no water. Therefore I have gazed upon you in your holy place, that I might behold your power and your glory” (Psalm 63:1-2).

Union/Love

I moved from longing to a vision of its eventual fulfillment: “The city did not need the sun or the moon for light, since it was lit by the radiant glory of God, and the Lamb was a lighted torch for it” (Revelation 21:23). The Blessed Sacrament itself satisfies even as it whets one’s appetite for the banquet of the Kingdom of God.

Hope

Finally, I felt hope, the hope that what one sees and longs for now shall have a consummation. The promises of God never fail, and the hope of life eternal with Jesus is a sure and certain hope. “Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5).

And that led me back to Joy. Jesus told his disciples at the Last Supper in anticipation of the breaking of their band, “I shall see you again, and your hearts will be full of joy, and that joy no one shall take from you” (John 16:22).

All of this can be wrapped up in a quotation from Karl Rahner from his brief essay, “About Sitting Down”. He wrote, “Of course, there are many exercises that lead to quiet and silent resting in oneself, such as the experience ... of deep and pure love between two people... Ultimately, however, there is only one type of stillness that enables a person to be at peace with himself or herself: prayer... Only in the loving being-at-oneness with the infinite mystery we call God can one arrive in such a way that one does not have to go any farther, where one can find rest."

“All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Or “I just look at him, and he looks back at me.”

“My Life’s Light, My Beloved Ladye”

Nearly five years ago I wrote this blogpost about my personal devotion to the Virgin Mary. Of more than one hundred blogposts in almost five years, it is one of those I am most pleased with; it still stirs my emotions. One person who read it at the time said it was the most beautiful account of a man’s love for a woman that she had ever read. That gratified me deeply.

Today I post another item about Mary. The one in the link above is very personal and devotional. This one is didactic. Of all the Feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary, August 15 is the most important. On it the Catholic faithful commemorate her death and assumption into heaven.

In the middle ages in England, a devotional acclamation arose: “Christ’s meek Mother, Saint Marye, My Life’s light, my beloved Ladye.” It is now the motto of the Guild of the Living Rosary, of which I am the American chaplain. I love the motto. It reminds me that Anglican devotion to Mary was once strong and widely accepted. The ravages of the Reformation removed many wonderful things from the palette of Christian devotion, but thankfully devotion to Our Lady has been returning for decades, gradually but surely.

The rise of devotion to Mary is not limited to Anglicans. J. Neville Ward, a Methodist clergyman, wrote a remarkable book on the value of the Rosary called Five For Sorrow, Ten For Joy. It was first published in 1971. In its preface, Ward wrote, “It does seem clear that the first-century people who put together the four gospels found that they could not do justice to the mixture of the divine and human in Jesus without saying some very remarkable things about his mother. Their minds were continually drawn to her. Because they felt that to Jesus was given the name that is above every name, these early Christians sensed an extraordinary mystery about her. They knew as well as we do that the influence of a mother over a child is absolutely incalculable for good or ill. If Jesus was who they thought he was, then who was she?”

Mary was the virgin mother of the Messiah. Legends of her early life tell us that she was an only child, miraculously born to aging parents, that she was presented in the Temple at the age of seven, and was raised there. Of her birth and early life, Holy Scripture and history are silent, but it is consistent with Scriptural accounts of others and therefore logical to assume that, with a view to her future destiny as the Mother of the Messiah and Lord, she was specially sanctified from the womb of her mother as were Jeremiah and John the Baptist, and that she lived a life of spotless innocence. How else could she have been fitted for her high and mysterious office as the Mother of the incarnate God?

In the Biblical narrative, she lived in Nazareth, a small town in Galilee in the north of the Holy Land. At the time of the Annunciation, when she was called to be the mother of the Messiah, she was probably about fourteen or fifteen and betrothed to Joseph, who tradition tells us was an older man, a widower, perhaps with children from a previous marriage. The assertion that Mary remained a virgin after Jesus’ birth was a very early one in the Church and became widely accepted.

Mary has been called “the greatest boast of the human race”. Quite likely, next to Jesus, she is the most beloved human being of all time. In the eighth century, St. John of Damascus weighed into the iconoclastic controversy in which the Byzantine Emperor had declared that the use of images, icons, and other externals was not permitted in Christian worship because it was idolatry. John said that the use of such things is permitted, since there is a difference between “worship”—which is given to God alone, and “veneration”—which may be given to images and to the Saints. For Mary he declared that “hyper-veneration” is permitted, as the chiefmost of the Saints. John’s declaration became the official teaching of the Church.

Mary is the only person in Scripture who is not exhorted to believe that Jesus is God. Others are told that he is the Messiah, such as the shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem and Simeon in the Temple, but only Mary is told from the beginning who Jesus is: the Son of God. There are only two categories in the New Testament of those who never doubt that Jesus is the Son of God. One is Mary alone; the other is the demons, who cry out, “We know who you are—the Holy One of God!”

She accepted the call of virginal motherhood, using the same words God the Father used to create the universe: “Let it be”—in Latin, “fiat”. Like most godly vocations, this one was not an easy one, and the Gospel of Luke says that “she was greatly troubled at the saying” when the angel greeted her. Like Moses and Jonah, she knew the voice of the Lord at the time of her vocation; unlike them, she accepted and maintained the vocation without hesitation.

It must have been because she not only knew God, but also loved him. Not that the others did not love God, but Mary was the one who loved him best. She was able in her own existence to love God and to love neighbor, to fulfill the summary of the Law her Son would later pronounce. Hence, after the Annunciation, she visited Elizabeth in joy, and risked the loss of Joseph’s trust because she had faith in the God whom she trusted to bring it all out right—which He did.

In the visit to her kinswoman Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, she proclaimed the Magnificat. The canticle shows her contemplative nature, but also that this nature is rooted in daily life and reality—as all contemplative nature must be if it is truly to be contemplative. The Magnificat shows that Mary was aware of God’s sovereignty, intentions in exalting her, and regard for the poor.

The Magnificat satisfies those most deeply devoted to Mary, with the words “all generations shall call me blessed” and “he who is mighty has done great things for me.” The Magnificat also appeals to those who are passionately devoted to peace and justice concerns, with its ringing words about scattering the proud, putting down the mighty from their thrones, sending the rich away empty, and exalting the lowly while filling the hungry with good things.

Clearly, even as a young teenager, the contemplative Mary was not removed from the things of the earth. She could handle traveling while heavily pregnant, giving birth in a stable or cave, and being on the run with a small child while under threat of death from a powerful man with hundreds of soldiers at his command. Yet these things are the matrix for the most obvious and most important picture of all: mother with child. It is a tender, heart-rending, and heart-filling picture. She is poor but not destitute, and always rich with the presence of God.

She appears first as a young teenager called:

to a new country more alien than that to which Abraham was called;

to know the meaning of the divine presence more intimately than Moses at the burning bush;

to be devoted to the will of God more intensely than Elijah;

to a vision of holiness greater than that given by revelation to Isaiah;

to carry sorrows with more resolution than Jeremiah; and

to an obedience more resolute than Daniel’s.

In the stable, feeding the divine infant from her own body, she is presented as undeniably Virgin and Queen. Virginity here is not a statement about lack of sexual experience, but a statement about purity, about being completely “God-oriented” and having room for nothing else, so that all of her relationships, including that with Joseph, were made rich and whole solely because of her single-heartedness toward God.

It is a concept with which our generation has become unfamiliar, and because unfamiliar, uncomfortable. A number of translations of old hymns have replace the word “virgin” with “maiden”, and in the categories of saints in the Episcopal calendar, the ancient class of “virgin” has been dropped. It is a major loss and our culture and contemporary Church are the worse for it.

This is not to imply that virginity is inherently a higher or better vocation than marriage or that sex is inherently impure. Virginity is a special kind of offering. It is a kind of fasting. True fasting is not merely the absence of food, but the presence of joy through the offering of a gift.

Virginity is a means of loving God, and a calling for a few. It was the calling of Mary, and an integral part of her glory. In the early Church, virgins were considered in a category close to martyrs: those who offered themselves single-heartedly and wholeheartedly to God. Virginity is never about absence, but rather a unique richness. The things of God are never negative, never about lack; on the contrary, they are always about richness and inundating love.

The first clear prediction of suffering for Mary came when she and Joseph presented Jesus in the Temple at the age of forty days, according to the Law of Israel. Simeon was there, “righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25). Simeon gave the pre-eminence to Mary rather than to Joseph by addressing her, saying, “This child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2:34-35).

Pre-eminent as she was, there was a price to be paid for her vocation. We are nowhere told what her response to Simeon was, but we can guess that she lived not only with joy but perhaps with a measure of apprehension, or at least the knowledge that there would be heartbreak and great pain in store. In fallen world, it is always so wherever there is love.

When Mary and Joseph lost track of Jesus when he was twelve years old and found him in the Temple, and Jesus spoke to them about having to be in his Father’s house, the Bible says, “They did not understand the saying which he spoke to them”…and “his mother kept all these things in her heart” (2:50, 51b). Understanding is a matter of the mind; Mary kept those things in her heart, a deeper place than the mind, the repository of love and intimacy, the home of faith and worship. Here also she had treasured the words of the shepherds who visited on the night that Jesus was born. (Luke 2:19)

There are only a few other places where Mary is mentioned in the Gospel narratives. She is mentioned at the wedding in Cana of Galilee; when she and Jesus’ brothers are trying to get a word with him; by a woman who cried out to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts which you have sucked.”

And finally the poignant words at the crucifixion, “Woman, behold your son.” Her presence at the cross is indicative that perhaps she had been among the company much of the time—certainly at the least in its last days.

And when Jesus died, she was a widow without a son, like the widow of Nain upon whom Jesus had had compassion and for whom he had raised her son from the bier. Like that widow, Mary’s son also returned from death. Unlike that widow, she did not get to keep him—at least not in the earthly fashion. Much has been said and written about Mary as virgin and mother; far too little about Mary as widow and bereaved.

The last Biblical reference in her chronology is the day of Pentecost, where she was numbered among those in the Upper Room when the Spirit descended upon the faithful. (Acts 1:14)

We do not know how long she lived after that, for she is not mentioned again in the New Testament. No matter how long she lived in the first generation Church, as J. Neville Ward wrote above she would have had a place of deepening affection and awe in the hearts and minds of believers. It is evident that the first Christians found it increasingly difficult to exclude her from their praise of Christ because the more they saw of the glory of Jesus, the more they saw his Mother aglow with it.

Every right belief about Mary points to Jesus, continuing the lesson in the miracle of Cana in which she said to the servants, “Whatever he says to you, do it” (John 2:5). Mary is the model of humanity redeemed by Christ.

She is the only mortal who knew the entire earthly life of Jesus. “Her virgin eyes saw God incarnate born,” says one hymn (Written by Moir A. J. Waters [1906-1980]); and the Stabat Mater speaks of how she saw him suffer and die: “At the cross her station keeping, stood the mournful mother weeping.” She knew him throughout the “hidden years” of his childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. She knew him as carpenter.

Sometimes it seems that Mary is reverenced by being mentioned little in the New Testament. It does not seem to be a silence of unimportance, but rather of reverence. She is never even called by name in John’s Gospel, the Gospel that was written by the one with whom she spent the last years of her life. In John’s Gospel she is only referred to as “the mother of Jesus”. It is almost a literary bowing of the head, and, in the mind and heart of the Church, tying her to Jesus forever.

I believe that it is no coincidence that the Gospel written by one whom Jesus named a “son of thunder” for his violent and vengeful nature is perhaps the most mystical and profound thing ever written. The “son of thunder” was transformed by having “the mother of Jesus” in his home for the rest of her life. It is not hard for me to consider that the Gospel of John in many ways was inspired by Mary.

What of Christian devotion to Mary? In some ways, it is so obvious that it is foolish to bring it up. Maybe understanding it can come through a brief reflection on the words used in the Bible of her alone: “full of grace.” Grace is the means by which God does everything to redeem and hallow people and places. Mary was full of grace. In order to be full of grace, one must be empty of everything else, so that one can be utterly receptive—that is, to be truly female. This is a mystical truth, written deep not only in human nature, but in the very framework of the cosmos.

God, from the beginning of time, is the Giver of Life. All life-initiating, life-producing, and life-nurturing activities are derivative of God’s acts of Creation and Redemption. Because the world is indwelt by the Spirit, all things are sacramental, not only all of nature but in particular human physiology. Just as snow, for example, reminds us of purity, beauty, silence, and renewal, and as a storm reminds us of might and power and transcendence, so do human bodies reflect spiritual truths about human nature.

The body of a man is designed to give, to initiate life; the body of a woman is designed to receive, to nurture life. These are spiritual realities, far richer than merely physical or even symbolic. George MacDonald (in his novel Malcolm) says, “The love between man and woman, arising from a difference deep in the heart of God, and essential to the very being of each... is one of [God’s] most powerful forces for blasting the wall of separation, and first step towards the universal harmony of twain making one. By no words can I express my scorn of the evil fancy that the distinction between [male and female] is solely or even primarily physical.”

Thus, the relationship between male and female, by logical extension of sacramental theology (not to mention physiology) is an icon of the romance between God and the cosmos, in which God woos and wins his wayward bride. The Bible consistently reveals God in masculine terms, not to say that God is male (which is absurd) or to disparage females (equally absurd), but to reveal the nature of the relationship between God and the cosmos: that everything that is created and redeemed is his beloved Bride. At the foundation of all things, and the interaction of things, there is divine love. God created by love, sustains and redeems all things in love, and consummates all things for love.

If God is revealed in masculine terms, and if all that exists is truly about love, then the cosmos, everything that exists, is feminine to God. Salvation is a romance, a love story, and a matter of passion. One may consider that it is the only love story that there is, for all other love stories are only variations on this theme.

If this is so, then Christianity is the most earthy, sensuous, “rooted in real life” religion that there is, and therefore the only fully true religion—for it recognizes that in the Incarnation human flesh has been hallowed and all matter transformed, and maleness and femaleness themselves are the localized expressions of cosmic verities. Christian orthodoxy proclaims that only a male can be an icon of God as he has revealed himself in Christ, and only a female can be the icon of the universe. The archetypal contemplative is female, and Mary, the receiver of God, is the one in whose human flesh and life the cosmic myth of divine love became fact. What is written large across the cosmos became localized in such and such a real time, such and such a real place, such and such a real person.

As an archetype this reality perhaps even implies virginity. It may even imply perpetual virginity—one who is filled with nothing but God, and has never been filled with anything else; one who is full of grace. It implies purity (the radiance of God) and innocence (untainted by evil), but not naiveté.

Mary is such a one who is full of grace, which is to be full of God, which is to be full of joy... and (until heaven) full also of sorrow. For joy and sorrow are inseparable until the great consummation, the great End that is the great Beginning. Mary is often depicted as a woman of sorrows or of solitude. This image probably implies a reference to the sword that pierced her soul (heart) as prophesied by Simeon in the Temple.

This is the glory of Mary. It has been more than six centuries since the age of chivalry, when virginity was understood and valued as the enormous power that it is, when there were festivals in honor of Our Lady, and when England was called “Mary’s Dowry”. Now we live in a culture of speed, greed, and death, and the heartfelt exclamation “By Our Lady,” has devolved to the English epithet “bloody”.

But for the Catholic faithful, the truth does not and cannot change, though all the world be deaf and blind. Our Lady is still, next to Jesus, the greatest human being who has ever lived, who shows us the way of Jesus. Her hidden glory of unique intimacy with God shows that we bear the cross to walk the way of life. We share in the sufferings of Christ only because they lead to “the joys of his resurrection”. Mary, then, is the first among the redeemed, and the greatest boast of the human race.

Her glorious Assumption is a sign of the full hallowing of matter, the fullness of redemption, the firstfruits of Jesus’ promises, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5); and “I shall come again and receive you to myself, so that where I am, you may be also” (John 14:3). Mary’s Assumption shows us our destiny, what the Prayer Book describes as “perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul, in [God’s] eternal and everlasting glory” (Book of Common Prayer, page, 488).

As the first Christians knew, and as Catholic Christians everywhere have known through the ages, and today know still, any genuine devotion to Jesus and commitment to him must inevitably draw Mary into one’s heart as well. As the medieval Anglicans knew it, “Christ’s meek Mother, Saint Marye, My Life’s light, my beloved Ladye.”

Joseph, Son of David

When Bishop Robert Rusack consecrated Blessed Sacrament’s church building almost thirty years ago (September 27, 1981), in his remarks he pointed out that of all the churches in the diocese, he believed that though many had statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Blessed Sacrament was the only one that had a statue of Saint Joseph as well. It is unfortunate that Joseph is so neglected in our churches, and I am delighted that our forebears saw to it that he was remembered in our parish.

Our shrines to Mary and Joseph are in opposite corners at the back of the nave. Both receive visitors who pray and light votive candles. I wonder how often, if ever, anyone connects the two in devotions. Just a few days ago, someone did, and was moved to write to me about it. What she wrote transformed and immeasurably enriched my understanding of St. Joseph. I will quote her few lines below.

In all of Scripture, there is not one word recorded of anything that Joseph said. We know him by his dreams and his actions as the protector of the Virgin and Child. He was a descendant of King David, a carpenter, open to direct communication from God in dreams and obediently responsive to what he discerned, and willing to take risks out of obedience to God. And it is clear that he loved Mary.

Long tradition tells us that he was an older man, perhaps a widower with children, and that by marrying Mary he became her protector in her vocation as Mother of the Messiah. He was still alive when Jesus was twelve and the Holy Family traveled to Jerusalem. When Jesus began his public ministry nearly twenty years later, Joseph is no longer in the narrative. He had died in the meantime and Mary was a widow in her forties.

Another long tradition is that Mary was always a virgin. There is much Scriptural support for this belief, though not definitive, and the title “ever-virgin” is ancient and nearly universal from the early years of the Church. In the service of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, Joseph is referred to as Mary’s “most chaste spouse”. Most believers reduce this belief to the understanding that Joseph and Mary did not have sex.

I am chagrined to admit that I hadn’t thought much farther than that myself until a few days ago. But if we stop there, considering only what did not occur between them, the haunting implications of what their loving relationship actually was are missed, and we are left with a poverty-stricken image of negativity or absence. The reflection I received from a member of Blessed Sacrament on the subject caught me up short. If we take it as given that Mary and Joseph were not sexually intimate, we must not and cannot rightly conclude that they therefore had no intimacy. In chastity, and even in celibacy, there still can be and should be deep intimacy, for are we not called truly to love? And can there be genuine love without intimacy of some kind?

Looking across the lawn between the hall and the side door of the church, I caught sight of a young woman going into the church to pray. I never saw her leave and assume that she was there for a long time. Later I learned that she had visited the shrines of both Mary and Joseph, and in her devotions connected the two in a way I had never even thought of before. She was moved to write to me about her experience, and said, “I think that St. Joseph held the Blessed Virgin a lot: I don’t know how else she could have survived... and I think that was probably terrifying for him, and probably conflicting---a very fine edge, but not an impossible balance since he did it.” She added later, “In retrospect, it seems so obvious I want to laugh: what do we think St. Joseph was doing? Standing around holding the reins of the donkey while a lonely girl carried the God-Man?”

These few words had enormous impact on me and opened up a profound depth in the meaning of true love as manifested in the Holy Family. Our wayward culture seems to know only gratuitous sex or painful isolation; it knows almost nothing of genuine love of any kind, with all of its limitless manifestations.

The young woman came somehow to know that, if Joseph’s love for Mary led him to hold her a lot, it would have been costly to him. I have no idea how she could have received that insight, but I think it must have been so. We know of the sword that was prophesied for the heart of the Mother of the Messiah; was there not also a price for Joseph to pay for his fidelity to his vocation, his lifelong devotion to the most lovable woman of all time? I thought of the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, and Jesus felt power going out of him. There is a kind of love in which power is given from the lover to the beloved: sacrificial love in any of its manifold expressions.

Joseph was not only a son of David; he was also a son of Boaz, whom I described in a recent blogpost as “a real man”—one who knows how to love a woman. Joseph was obedient to God, protective of the ones he loved, and willing to pay a price not only for their safety but to ensure that they were blessed. He was self-effacing and humble, yet strong and reliable. His strength passed into the Virgin Mother, shaping and filling her through the years of their marriage for the costly future days of her Son’s ministry that he would not live to see. “Blessed indeed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse.”

I plan to post something about Mary next week on her feast day, August 15, but a post about Joseph begged to be written today.