Thomas Merton Reflection

Today we celebrate the solemnity of Mary Mother of God. In that context I offer you the following reflection from Thomas Merton:

“Mary alone, of all the saints, is, in everything, incomparable. She has the sanctity of them all and yet resembles none of them. And still we can talk of being like her. This likeness to her is not only something to desire—it is one human quality most worthy of our desire: but the reason for that is that she, of all creatures, most perfectly recovered the likeliness to God that God willed to find, in varying degrees, in us all.

It is is most fitting to talk about her as a Queen and to act as if you knew what it meant to say she has a throne above all the angels. But this should not make anyone forget that her highest privilege is her poverty and her greatest glory is that she is most hidden, and the source of all her power is that she is as nothing in the presence of Christ, of God.

This is often forgotten by Catholics themselves, and therefore it is not surprising that those who are not Catholic often have a completely wrong conception of Catholic devotion to the Mother of God. They imagine, and sometimes we can understand their reasons for doing so, that Catholics treat the Blessed Virgin as an almost divine being in her own right, as if she had some glory, some power, some majesty of her own that placed her on a level with Christ Himself. Hence her place in the Redemption would seem to be equal to that of her Son. But this is all completely contrary to the true mind of the Catholic Church. It forgets that Mary’s chief glory is in her nothingness, in the fact of being the ‘Handmaid of the Lord,’ as one who in becoming the Mother of God acted simply in loving submission to His command, in pure obedience of faith. She is blessed not because of some mythical pseudo-divine prerogative, but in all her human and womanly limitations as one who has believed. It is in the faith and the fidelity of the humble handmaid, ‘full of grace’ that enables her to be the perfect instrument of God, and nothing else but His instrument. The work that was done in her was purely the work of God. ‘He that is mighty hath done great things in me.’ The glory of Mary is purely and simply the glory of God in her, and she, like anyone else, can say that she has nothing that she has not received from Him through Christ.

As a matter of fact, this is precisely her greatest glory: that having nothing of her own, retaining nothing of a ‘self’ that could glory in anything for her own sake, she placed no obstacle to the mercy of God and in no way resisted His love and His will. Hence she received more from Him than any other saint. He was able to accomplish His will perfectly in her, and His liberty was in no way hindered or turned from its purpose by the presence of an egotistical self in Mary. She was and is the highest sense a person precisely because, being ‘immaculate,’ she was free from every taint of selfishness that might obscure God’s light in her being. She was then a freedom that obeyed Him perfectly and in this obedience found the fulfillment of perfect love.”