Let us return to Father Vann’s refined contrasting of the sorrow of Mary compared to the women of Jerusalem. Mary’s sorrow is nurturing and strengthening: true pity. The good women of Jerusalem, followers of Jesus, become overwhelmed with emotional self-pity. Lacking definitude, without detailed understanding, Mary’s sorrow comprehends the totality of sacrificing her Son, embracing His crucifixion in silence though it pierces her heart.  Always obedient, Mary questions not the mysteries of God. Her trust in God supersedes her own experiences, emotions, feelings, desires, intellect, and being.  Silence, love, and a sorrowful heart she offers her Son in order to embolden and strengthen Him so He can remain loyal and obedient to the will of His Father.

If Mary’s heart had been filled with the soft sentimental pity, she would not have helped, but would have hindered. Human love helps when it is within the framework of vocation, when it expresses the will of God. A mother’s vocation is fulfilled when she offers her son to God (Hannah), to life, and to his own destiny; it is ruined when she clings to him for her own sake on the plea of saving him from hurt. “Go forth and see the king in the diadem wherewith his mother crowned him.” And this is the crowning (crucifix): her offering of her Son to the Father, her strengthening of her Son for the kingship of the cross.

For the very offering is itself a help to Him, comforting and gladdening Him. For her, the meeting (Jesus carrying the cross) can be only agony: and John and Mary Magdalen must have tried to restrain her, while she insisted, “I must be with my Son; He will have need of me.” And so she shows us a second thing: we are not merely to avoid confusing true pity with sentimental pity; we are to keep clear the distinction between true pity and self-pity. We, for our part, are not often asked to shoulder very heavy crosses perhaps, but the small ones come our way, and they fill us with self-pity; they make us yearn for and expect and perhaps demand sympathy until, in the end, we make others miserable in their turn. It is then that we should think of this scene, compare are noisy lamentations with Mary’s silence, our emotional wallowings with Mary’s strength, our wasted opportunity with the glory of the crucifixion. –Father Gerald Vann ‘Mary’s Answer for Our Troubled Times’

I am finished reading Father Thomas Philippe for the time being, ending with his concentration upon the importance of Mary in the life of a contemplative, the essentiality of Mary in the life of a Christian.  Our Holy Mother serves a distinct purpose; a genuine human example, inspiration, and power to behold.  She is more than doctrine and dogma, and I propose beyond the fanatical following those obsessed by her apparitions present.  Simplicity, an aversion to sin, a healthy sane faith, hope, and charity willing to be nothing more than the handmaid of the Lord, a source of grace and intervention.  Through purity and authenticity, a longing deeply for God, we must always grant Our Holy Mother the respect, dignity, and voice she deserves.  Our Holy Mother must be utilized for cleansing.  Her virginal majesty and mighty innocence pose her ripe for the further tainting of dirty vessels.  Responsibility, an approach and mindset imitating Our Holy Mother must be exercised.  We do not gain power over the world through Our Holy Mother.  Internalizing, her sublime grace kisses with a greater efficiency and depth.

Browsing a used bookstore, I came across a book for fifty cents: Gerald Vann’s ‘Mary’s Answer for Our Troubled Times’.  I became familiar with the author during my time at Assumption Abbey.  The novice master, Brother Aldred, chose the morning communal readings, focusing during my stay upon the twentieth century Dominican Father Gerald Vann.  Reminiscing, I observed the abbey’s website, a sorrowful overwhelming occurring, tears falling.  All I can do is present to my Lord and Holy Mother my heart, my wishes and desires.  I plead, opening myself, thoughts emerging: ‘I feel I have had enough Lord.  Know me Mary Undoer of Knots.  I want to go away from the world.  I am healthy and strong in mind. I can contribute to the Church.  What am I to do?’  Anyway, back to Father Gerald Vann, his short book on Mary will be my focus, Our Holy Mother becoming the center of attention, another Undoer of Knots novena initiated.

First an introduction to Father Vann from an interesting Dominican website.  …his approach (The Divine Pity) to the beatitudes…Fr Gerald first mentions one of the core concepts of the book: that to be a happy and holy Christian is not primarily a question of doing but of being. The virtues lived perfectly are not something that we do but something by which we are possessed. In an age where the fear of what doing nothing might bring pushes almost everyone to embrace a culture of activism, it is such a relief to read that all we really have to do is to let God take over. The anxieties and neuroses that are the product of a semi-Pelagian attitude must be left behind, says Fr Gerald. The feeling that we must make everything happen has no place here, it is not a Christian approach…..poverty of spirit as a child-like dependence on God. It is the opposite of pride which attempts to be autonomous, which wills to be its own master. 

The introduction fits perfectly within the current direction the Holy Spirit personally leads; words synchronizing, ideas harmonizing.  The further we advance, the more the road narrows, the more God demands.  Surrendering, the vitality of the obedience of Mary, must be elevated.  The inability to hold the reigns gently, to wear the garment of life loosely, to move about matters with a hidden nature, produces a faith of self-absorbed ugliness, a self-will dominated spiritual abomination in a world being overwhelmed by abominations.  Let’s read a bit of Father Vann, refreshing the wonder of Mary, deepening the contemplative journey.

…we must begin to say ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord”: and this is something we can say no matter what history of accumulated evil may lie behind, provided only that now we began to know and acknowledge our nothingness and helplessness, and destroy all the self-fashioned and self-imposed masks we have presented to ourselves and to the world, and stand naked under the creative and re-creative hand of God.  Be it done unto me: done from the very beginning, for there is nothing therefore that can give any direction, have any rights, form any pattern; no power, no entity, no I, but only the dark chaos of nothingness out of which God, but only God, can create a real man.  

Our Lady Undoer of Knots