1965-66  MARY GARDEN ECUMENICAL UPDATE <PRE>

(UNION WITH MARY)

TAPE                TOPICS

5/11/65      <A HREF = "DC-BR-1965-66.html#Vatican II">Vatican II and Marian Devotion; Flower Symbols</A>
5/12/65      <A HREF = "DC-BR-1965-66.html#May">May Devotions & The Rosary</A>
3/20/66      <A HREF = "DC-BR-1965-66.html#Union">Mary's Union with Christ</A>
4/19/66      <A HREF = "DC-BR-1965-66.html#Holiness">Mary's Holiness</A>
4/20/66      <A HREF = "DC-BR-1965-66.html#Holiness2">Mary's Holiness</A>
4/21/66      <A HREF = "DC-BR-1965-66.html#Attributes">Mary's Attributes, Privileges, Flower Offerings</A>;
             <A HREF = "DC-BR-1965-66.html#Attributes">Mary Gardening</A>
4/26/66      <A HREF = "DC-BR-1965-66.html#Beauty">Mary's Beauty, Will, Glory, Joy ; Rod of Jesse</A>          
5/08/66      <A HREF = "DC-BR-1965-66.html#Prerogatives">Mary's Prerogatives; Purgative, Illuminative, Unitive</A>
5/10/66      <A HREF = "DC-BR-1965-66.html#Divine Maternity">Mary's Divine Maternity;  Jewish prohibition of Images</A>
5/12/66      <A HREF = "DC-BR-1965-66.html#Immaculate Conception">Mary's Immaculate Conception</A>
5/26/66      <A HREF = "DC-BR-1965-66.html#Male Female">Male, Female & God</A>
5/29/66      <A HREF = "DC-BR-1965-66.html#Trinity">Mary and the Trinity</A>



TRANSCRIPTION OF MEDITATIONS TAPED IN THE MARY GARDEN BY JOHN
STOKES FOR BONNIE ROBERSON. 1965 & 1966. Edited.
________________________________________________________________

<A NAME="Vatican II">5/11/65</A> - <B>Vatican II and Marian Devotion; Flower Symbols</B>

Dear Bonnie,

     I have been thinking continuously about the disturbing change
in attitude you have noticed on the part of your diocesan newspaper
- which in the wake of the Second Vatican Council has suddenly
started to disparage devotion to Mary and even the praying of the
Rosary.

     From my following of the Council and my participation in the
many dialogs of the Wellsprings Ecumenical Center here in the areas
of Catholic-Protestant and Jewish-Christian relations and Women's
Liberation; and also from the numerous discussions I have
participated in among Catholics as to the place of Marian devotion
in the post Vatican II Church, I think I can be helpful to you both
in understanding the origins of this change of attitude, which is
not unique to your diocese, and also in carrying forward our Mary's
Gardens work with continued, and even greater, confidence in the
coming period.

    You may recall that for some time it was reported that there
was in preparation a separate Council document on the place of Mary
in the Church, but that at the last minute  it was decided to
include it as some chapters on Mary in the Constitution on the
Church, published last Fall.  The dropping of these passages as a
separate Marion document was siezed upon as a "victory" by those
Catholics who have been opposed all along to the prominence of
Marian devotion in the Church and who are now "coming out of the
woodwork".

     St. Louis de Monfort has characterized such persons as
"critical" and "scrupulous" devotees to Mary - critical devotees
who object to simple devotion to Mary, such as giving flowers to
her or even praying the Rosary, as ignorant, sentimental and
superstitious diversions from devotion to Jesus; and scrupulous
devotees who object to veneration of and recourse to Our Lady as
Intercessor, Spiritual Mother and Mediatrix, etc. as detracting
from or usurping the unique role of Christ as the one Mediator
between God and man.

     Presuming that it supports their position, these "Marian
minimalists" cite the statement in Paragraph 67 of the Constitution
on the Church that:

          "This Synod earnestly exhorts theologians and priests
          of the Divine Word that in treating of the unique dignity
          of the Mother of God, they carefully . . . avoid the
          falsity of exaggeration . . . .

          "Let them painstakingly guard against any word or deed
          which could lead separated brethren or anyone else into
          error regarding the doctrine of the Church.  Let the
          faithful remember moreover that true devotion consists
          neither in fruitless and passing emotions, nor in a
          certain vain credulity,"

     This was also seen by some bishops as a signal to downplay
Marian devotion in their dioceses in order better to get along with
Protestants in ecumenical dialog.

     We must not be surprised, then, when, as an aftermath of the
Council, we encounter such opposition to Marian devotion generally,
and to our work with the Flowers of Our Lady and Mary Gardens in
particular - even though the flower symbolism mirrors basic
doctrine, and Mary Garden devotion is exemplary of the true
devotion to Mary, derived from Tradition, which St. Louis de
Montfort discerns as interior, tender, holy, constant and
disinterested.  And always keep in mind that our research - mostly
from secular sources - and our basic literature and articles give
the lie to any characterizations of our work as "exaggerated,
emotional, vainly credulous or erroneous."

     Happily, the fact is that while the Council properly does
condemn exaggerated,  emotional and vainly credulous or erroneous
devotion to Mary - which, however, is not further specified - a
more thorough reading of its documents shows that its basic thrust
is a welcome restatement of the traditional doctrines of Mary's
Divine Maternity, Perpetual Virginity, Immaculate Conception,
Assumption, Spiritual Motherhood and Mediation - all of which are
at the heart of our Mary Garden symbolism and devotion.

     For example in paragraph 60 of the Constitution on the Church
it specifically affirms Mary's Motherly Mediation:

          "The maternal duty of Mary toward men in no way obscures
          or diminishes the unique mediation of Christ, but rather
          shows its power.  For all the saving influences of the
          Blessed Virgin on men originate not from some inner
          necessity, but from the divine pleasure.

          "They flow forth from the superabundance of the merits of
          Christ; rest on his mediation, depend entirely on it, and
          draw all their power from it.  In no way do they impede
          the  immediate union of the faithful with Christ."
                    
     So don't let anyone get away with trying to tell you the
Council is opposed to Marian devotion, or to projects like Mary's
Gardens.  To the contrary: from the Council we can be reassured in
continuing in our work with full confidence, and as an act of faith
- building its richess and beauty until the day when it is again,
hopefully, better appreciated and acted on. In a way you are
re-experiencing a repetition of what Ed McTague and I went through
at the beginning of our work, when we ran into disparraging remarks
such as, "I don't need this", and "Where'd you get this stuff?"
etc.. Our work has always been both one of reaching those who
already have an interior, tender, holy, constant, disinterested,
true devotion to Our Lady; and also of summoning, in  grace, those
who have a more exterior devotion to Mary to this deeper true
devotion - engendering the sense that "of Mary there is never
enough", so that they may perhaps be moved to undertake the
devotional work of Mary-Gardening.  And, always, we reach out as
well to Protestants, Jews and those of the other world religions;
and also to the secular world.

     Perhaps there are indeed occurrences of emotional and
superstitious exaggerations of devotion to Mary which should be
purged from the Church, but this can only clear the ground for an
re-appreciation of the fullness of traditional Marian true doctrine
and devotion, and their carrying forward, of which our work is
expressive in the area of flowers and gardening.

     On the positive side, I have found it helpful to re-think all
Mary's virtues and divine prerogatives in the light of the
recurring emphasis of the Council documents on Mary's "intimate
union" and "close cooperation" with the saving work of Christ; and
I propose this can be a useful basis for Corroborating of the basis
of our work through the citation of the Council.

     Thus, as I walk through and rest in the Mary Garden, where I
am making this tape - using my battery-operated tape recorder, and
with a few basic books and texts at hand - I will reflect on all
these matters in a free-flowing manner as I come upon the various
beloved Flowers of Our Lady - not  being up to the task at this
time of attempting to write up this "Council update" as some sort
of more formal and crafted statement.

     Here, now, before me as I stroll are "Ladder to Heaven" and
"Our Lady's Keys", which, for example, would  clearly be a
stumbling block and a problem to anyone who objects to the role of
Our Lady as collabrator and mediatrix with Our Lord - from whom she
receives the fullness of Grace, which she then pours fourth on us.

     Those who are scrupulous and critical in their devotion to
Mary likewise object to the doctrine of her Immaculate Conception -
giving it the minimum of assent required by its dogmatic
definition, instead of rejoicing in its proclamation as a
foundation for a fuller veneration of Our Lady and her other divine
prerogatives.

     Thus, those who have reservations about the Immaculate
Conception object to our regarding of all flowers as symbols of her
immaculateness  - being of all God's creatures, the ones best
suited to do this, perhaps with the exception of maybe snow flakes.
Snowflakes and crystals are more like stars and in that respect
symbolize Our Lady as the Morning Star, Star of the Sea - yet they
lack the sense of responsiveness of flowers and plants. Flowers,
being both immaculate and responsive, are indeed perhaps the best
symbols of Our Lady's cooperation with God

     Many people, too, are scrupulous with respect to the
meritoriousness of Mary's actions in the moral sense, deriving from
the purity of thought and intention and recollection with which
they were undertaken.  For example, the profounder sense of her
sewing work we reflect on as we behold "Our Lady's Thimble" would
be objected to.  The same purity is involved in symbols such as
"Our Lady's Shoes" and "S1ippers" and the words applied to her from
the Canticle of Canticles by Mother Mary of Agrada: "All her steps
were most beauteous" - words applied to the Bride, in the Cantlcle
of Canticles, and then applied to Mary following the Fathers and
St. Bernard. Again, the whole concept of flowers - the legendary
concept of flowers springing up where Our Lady walked and for that
matter, rested on the Flight into Egypt or placed her cloak - all
these, too, basically bespeak the immaculateness and purity of
Mary's holiness.

     Then there are the symbols of Our Lady's Transfixion or
Compassion - her spiritual participation in and sharing of the
Passion of her divine Son: spiderwort, "Our Lady's Tears", and
iris, "Our Lady's Sword of Sorrow", recalling the prophecy of
Simeon that many hearts would be revealed by a Sword of Sorrow
piercing her soul. This has to do with Our Lady's title of
co-redemptrix which, like the title of mediatrix, has not been
dogmatically defined, or as Pope Pius XII would say, is not yet
sufficiently ripe in the mind of the Church, not sufficiently
mature in the mind of the Church to be defined.

     The theological, Mariological, concept and doctrine of
co-redemption, in the sense of a collaborative partnership of a
human person elevated into communion with the suffering and death
of the divine person of the redeemer, is such that Mary, as mother
and life-time collaborator, sharer, with Our Lord, certainly must
have shared in the Passion of Her Son in a most special and
privileged way or manner, vastly more sublime and elevated and
different and full than that of anyone else - even those such as
St. Francis or St. Paul who received the stigmata of Our Lord or
those who have dedicated their life to meditating upon Our Lord on
the cross.

     Thus, "Mary's Sword of Sorrow" reveals both the thoughts of
loving hearts that emulate her intimate union with her Divine Son's
Passion and also the thoughts of scrupulous hearts which reacts
negatively to the symbols of her Mary's co-passion  and
co-redemption. These doctrines, despite their universality, may
indeed not yet be ripe and mature enough in the life of the Church
for dogmatic definition, but what is in question here is something
entirely different, namely, that the very appreciation, love and
spiritual benefit and richness of the Mary Garden come from the
overflowing of the fullness and the full acceptance of these
ancient traditions in the Age of Faith - a faith so needed today.

     The Marian devotion which comes from these traditions of her
full collaboration with her Divine Son, and the resulting prayers
to Mary that she honor God by exercising her sublime collabration -
including intercession with Him on our behalf and her mediation
with us - are implicit in the marvelous way which God has blessed
her, so that, as Pope Paul VI pointed out: in praying to Our Lady
to intercede and mediate for us, we are in effect simply
acknowledging, honoring and praising God for the great things that
he has done to Mary in his divine plan of the salvation of the
world.

     Similar thoughts are suggested by just about every flower here
in the garden - for example "Our Lady's Bells", gland bell flower
(Adenophera confusa or ferari) recalling the Angelus and venerating
the wonder of the Annunciation.

     Scrupulous devotees would have Mary as just an innocent little
girl who was out in the back yard and all of a sudden this angel
appeared, and without really knowing what was involved she said "Be
it done to me according to thy word".  They are repelled by the
thought of the whole incarnation of our Lord depending upon Our
Lady's affirmative answer -- the whole salvation of the human race
depending upon this answer; not only the salvation of the human
race but the whole establishment of a new heaven and a new earth,
which makes Our Lady truly Universal Queen of Heaven and Earth, and
thus the Queen of Plants and Animals, as well as of Men -- making
even stronger the tie of the plant creatures to her.

     At the same time, critical devotees of Mary would object
especially to names such as the title of "Gentle Virgin", applied
to the florist's geranium. All the titles applied to Our Lady such
as tender, loving, sweet gentle, clement, etc., are regarded by
them as so much sentimentality and mis-placed piety - if they
accept the concept of piety at all.  But, again, "Tender Virgin",
"Sweet Mary", and some of the similar names we have here, again are
meaningful only if one has a full sense of Our Lady's womanly
delicacy and virtues.

     Then there are the various flower symbols referring to Our
Lady's bodily parts and faculties like "Eyes of Mary", "Our Lady's
Eardrops" or "Earrings", "Our Lady's Fingers", "Our Lady's Shoes",
- referring to her steps as well as her feet - and "Our Lady's
Tresses".

     It is reported that in one of the very old ways of saying the
Rosary 500 years ago or so, people would think of Our Lady as our
model or example or inspiration of each virtue.  Critical and
scrupulous devotees object to this because they think that Christ
should be our model of virtue. But the way in which Our Lady is
virtuous is inspiring to us in its special way - in a complimentary
and collaborative way - in that she is a human person just like us.
She had a special vocation, special graces, but we, too, have our
vocation and the graces of our state of life and graces of the
present moment.

     In these reports of ancient Rosary meditations on Our Lady,
one meditation was to meditate on, for example her, eyes, the
control of her eyes, the avoidance of concupiscence of the eyes.
Similarly, her ear, the purity of her hearing, as symbolized by the
earring, her avoidence of listening to gossip and detraction and
false witness.  Then, too, there is Mary's use of her hands, not
only in her sewing work, but in her envisaged comforting of St.
Joseph, the Christ Child, the sick, her neighbors, the bereaved.
The symbolism of Mary's Shoes and steps has already been mentioned.
Instead of thinking about the eyes of Mary simply as Our Lady's
Eyes, we should think of them in terms of purity of seeing - as in
the legend of the Forget-Me-Nots, or "Eyes of Mary".

     If we accept Our Lady as a model for virtue, as as a human
person, this enables us to accept and have confidence and hope that
sanctity and holiness are accessible and available to all of us
with the help of God's Grace, and not something coming from the
divinity of Christ whlch is sort of infinitely above us and
inaccessible.

     Then all the symbols of our Lady as typifying the Created
Wisdom, as being the Seat of Wisdom - all the marvelous symbols
from Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom and Proverbs: Fair Olive Tree, Cedar of
Lebanon, Rose of Sharon, and all those other wonderful symbols.
Again, scrupulous devotees object to Our Lady's title of Seat of
Wisdom, and, similarly to the Church Fathers' application to her -
even though it is in the liturgy - of all these passages about
wisdom which are developed from plant life.

     In short, the flower symbolism of the Mary Garden is
expressive both of the loving devotion to Mary of the child - the
simple soul - the pure soul - the person who would like to have "a
pretty garden for our Holy Mother"; and of the developed
theological discernment of Mary's preeminent place in the Divine
plan and work of Redemption, the universal works of mercy, the
building of the earthly Peaceable Kingdom, and the culminative
establishement of the New Heaven and New Earth.


<A NAME="May">5/12/65</A> - <B>May Devotions & The Rosary</B>

     With repect to the state of mind or belief or mode of soul
necessary from the spiritual or religious viewpoint to have a sense
for the Mary Garden symbolism - to have an acceptance and embrace
of the Mary Garden symbolism - I should not neglect to say
something also about Roses: l) Red - Crimson Glory, 2) White -
Virgo, 3) Yellow - Peace or Gloria Dei, before me, beginning to
soften for their June blooming.  These give us the White, Red and
Gold Rose symbolism of our Lady's Joys, Sorrows and Glories and
thus the whole natural foundation of the Rosary, the saying of the
Rosary, which also has been under such attack recently from the
critical and scrupulous devotees or non-devotees of our Lady.

     Both May Devotions and the prayers of the Rosary ultimately
have their foundation in a religious sense of nature.  Once that
sense, as set forth in the Mary Garden idea and prayerful work in
its entirety, is lost or no longer known, then the passing down of
the Rosary and May Devotions from generation to generation becomes
a sort of convention or routine, an "exterior" devotion, which has
lost its vital principle.  I believe that this is why those who
advocate the continuation and strengthening and renewal of the
prayers the Rosary and the May Devotions today have difficulty in
gaining acceptance.

     Even in Pope Paul VI's recent encyclical which came out in the
last couple of weeks, exhorting prayers of the Rosary to Our Lady
during the month of May for the intention of World Peace and the
full completion of the work of the Council - while they were most
moving - really contained nothing which made clear or set forth or
expostulated the religious or Marian religious sense of nature.
The exhortation was based, rather, on the role of Mary as "Mother
of the Church", the title of Our Lady he had just established at
the close of the previous session of the Council.  In view of the
Holy Father's establishment of this title and of the recent Marian
part of the doctrine on the Church approved by the Council, it was
and is, of course entirely fitting and proper that he should take
these as the starting point in exhorting prayers of the Rosary and
May devotions.  Nevertheless, from the viewpoint of historical and
traditional origins, it would have been profoundly renewing if he
had also based it on the religious sense of nature and of the
seasons of nature with respect to Mary, which would, I propose,
have given more depth to these particular devotions.

     However, we have had excellent statements from both Pope Pius
XII and Pope John XXIII on the Origins of the Rosary and May
devotions in nature, so we are not lacking in that respect.  Pope
Pius XII's address to the Rose Growers, in May of 1965, to the
effect that we should remember that the Rosary is primarily "A
garden of roses offered to Mary, an adornment of her image and a
symbol of her graces" places the Rosary precisely back on its solid
foundation of the Rose Garden, and on the religious sense of the
rose garden. Pope Pius XII as an approach to restoration reverted
to this logic in making his remark to Rose Growers, saying that in
view of all he had just said about the origin of the Rosary and the
meaning of the Rosary, it behooved them to use the rose as a source
of meditation on God and Our Lady as they proceeded with their work
of cultivating and hybridizing the rose in their gardens.

     Pope Pius XII called specifically for May Devotions in his
encyclical on the Liturgy, Mediator Dei. And Pope John XXIII on
several occasions made wonderful remarks about May Devotions such
as that the Flowers in the month of May are, as it were, the Smile
of Our Lady.

     One Sister, in something I read many years ago, referred to
the passage from the Canticle of Canticles applied to Our Lady on
the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and perhaps other times,
"Thou art all fair My Love" - pointing out that if Our Lady is all
fair, tben all beauty in a sense refers to her as "Beauty", and, as
it were, touches her beauty, especially during the month of May.

     As I see it, May devotions have their foundation in the fact
that since flowers have different types of symbolism, in the
different times of the year, therefore, in the month of May, which
is the month of growth and flourishing, flowers are especially the
symbol of the flourishing of our spiritual life which was reborn
with the liturgical season of Easter and the symbolism, the flower
symbolism, of the Resurrection. Now that new life has been
restored, through the Resurrection, to our souls, the consequent
marvelous growth and flourishing of all the graces and virtues
constitutes the primary and general significance of the flowering
of May. And since the soul of Our Lady was the model and example
and inspiration - the ideal - of this flowering, it is especially
fitting that the flowering is then referred to Mary as an
enhancement and clarification in our minds of the beauty of the
flowering of grace in her soul, so that focused on her we can still
better meditate upon this, and imitate it, and be silent before it.

     This I propose is the true and ultimate foundation of May
Devotions.


<A NAME="Union">3/20/66</A> - <B>Mary's Union with Christ</B>

     Mary's significance - in addition to having made possible the
Incarnation, and therefore the Redemption, - is basically that
having heard the word of God, she kept it, and having done the will
of God, she remained true to her vocation of Immaculate Holiness,
and true to her vocation, which is the vocation of all of us, of
praying for the Holy Spirit in the Upper Room when the Church and
the people of the church found, and find, themselves powerless to
carry on Christ's work through their own resources.

     Mary is the example of how we can hope in The Father and
Christ and the Holy Spirit, and of how we can authentically pray to
her as men "come of age". Not just as helpless sinners, in utter
dependence upon Mary, or praying to her for some sort of magic
intercession, but rather, as people having come of age and
spiritual maturity, working in a way with Mary, following her as
our model, seeing in her our hope of hearing, as she did, the word
of God and keeping it - seeing our relation to her as one in which
she beseeches of us our prayers to God, as one in which she, as our
sister and mother wants us to realize that we can follow in her way
of perfection. She wants this so that we, ourselves, too, will
magnify the Lord.  In wishing to praise God and to see him praised,
she beseeches this intercession and grace on our behalf.

     Also, in praying to Mary, we bear testimony to the closeness
of the union which is possible of an individual to God.  Just as
man and wife are of one flesh, so, too, the union between the soul
and Christ, the Church and Christ, but more particularly the
individual soul and Christ, and particularly Mary and Christ, is so
close, that the wish of the Bride becomes the wish of the beloved,
the Spouse.  Thus in turning to Mary in intercessory or petitionary
prayer, we are not so much depending upon favors that she can get
from God, because of her worthiness or position or her
collaboration.  Rather we are really affirming her union with God.
In her response to the Annunciation, Mary becomes with the Lord,
who is with her; becomes united to the Lord who is united to her.
Thus, in turning to Mary, we are affirming her union with God
rather than turning to her to exercise some sort of magic or "pull"
for us with God.  And turning to her in this way in effect affirms
the union that we too can have with God.

     From another viewpoint, since it God's pleasure and will to
distribute all the graces of the Son through Mary's mediation, this
is in effect what we pray for when we pray to God in the Our
Father, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" - that God's
Kingdom may come, to hallow his Name.  Or, to put it another way,
when we pray to Mary as our Intercessor and Mediatrix , we are
doing his will, that his Kingdom will come, to most fully hallow
his Name.

     Formerly, on entering into and walking through the Mary
Garden, I saw how it reminded me of how Mary's Soul magnified the
Lord, showed forth the Lord, and also recalled more specifically
how God had appointed Mary as the "agent" of his mercy and thus
wanted us to pray to her for that.  But now it seems to me that to
pray to Mary because of her union with God, her oneness with him,
and to celebrate that oneness, is a more complete and authentic and
adequate thought than to pray to Mary because she has power with
him because of her holiness, or, even because in His order God has
appointed her to represent his mercy to us and evoke our
supplications to his mercy through her.

     I have always felt that there were pious or devotional
overtones which were lacking in this.  But in honoring God's union
with mankind - with the world, the church - by evoking Mary
mindful of her union with him, solves a lot of problems in
presenting the place of Mary in petitionary and intercessory
prayer, when we are talking to others who question or resist this
concept.  This effects the way that we pray the Rosary, pray the
Hail Mary. It is because Mary is full of grace, and the Lord is
with her and that she responded to him throughout her life, and
now, assumed into heaven, is so intimately and closely united to
Christ so that in saying "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is
with thee", by evoking Mary united to Christ, we are really
honoring God's marvelous desire to unite us all to him in every
possible way.

     Also, we are repeating this in another way when we say , "Holy
Mary Mother of God", and here again this question of union seems to
me much more sublime and mysterious and marvellous than praying to
Mary because she is God's Mother.  Since nature perfects grace, her
earthly motherhood is perfected in heaven; but even praying to her
to intercede because she is God's heavenly mother again seems to be
using her magic or something rather than praying to her as united
with God.

      Then comes the word, sinners: "pray for us sinners now and at
the hour of our death".  Here again with the word, sinner, there
are many ways of looking at it.  I'm sure that the word sinner, and
the very prayer of the Rosary came into being before there were
printed Catechisms and printed books of how to examine our
conscience and behavior.  The word, sinner, originally did not mean
someone who went to confession and confessed five of this kind of
sin and ten of that, and twenty of those, or this one particular
grevious sin, or this mortal sin.  Neither did the word, sinner,
neccessaily mean a sort of abject helpless person who was without
hope unless Mary mercifully came to his rescue. Regardless of the
historical background, I now think, when I refer to myself in this
traditional prayer as being a sinner, in terms not only of my
specific sin, and of enumeration of the sins of my life, but more,
rather, of the whole state of my soul at this point in History in
terms of my whole life - in terms of its good points and weak
points which, when all considered together, of course would be very
far short of where Mary was when she was on earth and where she is
now in her sublime union with God.


<A NAME="Holiness">4/19/66</A> - <B>Mary's Holiness</B>

     In praying to Mary, mindful of her sublime union with God, we
affirm the universal longing for the union of the human and the
divine, and beseech her to lead us to it.

     We speak of heavenly joys and being happy with God forever in
heaven; of the beatific vision and so forth; but this way of
speaking of the beatific vision and of being happy in heaven seems
to end up implying  almost a separation from God as opposed to
union.

     What we are really praying for is union with God.  Mary, being
united to God, most dearly and profoundly wants our union with God
and God wants our union with him.  Praying to Mary in terms of her
union with God, for ourselves as sinners - which in the broadest
sense simply means that we are not united with God - seems to me to
be a completely authentic prayer from the viewpoint that with our
intellect, emotion, feelings, and free will, with our whole being,
we seek, and want and work for this union. Thus, we are really
affirming and stating the intention of what we are in fact spending
every waking minute doing; and the object of our lives, and our
intentions for them, as stated in our prayers, become identical and
therefore authentic.

     I hope you can sense what in fact this represents; not some
sort of diversion or incidental elaboration, but rather, thanks to
God's providence, and grace, an advance toward a deeper
appreciation and a deeper basic insight into Our Lady and thus a
deeper insight into why it is good that we honor Mary's
relationship to God and thus honor God through Mary's relationship
to Him in our Mary Garden symbolism and stewardship and action and
work.

     I have tried to set forth in some detail the present status of
Mary in my life.  This whole question of seeing Mary in heavenly
union with Jesus instead of seeing her in terms of her virtues and
attributes, seeing that our imitation of Mary should be imitating
her way of acting, in obedience to and response to and
collaboration with God from which her virtues emanated and
developed, rather than seeing her virtues only as something that we
should imitate.

     We know that any given person's spirituality keeps changing
from time to time.  I suppose that in a certain phase where we keep
seeing new truths of spirituality we see what they mean in terms of
virtues and we see Mary as an ideal model and prototype of those
virtues to contemplate, to meditate on, to imitate as a means of
our religious development that are suited to where you are at the
moment.  It is probably because I have working on the ecumenical
unity of religions that thinking in terms of these llluminated
attributes now seems to imply a seperation from God.

     In keeping with the Council's affirmation of Mary's "intimate
union" and "close cooperation" with her Divine Son and Lord, I now
focus on seeing Mary in unity with God.  In this I see Mary and God
together in terms of God's desire for the union of all of us as his
body, as his people, in our union with Mary, who, as somebody said,
is the "neck of the mystical body", or at least our sister, with
whom we and she are both members of the same body.  She is in
heaven united with our Lord; she is united with us and united with
him.

     I recall your counseling me when people suggest that I'm
wasting their time working with flowers, when so much social work
needs to be done. - that I should remind them of Mary Magdalene
annointing the feet of the Lord, with the precious oil and her
hair, or Mary and Martha being busy with many things but Mary her
sister sitting at the feet of Our Lord with the Gospel, observation
that she has chosen the better part.  I think that the key
justification of Mary Gardening is not only that it honors Mary's
role of union with God but also it honors God's holiness as
in-dwelling in Mary.

     Considered from Mary's viewpoint, holiness might be said to be
one of her attributes; but if holiness is understood as being the
presence and indwelling of God himself, then truly holiness is an
attribute of union with God and not, shall we say, a virtue of a
person.  So that when we say that somebody was a very holy man we
think in the usual pietistic sense that he has his hands folded and
is looking up to heaven, or maybe more seriously or more profoundly
it means that this man is highly mortified interiorly, a very
purified person lnteriorly, and holy in that sense, but that still
is made to be an attribute of him. But he is holy in the profound
sense when the dwelling of God), the action of God, is considered
to be in him.  Again we go back to the Magnificat when Mary says
that her soul magnifies the Lord and her spirit rejoices in God
because his might has done great things to her and holy is his
name.  Of course some of the things that God had done had to do
with the Immaculate Conception, the Incarnation and so forth, but
also the Holy Spirit over-shadowed her and dwelt in her so that she
was holy in the sense that I have indicated, that God was dwelling
in her soul as well as in her body, in her womb.

     I recall that Dan Foley, I believe it was in his Herbarist
article, or maybe it was the lecture at the Catholic Art
Association convention in Latrobe, Pennsylvania in August of 1960,
or both those places, spoke of the beauty of the garden as
symbolising the beauty of Mary's holiness.  I think that when we
consider the beauty and purity of flowers as symbolising the beauty
of Mary' s holiness, understood to be the presence of God within
her, and therefore the potential of God's dwelling within us also,
that the Mary Garden, then becomes a visible sign and witness of
holiness, of the holiness of the Church, holiness seen as a mark of
the Church, and, thus acquires a special dignity and significance
and justification as an activity, this light.

     You may recall my previous remarks on the importance of the
Mary Garden symbolical testimony and witness to trancendence or
more specifically to the trancendent, supernatural, infinite,
personal God in terms of all the symbolism of the Creed, of which
the symbolism of the Rosary is simply another form - in praying the
sequence of the 15 mysteries of the Rosary, or meditating on them
we are in effect affirming the basic tenents or articles or the
Creed.  But in terms of the beauty of holiness we are affirming
holiness which is not so much trancendent as it is incarnate and
immanent, and indwelling.  Holiness is the presence and indwelling
of the supernatural life of God, the uncreated life of grace
dwelling in us here, so that what I see in the Mary Garden is
transendence, union, immanence, and holiness.

     Speaking again of the flowers as symbols of holiness, as
symbols of the beauty of holiness - since holiness (as I've tried
to suggest in its most sublime sense) is the indwelling of God, of
grace - to the extent that you have a figure, a statue, a shrine of
Mary and Jesus or even just Mary in the garden, and to the extent
that the flowers are seen attributively in relation to the statue,
as it were showing Mary's attributes,  the attribute of holiness,
which is the attribute of the dwelling of God in her; "the Lord is
with thee", the flowers, while honoring Mary's holiness or in
attributing to Mary holiness, at the same time, honor God, thus
again confirming this unity in another way.

     Perhaps this is what Pope Pius XII had in mind in his address
to the rose-growers, where he spoke of flower, of roses, as symbols
of Mary's graces, yet in my mind, (of course this is translated
from the Italian, and we all know what happens, that in the subtle
changes when translations are made), it's one thing to say that
Mary is full of grace, which means holiness, that the Lord is with
her, which means holiness, but it is different when you say that
she has graces, or when you speak of "Mary's Graces". Now, I know
the word graceful, and speaking of people  having graces, in its
most profound sense means that since they have holiness because of
the indwelling of God, it shows up in these various ways.

     But again there is this subtle tendency to think of the graces
as something that somehow are hers and not God's, that they are
hers, and due to her virtues or something, instead of results and
manifestations of holiness which is God with her.  I hope that
these things that I am mentioning help you in presenting the Mary
Garden idea to others, to make it a mark of union and of holiness,
and a symbol of trancendence and of incarnation so that the very
core and essence of our belief and faith are shown forth in it, and
that this brings people to heart, mind, and soul instead of giving
them ways of writing it off as simply being pietistic or
sentimental and so forth - these being words that people who don't
accept the concept of holiness as the indwelling of the divine,
always use to explain away holiness: pietistic, sentimental,
emotional, superstitious, etc..


<A NAME="Holiness2">4/20/66</A> - <B>Mary's Holiness</B>

     In terms of union and holiness, the whole prayer of the Hail
Mary takes on greater depth.  When Mary, full of grace, is told in
the Archangel Gabriel's Annunciation to her that the Lord is with
her, this attests both to her holiness prior to the Incarnation,
prior to the Annunciation - made possible by her fidelity to the
Immaculate Conception and its continuing graces; and also to the
culmination of this holiness in the Lord's entering into indwelling
unity with her through the espousal of the Holy Spirit, and through
her acceptive embrace of this unity through her responsive fiat.
Union with the Holy Spirit is union with God, and therefore union
also with the Father and the Son.

     The words "the Lord is with Thee" implies both this fullness
and also the fact that God is with her in union.  Protestants who
don't accept the concept of indwelling grace interpret full of
grace as a parellel statement.  They say that when grace is spoken
of, what is being spoken of is what we would call providence or the
person's relationship to God.  To them the relationshlp of grace
would include the relationship of the Incarnation which we would
call her vocation or privelege.

     The fact that the words of Elizabeth address Mary as "Blessed
art thou among woman and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus"
means that Mary is blessed in being chosen as the mother of Jesus,
the redeemer who in turn is blessed because he is to be the
Redeemer.  The fact that the word blessed is applied to both again
indicates the collaborative union of Mary and Jesus.

     Then when the Church speaks and says "Holy Mary and Mother of
God" the word holy sums up holiness as meaning full of grace etc..
Mother of God adds to it the unity, the fleshly unity and the unity
of love and will and the ties of mother and son.

     In terms of unity when we ask Mary to pray for us, again this
is not so much that she is sort of standing between us and Jesus,
that we pray to her to pray to Jesus to pray for us, rather, that
because of her union with Jesus and his divine condecension shall
we say in love to make her prayers his and his prayers hers, in
effect we are asking Mary to pray for us with Jesus.  We are asking
Jesus to pray for us united to Mary honoring this union to God the
Father within the unity of the Holy Sprit.  We are, in sum, asking
Mary in her union with Jesus to pray with Jesus, through Jesus, and
in Jesus, for us to God the Father.

     Then one other observation that I thought should be made in
speaking of Mary's attributes and so forth: if, as I propose, we
want to avoid speaking of Mary as if her graces and glories,
virtues, somehow make her worthy to have her prayer listened to by
Jesus, and rather want to speak of her unity with Jesus - with her
holiness and the attributes simply pointing to this - then the only
virtue which we can truly point to as Mary's alone, perhaps is her
humility, which in a way can also be considered as her openness to
God. It is because she as completely open to God, or completely
humble and self-abnegating, self-affacing, self-emptying, before
God, while loving him, that He could fill her so completely.  Thus,
in considering Mary's humility, it is not some indwelling attribute
of God shining forth through her as much it is a virtue of hers
which made it possible for her to be open to God, and to receive
him and have him dwelling in her soul and in her body and showing
forth all the attributes and graces which have come from this.

    Similarly, in a way we can't really speak of Mary's priveleges
as being hers, for example, the privelege of the Immaculate
Conception or Divine Maternity or Perpetual Virginity.  While these
were hers, and she responded to the offering of them to her, or
maintained fidelity with them, nevertheless they were divinely
ordained, presdestined - whereas it was her humility that was
especially hers, and enabled her to be open to these and to grace,
And to say "Be it done to me according to thy word".


<A NAME="Attributes">4/21/66</A> - <B>Mary's Attributes, Privileges, Flower Offerings</B>

     With respect to Mary's heavenly glory (I'm looking at a
Calendula Marigold) I will attempt to speak of the symbolism in
terms of Mary's glory as really not being her glory, or something
emanating from her, but something emanating from her unity with
God, of God, of her mystical marriage with God. It is really God's
radiance; her holiness is God in her, with her, so that it is a
union symbol, not just a sort of pietistical halo.

     Now I am moving to the narcissus, "Mary looking down from
heaven to earth"; to forget-me-nots, "Eyes of Mary"; to "Our lady's
Mantle" - attempting to develop my way of talking about their
symbolism so that it is now always Mary in unity with God; and Mary
manifesting for us the principal in God which she is able to again
because of her unity with him (God).

     Floral offerings first of all perhaps would be regarded as
symbols of praise and thanksgiving, of the return of fruits, if
possible first fruits, of the earth, fruits of the goodness,
beauty, and truth of God - to God, to acknowlodge his creation, his
lordship, his love, his generosity.

     Secondly when making this floral offering in front of the
image of the Virgin and Child, the flowers are symbols of praise
and thanksgiving, more specifically, for Mary's unity with God, and
of her, or for her collaborative instrumentality with God's
redeeming action, in pure humble, loving, total response to hls
call.

     Then thirdly these floral offerings represent us in our
thoughts, our hopes, our petitions, through Mary and Jesus to God.
Again, through this petition - through Mary and Jesus - honoring
Mary's unity with Jesus, including epecially her lovingness, her
holiness, her unity of brideship and queenship.

     When we speak of Mary as Queen, this implies actually
brideship, and a mystical marriage with Christ the King.  Again
this question of unity. When we speak of Mary as Queen, we are
speaking of her union with the King.  The Queen shares in the
King's office, because she is marrled to him, she is his wife and
in this sense the queenship of course implies not just some
sentimental idea of Mary kind of being queen sitting up there but
actually her union with Christ her sacredotal, joint authority and
rulership with him.

     Again, also, her will is Christ's will, and his is ours, and
also, petitionary prayer honors, as I said before, our union with
Mary and Christ's mystical Body, so that we and Mary are all
members of one body, and our concerns are hers, and are joys are
hers, and vice-versa so that she, through our union with her, and
through her union with Christ, becomes the link, or "neck of the
Mystical Body", so that she is a means of union with God, and not
some sort of obstacle.

     Finally these flower symbols again are symbols of our desire
to imitate and emulate Mary's union with God by imitating and
emulating her predispositions to unity; namely, her purity,
humility, openess, watchfulness, attentiveness, and her
responsiveness of hearing the word of God and keeping it and doing
the will of the Father with total dedication and commitment and
steadfastness.

     I also should add - although it perhaps applies more to our
prayers and recollections when we're actually in the garden tending
flowers before the image of Our Lady - that we should constantly
reflect on all the parellels between flower life and growth and
spiritual life and growth so that in growing a Mary Garden and
undertaking one and being faithful to it we are in a way offering
ourselves in spiritual growth to Jesus.  Though Mary, in union with
Jesus - we are dedicating ourselves to fidelity to the spiritual
symbolism of flower growth.

     We are saying that in undertaking this garden and as we care
for it, this symbolism of growth will be our constant meditation,
that we are committing ourselves to this meditation much along the
lines of the prayer or the Burmese woman, although she is referring
to a flower that has been picked and may or may not have the whole
sense of cultivation and nourishment and so forth - her prayer that
"May my spirit be always fragrant as this flower; may I ever
remember that as this flower fades, so will my body die; and may my
life on earth be more than body."

          I am developing here the idea of the undertaking of the
Mary Garden that follows not only the commitment to care for the
garden, but the commitment to the gardening way to God through Mary
which can be as binding, in its own way, as the depth and
commitment of the vows, for example, that a religious nun or sister
or brother makes.

     In entering the convent and taking the religious vows for
life, one in effect is saying, "I am following this way, I am
following the precepts of the Gospel; of the Sermon on the Mount. I
am serving public notice of this fact, and here I am before
everyone who is watching to see what this means in terms of
affirming God and the religious life and affirming holiness as the
mark of the Church."

     Similarly, one who commits oneself to undertake a Mary Garden
- and it is a public thing to establish such a garden in your yard,
and with the image of Our Lady - undertakes an obligation and a
committment to live a certain type of life.  Of course, if one
gives the garden up, for reasons other than neccesity, this again
is sort of like leaving the convent, you might say, not that there
might not be good reasons for this, but the sticking with the
garden in itself says something about your motivatlon and spiritual
orientation.  But more than this, those who know that you work in
the garden and see you there, and so forth, are looking for more
than just a continuation of the garden.  They want to see if the
commlttment to the way of the garden, to the symbolism of growth,
to the approach to God through flowers and Mary, does anything in
your life, and is a light to the world as a mark of the reality and
truth and being of the trancendent, of the supernatural, of the
truths of religion; so that when seen in this way, one is making a
very big and responsible commitment to undertake a Mary Garden.

     One additional thought in connection with Mary's union has to
do with the symbolism of "Mary's Tears".   Mary is with the Lord,
united to the Lord - to Father, Son and Holy Spirit - in all the
joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries, and not just at the
Annunciation - as co-redeemer and co-sanctifier as well as
co-parent and Mother.

     While Mary as mother and particularly as the Mother of God, no
doubt was crying because of the suffering of her Son; in terms of
her close union with him and as collaborator with him in the work
of the redemption, I think we should stress, first of all, that she
was weeplng with him over his rejection, that she wept with him as
he wept during the agony in the garden.  We recall he reprimanded
the holy woman and told them they should not weep over him, but
should weep over Jerusalem.  In other words, we have in the gospel
Jesus' words as to what people we should weep for. Surely, Mary in
her close unity and correspondence with God's will would have
exemplified this weeping. In other words, Mary was weeping first of
all with Jesus and then for him.

     Then the other series of thoughts I've been having have to do
with Mary's attributes.  In terms of her union, every attribute of
Mary should be seen more profoundly as a sign of her relationahip
to God, and not something that is just an attribute of Mary
herself.  From this viewpoint, we should always intuitively plumb
all the garden and nature symbols to their depth, so that our
thoughts on beholding them or reflecting on them will always end
with God and not with Mary.  In other words Mary's attributes are
not to be contemplated in themselves, but within their
relationships of intellect, will, or Mary's intellect, will, and
affections to God.  God created us to show forth and share his
goodness, of attributes and action, and achieves this in its
fullnes initially in Mary - thanks to her immaculate holiness, her
humility and her fiat in response to God's proposal to her at the
Annunciation.


<A NAME="Beauty">4/26/66</A> - <B>Mary's Beauty, Will, Glory, Joy; Rod of Jesse</B>

     Here, flower symbolism has a great advantage over paintings
and statuary because in painting Mary's visible person in itself is
a symbol of her interior attributes.  Yet, the more beautiful you
make the representation of her physical person, the more it is
emphasized itself, instead of her interior 1ife of the Spirit. It
is basically Mary's intellect, will, and heart that we should
contemplate in their relationship to and response to God, not her
physical goodness or beauty.

     It is true the words of the psalm are applied to Mary, that
"All the queen's beauty is within"; that "she is clothed in gilded
clothing and surrounded by variety", that the adornment and
embellishment of Mary are what symbolize her beauty.  There is no
question of the beauty of Mary's physlcal person.  Her eyes, her
hair, her fingers, her feet, and so forth, certainly manifest her
physical perfection; spotlessly free from the effect of original
sin.  It is just that the artistic version of these in the visual
arts has a tendency to make us stop with the thought of physical
beauty and not carry our thoughts inwards to the essential beauty
of her intellect, will, and heart. This danger inherent in direct
physical representation is a profound justification of symbolism,
and, in particular, of Mary Garden symbolism.

     But here is a further thought regarding the relationship
between physical beauty and moral beauty.  If Mary is a perfect
example of moral beauty in the sense of her spotlelesness of
intellect being such that she responds perfectly to everything that
God sends to her through nature and grace - such that actually,
with her perfect intellect, she became as it were, the embodiment
of created wisdom in the way it reflects Christ the uncreated
Wisdom - then then Mary, the spotless mirror is indeed suitably
portrayed in all the pasaages drawn from the Sapiential books:
Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Proverbs etc.  In other words, once we
really reflect on the implications of having an immaculate,
spotless, intellect, which becomes a spotless mirror reflecting all
creation and God, we see the real basis for attributing the
passages of the Bible on wisdom to Mary, as well as to the
uncreated wisdom of Christ, such as the passage that "God possessed
her in the beginning of his ways, before the earth was created,"
etc.

     Similarly the Immaculate perfection of Mary's will means that
she was infinitely responsive to the will of God and steadfast in
adhering to it.  As we have the symbolism of the vine in nature,
twining around a tree as a symbol of congruence and symbiosis,
similarly, anything in nature which shows forth strength such as
the mountain, or Tower of David, for example, suggests Mary's will.

     Then, all beauty in a way suggests rejoicing, and again we
have Mary, who in the spotlessness of her whole heart, her whole
affections and emotions and senses, was able to rejoice perfectly,
not only to know God, but to rejoice in him.  This brings us back
to the Magnificat "My soul, doth magnify the Lord, my spirit has
rejoiced in God my savior, because he that is mighty has done great
things for me," etc."

     What all this means is that while in one sense we can look at
the beauty, strength and purity of nature, and see these directly
as attributes of God - and this would be the was it was before the
Fall - nevertheless, after the Fall, nature often was not seen to
reflect God, but seen to reflect all the pagan dieties:  Venus,
Apollo, etc., or no god at all.  But when all these natural
beauties in physical order are referred to Mary's beauty of the
moral order, then we look at these things in nature as not just a
passive exercise of thought or symbolism, but as moving us from the
physical area into the moral area, where the purity, clarity,
beauty, strength, joy, of nature prompts us to imitate Mary's
openess and humility and response to God.

     From this viewpoint Mary truly is the queen of all nature, and
nature is thus reconciled with God through Mary.  It is as they are
transformed in the moral beauty of Mary's collaboration with God
that the physical goodness, truth and beauty of nature lead us to
God.  Thus the goodness, truth and beauty of nature are in
themselves symbols of moral virtues, but seen in relationship to
Mary, they are intuitively transformed, as it were, into the very
Immaculate perfection of these virtues as found in Mary - so that
in beholding nature we see and rise to virtue.

     This raises an important point about symbolism in general.  It
is one thing to make a list of symbols and say what they symbolise
by association, so that when you see the symbol, you think of the
thing, whether it is a virtue or whatever.  Thus, you say the
Marigold is a symbol of Mary's glory and "isn't that nice" it makes
us think of Mary's glory.  But it is another thing to see these
symbols intuitively so that as we behold.the gold of the marigold
we just aren't pushing a button that makes us think of Mary's
glory, but rather we're intuitively penetrating this symbol and
meditatively actually seeing all the humility and openess and
purity of Mary, her responsiveness, and  her will, which accepted
the invitation of God to dwell in her in grace, and also the union
of heaven which resulted in the resplendence of God dwelling in
her, which shines forth in her glory.

     Also, the same thing is true with people.  When we see moral
goodness, truth, and beauty in people, if we are used to thinking
in the way I have described , with respect to nature, we then see
the perfection of this goodness, truth, and beauty, in Mary.  It is
this perfection that made possible her collaboration with God in
the Redemption, which made possible the redemption and therefore
the participation of all of us in these virtues, so that even when
we are looking at the saints - although they in themselves directly
reflect and show forth God, we also see in the saints Mary, the
Queen of Saints.

     It is seeing all human perfection as culminating in the
person, in the human person, of Mary that warrants the application
of the virtues of woman like Esther, Ruth, and so forth in the
Liturgy to Mary, in whom these virtues have their immaculate
perfection.

     To sum up, natural goodness, before the Fall, whether physical
goodness in nature or moral goodness in persons could lead directly
and intuitively to the word of God.  After the Fall this lead to
Venus, Apollo, Dianna, etc. But after the redemption it leads to
Mary's collaboration with God in the redemption.  Thus if we see
things as leading directly to God, they just leave us there,
quietly reflecting, but if they lead ua to Mary they become an
active principle and inducement which inspire us to imitate Mary in
her relationship to God.

     My final thought was to make a similar application to the new
life and growth of spring.  The new life and growth of early spring
are associated with the prin˘iple of new life, namely, Chrlst'
Resurrection,  But later spring flowers, and particulary in the
month of May, are associated with the rebirth and growth of
springtime, of grace in souls, as manifested most perfectly in
Mary, whose dispositions and responsiveness to God we are to
imitate and emulate.  Thus, new life and growth come from both
their principle, Christ's Ressurection, and also, the
responsiveneas of the Blessed Mother's, and our souls - in openess,
purity, and humility - to that principle.  Thus, Mary is seen very
specifically as the responsive and collaborative principle of new
life because the redemptive work of  Christ was made  dependent
upon her responsiveness to, and collaboration

     From this viewpoint, again, the association of the month of
May and of spring flowering with Mary is not just a nice sweet
sentimental thought that because Mary is pretty and immaculate and
holy, therefore all this beauty should be associated with her so
that when we look at the flowers we think of Mary and so forth.
Rather, we should see more profoundly the beauty of Mary's
intellect, will and heart as I've already mentioned.  But when we
see newness of llfe and growth in the springtime, we should realize
that Mary is very truly and profoundlly the principle of
springtime, because it was her openness and response to and
collaboration with grace which made poasible, under God's plan, the
very incarnation of Our Lord, and his redemption and Ressurrection
which have become the principle of a spring time of grace and new
life for all of us.

     So as I said before, although Christ is the principle of grace
and new life, nevertheless, it was Mary's purity of heart and mind
which made possible the manifestation of this principle on earth.
Thus, therere is a very deep and authentic relationship between
Mary and nature in terms of the springtime of grace, and the spring
time of nature, the springtime of uncreated life, the springtime of
created life - which is much deeper than what many people seem to
consider as simply a sentimental association of Spring, and flowers
with Mary.

     If what we are to do is not just to contemplate God, but also
to collaborate with him, then God wants us to imitate Christ, and
perhaps even more,to imitate Mary's collaboration with Christ. Thus
it is through Mary that all nature is seen as symbolizng her, and
leads not only to meditation on God's attributes, but meditation on
Mary's dispositions which resulted in her collaboration with him in
the saving work of the redemption.  So that Mary is very much the
Queen of redeemed nature; Queen of the new heaven and earth.

     The culmination of this train of thought, would be that
through her immaculateness, and her self-emptying humility and
total responsiveness to grace, not only is Mary's intellect the
spotless mirror of sublime wisdom, not only is her will the
steadfast holy mountain of God, and tower of David, not only are
her affections, feelings, emotions, and senses the immaculate heart
ever rejoicing in God, and not only is the flowering of grace in
her the springtime of God's grace for the whole world, but
culminating all this she is the mystical rose of charity - of the
most perfect love of God, of the mystic bride of God in heaven, and
crowned on earth as the heavenly bride and queen of God, and of all
creation.

     So that most perfectly loving God and united to God in love,
of all creatures, Mary has most fittingly had the words of that
greatest love song, the greatest scriptural love song, the Canticle
of Canticles, applied to her in the liturgy, "Arise, my beloved, my
dove, my beautiful one, and come, the winter is past, the rains are
over and done, the time of pruning has come, the voice of the
turtle-dove is heard in the land, arise beloved and come."

     We see that Mary's response to God is not just that of the
spotless mirror of wisdom reflecting and knowing God, or of the
holy mountain of God responding to and standing steadfast in his
will, or the immaculate heart pouring all her being into her
rejoicing in God, but ultimately all together are best symbolized
by the Immaculate heart, which we perceive with the help of the
scriptural passages in which we learn that Mary pondered the
supernatural events and mysteries of her life with Christ, in her
heart.  We see that most profoundly, this viewpoint, through the
prism and focal person of Mary, we see her immaculateness, her
wisdom, her steadfastness of will, her ordered affections,  as all
making possible the most perfect response in love to God 's love in
all the life and growth, flowering and fruition, of nature. We see
an ever greater and deeper and more sublime growth in that love on
earth, as cultivated in the tremendous union and bond of love and
spritual marriage and queenship and glory in heaven.

     In working through these thoughts I think I have really come
for the first time to appreciate the total and utter validity of
the application of all examples from physical nature, from human
persons, and from nature and persons as described and referred to
and figurativeely used in the scrlptures, to the person of Mary,
all resulting from deep reflection on Mary's collaborative role
with Christ, in the light of the passages from the Gospel referring
to Mary.  I think I see and firmly assent to the total validity of
the refererences to Mary so that now for me they carry no trace
whatever of simple, or of simply sentimental, or pious associations
with Mary; that, rather, they have the most profound basis in the
truth of Mary (the truth of Mary of course being her relationship
to Christ, and through him to the Trinity and to all men and
creation).

     I hope that in my future thinking, speaking, and writings,
these insights will beome more clear, concrete, living and loving.
At the present I am sharing them with you in all their newness and
spontaniety, in the form they take, just as I am taping them so
that you have them at their moment of coming into being.

     With reference to the words of Christ "unless the grain of
wheat fall to the ground and die it will not bear fruit, but if it
dies it will" - that to find our life we have to lose it, unless we
lose it we won't find it - I was thinking meditatively of all the
applications this has to the variety of responses of seeds to the
our efforts to germinate them.  I would like to check the actual
Greek and Latin of this passage, of unless the grain of wheat falls
to the ground and dies, for further nuances

     The interesting thing is that in a way the seed has to die
before it falls to the ground; and in thinking about all we have
learned about the after-ripening of seeds, meaning their
after-ripening after they have left the plant, and all that we have
learned about pre-germination conditions of seeds - whether they
have to be maintained at a certain temperature or go through
certain variations in temperature, or their hard outer shells have
to be penetrated mechanically or chemically before germination can
take place - all the miracles of correspondence between seeds and
their environment which are part of the germinatiom of so many of
the more difficult seeds, it struck me what a lesson their is here
for persons, if we are to die to be born again and are to  give up
our lives to find it.  How much we can learn from seeds of the
great difficulty and detailedness of what it takes to die, before
we can be born again!  I mean all the problems of making the seed
really die with all its after-ripening and pre-germination even
after it haa fallen to the ground.. Thus in these words of Our
Lord, I think that the more detailed examination of nature - the
natural basis of the figure or parable referred to - illuminates
and makes us humble in awe at the wisdom of God shown forth in
these marvellous correspondences between physical nature and moral
nature in our souls, as shown forth in the teachings of Our Lord.

      One of the wonderful things that this helps us to see is that
the teachings are not just figures or moralisms drawn from surface
appearances, but rather are very profound analogies between the
moral and physical orders as both reflecting and manifesting God's
infinite wisdom. Truly, the more we come to know nature and to live
with it, the more profoundly we are able to appreciate the total
truth of Our Lord's teachinsgs and their great wisdom and the whole
mystery and awe of the divine plan of creation and redemption. In
this, as stated, we have as our model and ideal whom we are to
emulate and love in collaboration with God - Mary the model and
ideal who is brought to mind by all the physical beauties of
nature.  Further, in accordance with the symbol of the star, of the
"Star of the Sea", Mary is not only our model and ideal, but our
light and guide to Christ - the the "Morning Star" who preceeds
Christ's sun; Mary, who "comes forth as the morning rising".

     The Epistle for the feast Or Our Lady of Good Counsel is the
passage from Ecclesiaaticus 24 vs. 23-31, one we know so well which
is used in a number of Our Lady's feasts, perhaps the feast of the
Immaculate Conception: "As the vine I have brought forth the
pleasant odor and the flowers are the fruit of honor and riches, I
am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of
holy hope; in me ia all grace of the Way and of the Truth; in me is
all hope of life and of virtue; come over to me all ye that desire
me and be filled with my fruits; for my spirit is sweet above honey
and my inheritance above honey and honey comb, my memory is to
everlasting generations; They that eat me shall yet hunger, and
that drink me shall yet thirst; he that harkeneth to me shall not
be confounded, and they that work by me shall not sin; they that
explain me shall have life everlastlng."

     Among the many depths of richness in this passage as applied
to Mary is the further thought that Mary, our way to Christ, our
"Star of the Sea", our Mother of good Counsel, is preeminently a
sweet and attractive way to Christ. Yet, here again ls the caution,
applied originally to wisdom, which these passages refer to in
Ecclesiasticus, and thererore to Mary as the Seat of Wisdom because
of the spotless mirror of her intellect and the illumination of her
intellect through her openess to grace - the cautlon that "they
that eat me shall yet hunger, and they that drink me shall yet
thirst" - the caution that always, Mary's attributes, her
sweetness, are always a manifestation and reflection of God's
sweetness to which she leads us, so that again in the words of the
scriptures we shall always remember that "in me is all grace of the
Way and of the truth; in me is all hope of lif'e and virtue", so
that Mary is clearly the way to Christ, the grace of the way, and
we should never forget that since she is the way, all these
attributes, graces of the way have thelr ultimate source and
destiny in Christ.

     Thus, those of us who might be tempted to rest with Mary or
stop with Mary "shall yet hungcr and shall yet thirst.  Yet he that
harkeneth to me shall not be confounded and that they that work by
me shall not sin" - meaning of course that if we listen to what
Mary is saying to us, it is always to imitate and to join in her
collaboration in Christ's redeeming work, so that when we work by
her, we are simply working by her in that redeeming  work of
Christ.  "Yet they that explain me shall have life everlasting."
Perhaps this means that in order to explain Mary we have to see her
truth which is her very relationship to life, to Christ, so that
when the only possible explanation is that Mary is in Christ and in
the process of explaining Mary we do encounter Christ who is life
everlasting.

     Here, again, from the view point of the Mary Garden: to the
extent that we endeavor, through the garden symbolism, to explain
Mary, ultimately, we can only explain her by explaining Christ and
we of course can only explain Christ by knowing, loving,fand
serving hlm here, so that we will know him perfectly face to face
in heaven, even as does Mary, the cause of our joy, our life, our
sweetness, our hope, at this time.

     Ultimately, the basic communion we all share, with God,
through Mary and nature, is something inexpressable, indescribable,
unspeakable, unarticulatable, and what is said here can be no more
than an attempted approximation and communication, in love.

     One further thought has to do with Mary as the branch or the
rod, which came forth from the root of Jesse.  the Liturgy of the
Brievary for the second vespers of the feast of the Immaculate
Conception on December 8th, the antiphon  for the Magnificat, the
text goes, "This day, a rod came forth from the root of Jesse. This
day Mary was conceived without stain of sin. This day the head of
the old serpent was crushed by her, Alleluia." A pertinent analogy
here from nature, as I understand it, is that the grapevine does
not normally grow up from or send up rods or shoots from roots, but
always from the point where it has been pruned, and therefore
people who were familiar with vineyards would understand that the
idea of a rod coming up from the root was miraculous.

      In terms of the liturgical use of this passage, we can also
envisage this rod coming out of the root or source as being a
symbol of Mary's Immacu]ate Conception.  Thus the shoots which come
out at the point of pruning are not, so to speak, immaculate in the
sense of one which comes up from the root directly and purely.

    From this we go on to the figure from the Gospel where Our Lord
states that he is the vine and we are the branches.  In terms of
the profound unity of Mary and Jesus, the rod which has come up
from the root of Jesse and borne the flower, Christ, has then
become the vine, Christ.  Just as Mary's Immaculate Conception
anticipated or presupposed the redeeming Salvation of Christ's
sacrifice and redemption, so, too, Mary, the rod who sprung out of
the root of Jesse, is, so to speak, a branch which came before the
vine - so that in a sense Mary, too, is one of the parts of the
vine, Christ, and thus a member of the Mystical Body.

     As the rod of the vine, Mary, in effect is the mother of the
vine, for when you have a rod coming up out of a root you don't yet
really have a vine. There is a vine when the rod begins to divide
and take form of more then a rod, that is, several branches.  No
doubt the analogy wouldn't go so far that a rod would bear a flower
and then develop additional branches.  But in the general order of
growth and development the rod comes first;then it develops to  the
point when it can be said to be a vine; and then it continues to
develop theoretically lnfinite branches, so that we have a
marvelous analogy of Mary's maternity of Christ, and also of
ourselves, who are the branches.

     Yet, the vine is more than the rod, so that the rod, too, is a
part of the vine, and thus we and Mary are all members of Christ,
although Mary has been the trunk and mother and, as it were, the
originating principle. There could have been no vine and no
branches unless there had been a miraculous rod coming out of the
root, which is the immaculately conceived Mary.

     Of course it would have been just as miraculous that a rod, or
this rod, would bear a flower, as it would be that a rod would come
out of the root; so that the whole analogy could be considered as
miraculous - the miraculousness of Mary's Immaculate Conception,
and the miraculousness of the flower, which is the incarnation of
Christ.  We then go on to consider the growth of the vine, which is
Christ, and in which Mary, the rod, is the mother of Christ and of
the branches.


<A NAME="Prerogatives">5/08/66</A> - <B>Mary's Prerogatives; Purgative, Illuminative, Unitive</B>

     When we encounter those who have trouble turning to Mary in
her exalted and worthy intercession for us with God, and who see
that as placing her somehow in the way of our approach to God, it
can be pointed out that to the contrary, Mary really is the means
of uniting us to God, because of her close unity to God and her
close unity to us, and not because of her exaltedness. Actually,
given different individuals' experiences and perceptions, we have
to speak about this in a different way to each group, and even to
each individual when we are talking to one individual at a time.

     Some people accept Mary in a simple, logical, doctrinal way.
0thers feel piously or devotionally attuned to Mary in terms of her
priveleges, excellence, virtues and other qualities befitting to
her as Mother of God. Still others who are attuned to the changes
of emphases coming out of Rome, I believe only accept her in terms
of cooperation and unity with Christ.  This is not to suggest that
any one of these ways is somehow better than the other, or that in
talking to all people we should use one rather than the other two.
Rather, we should know the whole field so that when we encounter a
specific individual, we will be able to respond to him or her.

     In the classical manuals on prayer and spirituality, it is
pointed out that there are three different spiritual modes which
people which people may be in, or in transition between.  These, in
turn, more or less correspond to the three different ways of
approaching Mary.

     The first is the purgatlve way, in which we simply attempt to
disentangle ourselves from this world, from all the ideas and
prejudices and cares of contemporary life, and from religious ideas
to the contrary, so that we can accept Mary's place in the divine
plan.

     The second is the illuminative state or way whereby once we
have broken loose from all the thistles and thorns of worldly
cares, and are concentrating on doctrine, then our mind, faith, and
belief open themselves to spiriutual illumination and enrichment,
and we experience religious piety, affection and love.

     The third approach is the ao called unitive way or mode, where
everything is seen more in terms of oneness and unity - as distinct
from the more rational, purgative approach which sees things
logically, and the illuminative way which sees them more feelingly,
lovingly and insightfully. The unitive approach includes the other
two, but always sees each thing in terms of everything else, with a
minimum of separation.  We are called to relate to most people in
terms of the purgative and illuminative approaches. Nevertheless we
should be familiar with the unitive approach so that if somebody
comes out and challenges us some day - let's say accusing us or the
movement of being overly pietistic or sentimental or something like
that, because of the illuminative approach - we can always
indicate, of course, that there are other approaches in accordance
with the latest thinking of the Council.

     I sense that the Marian magazines, and articles about Mary,
even by the best people, are at the moment in a confused and
uncertain state, because they sense that there is a new challenge
to be met in the life and growth of the Church.  Yet they can only
respond by coming back to the old way of talking to meet the
objections that they are confronted with - without breaking through
to the unitive approach, which answer the new objections and, I
predict, will result in whole new flourishing of love of Mary, and
an approach to God through Mary, in the coming period of time -
probably covering several hundreds of years, in which it will
flower and develop in a new age of the f'aith.

     Mary, being immaculately conceived, and faithful to the graces
bestowed upon her for preserving that immaculatenesss, had no need
herself of the purgative way; but as we know from the Finding of
the Boy Jesus in the Temple, she pondered "these things" in heart
illuminatively; and from the Annunciation and her fiat that the
Lord was with her unitively.  Indeed, as Dante instructs us, Mary
was so totally purged, as it were, of inordinate movements of the
affections that her words to the boy Jesus, "Son, why have you done
this to us? . . . Your father and I have searching for you in
sorrow," were so filled with tenderness, loving concern and
sorrowful surprise, and so totally without a trace of anger,
irritation and impatience, that those in purgatory who are in
special need of purging themselves of the sin of anger are caused
to repeat these sweet words of Mary over and over until this
purging is accomplished. (This was brought to my attention in a
beautiful little pamphlet, "The Virgin Mary in Dante", by Angeline
LaGrasso, Professor of Latin at Bryn Mawr College and a dear friend
of my mother's, who gave it to me at the time I turned to her for
translation of some of the religious names in old Italian dialects
for Galega officinalis, "Holy Hay" or "St. Joseph's Bedstraw" -
needed for my article on this plant for the University of
Pennsylvania Morris Arboretum Journal.)

     As for those who are confused about the changes coming forth
from the Council, we must make a clearer distinction betwean what
is unchanging and what is changing in our faith.  The basic thing
that is unchanging is the Creed, in other words, we believe in one
God, the Trinity, the incarnation, Mary, the Holy Spirit, the
Church, Baptism, and life everlasting.  And this is basically what
we learn when we pray the rosary and what we affirm when we talk
about the flower symbols.  Basically, all the flower symbols can be
related back to the Creed, and to the Rosary, so that Mary
Gardening is really with the unchanging part of our devotion and
faith.  The parts changing are the specific forms of the Mass and
Liturgy, or particular teachings of the Church that have to do with
science, social problems, and even such things as marital relations
- that is anything not in the Creed. The Creed is the real deposit
of faith and the things that I've mentioned. These are the things
that the Protestants object to.

     Hold on to the Creed, and always point out to Protestants,
Mormons, and others that this is the unchanging part, and that the
very reason we're changing others parts is to keep the Church a
living growing thing, like a plant. I recall that one person
explained, after being in Rome at the Council, that the Church
finds out what it is by watching itself grow.  Even if you look at
the Catechism, it is basically the Creed, the Ten Commandments, the
Commandments of the Church.  These have not changed.  Once we look
at everything from this viewpoint, we aren't upset by the things
that do change. This is the basic message to the people.

     Another thing is that once we make the distinction between
what doesn't change and what does change, we have a much greater
appreciation of what doesn't change.  Mary's virginity, before the
nativity, before the birth of our Lord, is a sign that God is
Christ's father and not Saint Joseph or some other man.  Her
virginity during the nativity indicates her freedom from the
painful effects of original sin, the curse of Eve.  After the
Nativity, and all during the life of Christ, her virginity
preserved a very special relationship between Mary and her son, as
distinct from the usual mother, who has a closer relationship to
her husband than her child. Finally, after the Crucifiction,
Resurrection, and Ascension, when Our Lady was living in Ephesus
with Saiht John, then her virginity was more like that of a nun
withdrawn from life, who is opened, primarily, in all her
attention, thoughts, and mortifications to God.  It is well to
remind ourselves of this because when we speak of Mary's perpetual
virginity it at times obscures these four different distinctions.

    Next, in connection with Mary's collaboration with God in
heaven, as symbolized by her flower "Eyes" of Mercy, "Hand" of
consolation and "Mantle" of protection, of which we think in terms
of her spiritual maternity and motherhood for us all; the approach
of thinking of Mary in terms of unity with God makes us realize
that through this unlty, her eyes of mercy becaome God's eyes of
mercy, her hand of consolation becomes his hand of consolation; and
her mantle, his mantle.  While the function of motherhood is still
hers, the fact that God was so closely united with her raises it up
to divine proportions functionally speaking, such that in his close
unity with her, he in effect works through her,  as well through
his own resurrected masculine human nature.

     Further, the presence of the other saints united to God in
heaven, and our prayers for them in the Liturgy, as well as our
private prayer, makes it clear that Mary is not alone in this
unlon, but is the model and Queen of all saints.

     In the Council Decree on the Laity, there is the following
statement relative to Mary's union with Christ and his work: "The
perfect example of combined spiritual and apostolic life, (that is,
life for God and life for the world) is the most Blessed Virgin
Mary, Queen of Apostles.  While leading, on earth, a life common to
all men, one filled with family concerns and labors, she was always
inimately united with her son, and cooperated in the work of the
savior in a manner altogether special."

      Many people think of Our Lady as sort of etherial and
heavenly - in a way which somehow takes away from her real
humantty, especially when she was on earth.  This humanity is
served, for example, in such a beautiful and penetrating way, by
insights about the detaiis of the desert and the flight into Egypt
which come from special devotion to the flight into Egypt and the
same thing is true of all the flower symbols having to do with her
household work or sewing - such as her "Basin",  "Our Lord's little
shoes", Our Lady's Candle", and the others.  All of these remind us
to that Mary truly lived the life of her times, as indeed she must
have in order to have not only given Our Lord birth, but also to
have instructed him as a man of his times - so that he became fully
incarnate not only in a body, but in a body intellectualy and
culturally formed according to the times, so that he could speak
most effectively to those about him.

     These domestic flower symbols of Mary counteract the view
which prefers to see Our Lady less as a person completely involved
in the human life and circumstances of her day, and more as a sort
of "super nun" living in the world a little bit out of touch with
things and not having really to be in touch with things because
somehow her prayer life and grace would give her complete insight
into things, without having been part of them and experiencing them
like the reat of us do and have to.  The domestic flower symbols,
on the other hand, stress that Mary was very much one of us - which
is impressed so strongly on those who actually visit Nazareth.

      The development of Mary's praises and excellences and virtues
and glories in terms of her unity add holiness and in general
looking at Mary in terms of her unity with Jesus, and then from
that going back to the Immaculate Conception as a preparation for
the enabling of Mary to unite herself most perfectly to Jesus
responding to all the graces given and opened to more, ond then
developlng the implications of this Immaculate Conception in
preparation for her motherhood, enables us to see how all her
attributes developed from this but always refer back to this.
Within this unity we can talk about Mary's glories and excellences
in as exaulted and praising manner we wish. The difference is that
they ultimately go back to the unity that she has with Jesus.

     This really does more for her humanity because if we simply
say that God chose her to be his mother and therefore we can see
how perfect she must have been does not specifically imply Mary's
collaboration in responding to the graces she was given and having
all these attributea developed out of this response as well from
the great graces and the privileges of nature given.  We are saying
, "Yes, it was entirely fitting that Mary was ao embellished,
adorned, graced, glorified, and so forth as God's mother!"; but we
are saying even more than that, that God arranged for all these
wonderful things by simply creating Mary lmmaculately to begin
with, so that she could and did collaborate with Him by responding
to fullness in the graces given.  Mary wasn't just a painting that
God painted; she was an act of collaboration, of response to grace
starting with the Immaculate Conception which enabled this response
to be as perfect as possible.

     In turning to the Council "Constitution on the Church" we can
take the key words of Mary's "union" and "cooperation" with her
Divine Son and Lord, reiterated in numerous paragraphs, as a
contemporay starting point for deriving the fullness of Mary's
divine prerogatives - as I proposed in my first tape, last year.

     When Mary responded with her fiat, "Be it done to me according
to thy word"; to the Archangel Gabriel's announcement that the Lord
was "with" her, she was then - actively,  equally, acceptingly,
cooperatingly and magnifyingly - entering into a reciprocal embrace
of union "with" the Lord God of
 and Israel - then immediately revealed to her as Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. In the fullness of this union with God, therefore,
Mary was chosen to be "inimately united" to and "cooperating" with
God the Father "in a manner altogether special", as Co-Parent of
the Divine Son and Word and Word Incarnate, and also Co-Governor,
with him; and also with the Holy Spirit as Co-Sanctifier and
Co-Renewer , as well as Co-Redeemer and Co-Mediator with the Son.
In respect to the Father's governance, for example, this is the
basis for Mary's titles and action as Virgin Most Powerful, Queen
of Angels and Our Lady of Divine Providence, etc..

     Mary was in no sense mediating by herself between humans and
their creator, but was collaborating in a most intimate and full
way in the mediatorship of Our Lord with his Heavenly Father on
behalf of the human race, in which, for this purpose, he became
incarnate  And it is precisely in tribute to the attributes of Our
Lady's collaboration, mediatorship, intercession and advocacy with
our Lord in his work of human redemption - as well as to her own
immaculate purity, her doing of the will of the Father, her
humility and her fiat - that much of the manifold and replendant
symbolism of the Flowers of Our Lady have been inspired.

     Christ is a divine person with a human nature and Mary is a
human person in whom God indwells "with" her.   What we venerate
and honor in Mary is her elevation as the "number 1" human person -
our "tainted nature's solitary boast".  It is precisely because she
is a human person that we venerate her so much - not as a goddess,
but as a human person, elevated into this marvelous role of
motherhood, and of general collaboration with Our Lord.

     The more we honor Mary, the more we attest to her human
personhood as distinct from Christ's divine personhood -
emphasizing the distinction between the divine and the human and
thus making their roles even clearer, rather than tending to place
Mary in a position of ursurping anything that belonged to Our Lord.
A proper understanding of this provides the very foundation for the
cooperation between the human and the divine, between the human
race and God, between the Church and Christ.

     From the viewpoint of the equality of the sexes, Mary's
mediation can also be said to have a foundation in divine justice
regarding the created difference between man and woman.  God,
choosing to redeem the human race by becoming Incarnate, had to
become either man or a woman.  He chose to become a man, Jesus
Christ, the new Adam.  Then, to render full divine justice to
woman, he, as a Divine Person, clothed in human nature, elevated a
woman to be the most exalted and sublime human person, in full
partnership and collaboration with him in the work of redemption.

     Qualities of mercy, sweetness, tenderness, beauty - all part
of our general human potential, and neither male nor female - have
more frequently been associated with woman.  On the other hand, as
Jesus spoke with authority, "I Say unto you" etc. casting out
devils, healing the sick, raising the dead, so too was Mary seen as
bright as the sun, and terrible to the Devil as an army in battle
array.  But regardless of any cultural distinctions made between
"masculine" and "feminine" characteristics - just as God created
man and woman to propagate the human race in the first place, so
did Christ, as God incarnate, as man, call Mary as woman into equal
collaboration with him as mystical bride and physical mother, to
redeem it.

      In this connection, I should also mention that in addition to
the drawing on of the Council documents on Mary, I have reflected
extensively on Our Lady's position in the Church from the viewpoint
of the issues raised in the various discussions and dialogs I have
participated in regarding women's liberation and equality.  In
these I have encountered an entirely different criticism of Marian
doctrine and devotion than that of the "Marian minimalists", namely
that with the alleged "sexism" of an all-male Trinity of Divine
Persons and an all-male heirarchy of the Church, Catholic present
devotion to Mary is not powerful enough to promote equality of
women, but is rather a diversion from and impediment to the
promotion of this equality.

     In examining this, it should be noted at the outset that the
Council is specifically supportive of the current movement
promoting equality of women in social, political and economic life,
as set forth in the following paragraphs:


          "The Church is proud to have glorified and liberated
          woman, and in the course of the centuries, in diversity
          of characters, to have brought into relief her basic
          equality with man.  But the hour is coming, in fact has
          come, when the vocation of women is being achieved in
          its fullness."

                                      - Closing Address to Women

and,

          "It devolves on humanity to establish a political, social
          and economic order which will to an ever better extent
          serve (humankind) and help individuals as well as groups
          to develop in dignity proper to them.

          "As a result very many persons are quite aggressively
          demanding those benefits which with vividness they they
          judge rhemself deprivred either through injustice or
          unequal distribution. . . 

          " . . . While they have not yet won it, women claim for
          themselves an equality with men before the law and in
          fact."

                       - The Church in the Modern World, par. 9


     This is set forth in terms of the general movement towards
social justice in the world, but I propose that full religious
support for the equality of women must be found in a fuller
affirmation of Mary's relationship with God and of her place in the
Divine Plan for the world.

     We are to be pray for Mary's intercession and mediation for
justice and equality mindful that at the Visitation, she cited to
Elizabeth in the Magnificat an example of the great things he that
is mighty had done to her was to make her mediatrix of the
providence whereby might is shown in God's arm , scattering the
proud in the conceit of their hearts and exalting the humble, etc..

     In the medieval period Mary's power and influence in society
were indeed "equal" and proprtionate as archetype, model, mold and
matrix - in masculine/feminine terms - to that of the masculine
persons of the Trinity, as evidenced by the Cathedrals dedicated to
her, by the cities named for her, by the Litany of Loreto, by the
Rosary . . . and by the Flowers of Our Lady.  The very indifference
and resistance we run into today to Marian devotion in general, and
to our work to restore Marian flower devotion in particular,
signify the challenge to us to devise ways, of grace, to restore
Mary's role as archetype, model, mold and matrix for the full
showing forth, sharing, mirroring and magnifying of the divine
goodness of attributes and action in the modern world in its
movement towards Kingdom, as it was in the medieval Church.

     Knowing from Scripture that God created human nature as both
male and female "in the divine image and likeness", we are to
believe that the ineffable Divinity is therefore both male and
female, and that if the purpose of Creation is to show forth and
share the divine goodness with humans there must be a just overall
balance of male and female in the deposit of faith which is to be
more fully discovered and promoted by the Church for the building
of God's earthly Peaceable Kingdom of justice and love.

     Given the revelation of the three Persons of the Trinity -
Father, Son and Holy Spirit - as masculine, and the teaching of
Mary's intimate union and close cooperation with her Divine Son,
true God and true man, and with the Father and the Holy Spirit, as
woman, it would appear that the in the fullness of this union and
cooperation it will be found that the divine privileges and
prerogatives of Mary's motherly spiritual intercession and
mediation, through union with Christ, will, further, make manifest
for the world in feminine mode an instrumentation of and
equivalence to the creating, saving, sanctifying and kingdomal work
of all of the three divine persons - thus providing a model "from
the top" for equal justice for the sexes in human society.  Or,
from another viewpoint, since it was the one ineffable Lord of
Creation and of Israel that was announced to Mary, Full of Grace,
by the Angel as being "with" her, we can assume, as I have said,
that this one God was also with her as each of the three divine
persons, subsequently revealed to her by the Angel.

     I recall my mother mentioning that when a prominent member of
the Philadelphia 1920's women's suffrage movement asserted to her
how "sexist" the Church was, she responded "But what about the
Virgin Mary" - to which her friend then replied, "The Virgin Mary!
Why, she isn't even a member of the Trinity!"  From the viewpoint
of the principle of divine justice, applied to to men and women, to
masculune and feminine, I propose, again, that the fullness of
Mary's human union with the divine, masculine, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit was such that she was elevated in grace to a state of
cooperative womanly union and equality with each of them: as
womanly Co-Creator, Co-Governor, Co-Redeemer, Co-Mediator,
Co-Sanctifier and Co-Renewer.

     For the ineffable Divinity - which is both masculine and
feminine - to show forth and share the fullness of the divine
nature, in accordance with the purpose of Creation, with
proportion, it does so through the feminine as well as the
masculine in Creation, and in particular through the feminine in
human nature - created both male and female ("in the divine image
and likeness") - and thus preminently through Mary, who shows forth
humanly the feminine of the Divinity, along with the masculine
shown forth humanly in Jesus.

     Through her union with and mediation of the three masculine
members of the Trinity, Mary shows forth and instruments their work
in feminine mode - eternally in heaven as well as on earth - such
that, in reponse to the remark of my mother's friend, we could say
that Mary is a member of a "Heavenly Quartet ", so to speak, which
shows forth the goodness of the Divinity in both masculine and
feminine mode, and in which the one person of Mary is, so to speak,
in her union with each of the three persons of the Trinity, a
sublime "balance" to all three in the justice and fullness of
showing forth and sharing of the Divine masculine/feminine goodness
of attributes and action. And, even more essentially, as I have
said, Mary is a member of a "Heavenly Duo" with the One Lord God of
Creation and Israel, whom the Angel announced was with her, as
reciprocated and confirmed by her fiat - from which was then
derived in essence her intimate union with Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, respectively, of which her union with the Divine Son
Incarnate is focused on in the Council documents.

     Mary's bestowed, and responded to, effective union with the
Lord God of Creation and Governance is such that she could be
titled "Mother of Creation" and "Mother of Divine Providence".
This is reflected in her titles in the Litany of Loreto of "Virgin
Most Powerful" and "Mother of the Creator" . . . and in the passage
applied to her by the Fathers from Canticles: "Who is she that
comes forth as the morning rising . . . terrible as an army set in
battle array?"  (which reminds me of your telling me that since you
were unable to find a a medieval flower symbol of Mary's power,
the best you could to for a flower reminder of this was to plant
"artillery Plant" in your Mary Garden).

     You will recall that an Islamic criticism of of Christianity
is that we place so much emphasis on the trinitarian Father, Son
and Holy Spirit that we are insufficiently mindful of the ineffable
One God of Abraham.  From the viewpoint that "every heresy contains
a seed of truth" we can offset this as we pray the Hail Mary by
recalling that it is the One Lord God who was anounced by the Angel
as being "with" her - and not "just" the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, subsequently revealed.

     We are not in this way detracting from or really changing all
the wonderful qualities or Mary, herself.  Rather, we are adding
richness and depth to them in terms of her unity with God, and in
terms of a more profound understanding of the Immaculate Conception
and of Mary's collaboration with God which at the same time is more
to her credit, so to speak, in that her virtues and glories from
her divine prerogarives came from her collaborative union with God,
as well as from the intention of God for Creation - and all his
graces sent - for a fullness of a showing forth and sharing with
humans, created in the divine image and likeness, of the divine
goodness of attributes and action.

     Moving on now in the garden to "Our Lady's Keys", we reflect
that in her close union with Our Lord, while yet a human person -
being the one human person in such close union with Our Lord - she
is for us humans also our key to heaven because of this union.  Our
Lord's will is her will and yet she is a member with us of the
mystical body so that we are united to her, she is united to God,
and therefore she unites us to God, and thus is in this way, also,
our key to heaven.

     I've recently seen Our Lady referred to in several places as
the key to heaven.  One was in a talk given by Cardinal Bea called
"Our Lady and Ecumenism", or the "Blessed Virgin and Ecumenism",
affirming that Mary need not stand in the way of Christian union
between Catholics and Protestants, and probably should be
understood as helping us to that reunion.  It was in this
connection that he referred to Our Lady as a key.  In general we
can think of Our Lady's keys in terms of the fact that she has
responded to God's call to collaboration in such a way that she has
been the key which opened the gates of heaven through which Our
Lord and grace came, and in another sense, it can be said that she
is our key to heaven herself - and therefore also the "Gate of
Heaven".

      I keep mentioning and recording the evening Angelus, for
which I am usually in the Garden, as I am very devoted to this
prayer, and I do love the symbolism of "Mary's Bells" or "Our
Lady's Bells", which I am now looking at, and the little poem whlch
I have used in my lectures, the inscription on one Angelus Bell
which reads:

             "The rose, when shaken fragrance spreads around;
             The bell when struck yields forth melodious sound;
             The heart of Mary when moved by earnest prayer
             Scatters grace and sweetness everywhere."

     Again, this too, takes on more meaning for me when it is
thought of in terms of "all this happens because of Mary's close
unity with Our Lord", rather than "She is so perfect because she
was His mother, therefore he gives these graces when she
interceeds".


<A NAME="Divine Maternity">5/10/66</A> - <B>Mary's Divine Maternity; Jewish prohibition of Images</B>

     I have had some further thoughts which I think might be
helpful in approaching Mary from the viewpoint of her intimate
union and close cooperation with Jesus.  As you recall, in the
slide lecture which you have on tape  and in the printed text, I
take the divine maternity or Mary as other of God as the starting
point for everything I say about her in the symbolism. Now this of
course, from a view point of dogma, is the way that appreciation of
Mary's role did come historically.  In other words, at the Council
of Ephesus in 432, it was dogmatically  defined that Jesus was true
God and true man from the moment of his conception, and from this,
it was seen that Mary was truly the Mother  of God, which of course
is a most staggering fact.

     From starting with Mary as the Mother of God, we, of course,
as you pointed out, conclude that she must have been wonderful in
every possible way. This is a perfectly valid way of approaching
Mary, and you can reach all the same conclusions about her as you
can from starting any other way. However, the way of approaching
Mary that I am taking now is based on two scriptural texts.  One
is, (I am not looking up the exact chapter and verses, but I am
sure you're familiar with them), the instance when Jesus was
preaching and someone from the crowd came up to him and said,
"Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and blessed are the breasts
that gave thee suck", to whlch he replied "rather, blessed are
those who hear the word of God, and keep it", and the second
passage is where someone came up to Jesus and said "Thy mother, thy
brothers, and sisters are outside," and Jesus said "He who obeys
the will of my Father in heaven is my mother, my brother, and my
sister."

     Many Protestants have quoted these passages againat Mary, but
the way they are interpretated by Catholic theologians is that
Jesus was saying that the great thing about Mary is not the fact
she was his physical mother, but that she heard the word of God and
kept it, and obeyed the will of Father in heaven.  From thls view
point and as is actually the case, in terms of the incarnation, or
after hearing the message of the angel and questioning him, Mary
said "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according
to they word".  In other words, she wouldn't have been the Mother
of God unless she had heard the word or God and kept it, and done
the will of her Father in heaven.  And as I indicated on the
previous tape, from this viewpoint we interprate the Immaculate
Conception, and all that this means, as a privelege received by
Mary from God, so that she could most perfectly hear the word of
God and keep it, and do the will of her Father in heaven - which
word and will were that she should be the Mother and collaborator
of Christ in his work of redemption for the world.

     Actually, this makes the Immaculate Conception even more
important, as it were, as it was a direct act of God which Mary had
nothing to do with. From this view point, Mary is God's masterpiece
not as his mother, because as mother she is both God's masterpiece
who is Immaculately conceived, and also one who through her
spotless intellect and her steadfast will has responded to graces
and collaborated with him, thus becoming the Mother of God.

     I realize this sounds as though I am splitting hairs, and I
also realize that it doesn't make any difference when you are
praying to Mary whether you have her attributes in mind, or Mary as
a whole.  When you contemplate her, it does't make any difference
when you think of these attributes as coming because of her divine
maternity or because of her Immaculate Conception and her response
to God's Word, as was possible for one Immaculately conceived.
However it does give further dignity to human nature and to God's
call to all of us to cooperate and collaborate with him in the
orders of nature and grace. Also, it strengthens the notion that we
are to imitate Mary, not just to venerate her, or to put it in
another way, that the best way we can venerate Mary is to imitate
her.

     I was reading a book recently by Rabbi Abraham Heshel called,
I think, "Man's Search for God" or "Man's Quest for God", just
published this year. (Rabbi Heschel has been a guest teacher at the
Protestant Union Theologica1 Seminary in New York.)  In this book,
in the back part, Rabbi Heshel has a section on symbolism in Jewish
tradition.  He comments on the Jewish prohibition against images,
and points out that in terms of this tradition, there is
nevertheless a place for symbolism.  However, for the Jew, the
symbol is always to be an indication of how the will of God is to
be carried out, rather then somethlng to be venerated, with all the
dangers that veneration may turn into idolatry.  From this whole
new ecumenical understanding of the relationship between Christians
and Jews, as being one which is complementary and mutually
enriching, I've been able to get many helpful insights into
Christianity.

     This particular one just mentioned of Rabbi Heschel about
Jewish symbolism is extremely interesting because it is seeing
Mary, first, not in terms of being God's Mother, but being the
Immaculately conceived person who heard God's word and kept it, and
obeyed the will of the Father in an exemplary manner that somehow
brings her much more down to earth.  If the important thing about
Mary is her will and her actions in their immaculate perfection,
then it becomes even more important to be able to refer all the
most beautiful and pure and perfect things of creation to Mary.
Because in this reference to her, they become transformed into
calls to respond to God's will, rather then passively, shall we
say, to venerate and contemplate nature.

     Since we contemplate God ln whom action and being are combined
- God, the motionless mover - our contemplation of any lesser thing
or person, even Mary, should ultimately lead us to action in
response to God's will, no matter how sublime the object of our
contemplation may be.  Therefore, to see Mary in terms of a call to
respond to God's will is the most important way of looking at her
in terms of our own perfection.  It is consistant with the profound
truth Of God's prohibition of the use of images by the Jews, and
also it refutes the Protestant's accusation of idolatry - Marian
veneration as mariolotry, a form of idolatry.

     At the same time it makes Mary even more wonderful in that not
only does it bring to our attention her marvelous attributes in the
work of God in her, but it also makes us see her intellect and will
and heart, as being even more sublime, as they have seen and heard
God, loved Him, and responded to Him.  In this whole area then
which the Council has affirmed, I am convinced that we see the
seeds of a much more subtle and beautiful and glorious appreciation
of Our Lady in the Catholic Church and ultimately in all
Christianity and the whole world.

     From a historical view point it could be said that God's
prohibition of the use of images by the Jews was sort of a
neccessary first step of clearing away all the idolatrous
veneration of the Greek Gods - Venus, and so forth - to prepare for
the worship and service of the true God.  Also, along the llnes
that I've been talking, it could be seen to be a clearing away of
an idolatrous and false use of symbolism, such that after this
period of clearing away images of Judaism of the old Testament
period, symbols could then be reused by Christians, but in the
non-idolatrous way of always pointing to God's will, rather than to
just some sort of contemplation without resulting in action
according to God's will.

     In this, I am not suggesting that up to this moment, you and I
and othors have not been hearlng the word of God and keeping it and
doing the will of Our Father in heaven or seeking to do every thing
that He wanted us to. Rather, I am talking about a way of
presenting Marian veneration and the whole Mary Garden idea and
movement, to others, in such a way that if they raise the objection
of idolotry - placing Mary in between us and God, building up Mary
to downgrade God, etc. - we can immediately polnt out that Mary is
our model and ideal and example in seeking to learn and follow the
will of God.  Also we can assume that a lot of people among
non-cathollcs will sort of have this golng through their the mind
even though they don't mention it to us, so that if we talk in such
a way as to forestall this objection we will be getting through to
them.

     Finally, with reapect to Catholics; to the extent that people
venerate Mary without seekihg to translate this veneration into a
more perfect collaboration with God's will, we will be helping
them, too.  I think there is very definitely something "in the
air", shall we say, about Mary which has come out of the Council,
which is going to have tremendous importance for our Mary Garden
work, and as I said, basically we are simply in a beautiful and
deep way affirming the most basic truths of our faith as found in
the Creed and in the rosary.


<A NAME="Immaculate Conception">5/12/66</A> - <B>Mary's Immaculate Conception</B>

     One additional passage from the Constitution on the Church, is
the following, from paragraph 36, which says, "The faithful must
learn the deepest meaning and the value of all creation, and how to
relate it to the praise of God."  This expresses exactly what we
are trying to do through the Mary Garden movement, as we attempt to
relate all creation to God.

      In "Man in Quest of God', by Rabbi Abraham Heshel, there is a
section on symbolism , from which it can be seen how there really,
fundamentally, is no contradiction between the Jewish Prohibition
of symbols of God and the way they are used in the Mary Garden
tradition and through the Immaculate Conception symbols of Mary.
Christians use symbols because they are using the symbols of Mary
and not of 'God.'

     I had come to see through a deeper probing of the Immaculate
Conception that it was as Immaculate Conception symbols, signs, and
reminders, that all the thing of nature lead us to reflect on Mary
and to imitate her hearing and keeping of the word of God, that
leads us to the action of doing God's will as opposed to the
approach of regarding nature symbols simply as God's attributes
which we sit passively so to speak and contemplate, thlnking of
God.  I haven't checked the psalms in detail, but I do recall the
psalm which sings the praises of the world as God's handiwork, and
not as Rabbi Heshel says, his manifestation, or emanation.

     This is not to say that there is no place for meditation and
contemplation of nature in relation to God, because creation, as
God's handiwork, neccessarily shows forth something about the
Creator. However if we are to serve God, as well as to know him and
love him, there has to be some way in which our beholding of nature
constantly impels us to proceed wlth God's service.  Of course, we
have God's original command to Adam to dress and keep nature;
namely, to serve him by taking care of his creation, his handiwork.
But then there comes the question as to how we are to obey him, how
we are to serve him in terms of his law and his will as being made
known to us through the Scriptures.  This we ever have before us in
our minds as we relate to all nature as signs and symbols of Mary,
whom we are to imitate in her service of God.

     From the ecumenical viewpoint, of Jewish-Christian relations,
then, I see there really is, at least from the Christian viewpoint,
no fundamental opposition between all the Mary Garden symbolism and
the second commandment's prohibition against the use of idols or
images of God.  Of course, from the Jewish viewpoint, our use of
images of Christ and Mary, and the Saints, I believe, represents a
form of idolatry also.   However, the basic difference here is not
so much around the use of images, but the basic question as to
whether Jesus was in fact, the incarnation of God, personally, in
his human image, or whether he was not.  If you don't accept Christ
as God, the whole question of; Christian images is thrown out in
principle anyway.

     However, taking the Jewish prohibition against images and then
moving on to the acceptance of Christ as God, then the images can
be seen first of all as recalling God's action in becoming man, and
the action of Mary in collaborating with this, and the action of
the saints in collaborating with this, so that the meditation on
and the contemplation of Christian images again is not a means of
approaching God mentally as such, but rather again a reminder and
call to action.  A1so, it can be aeen historically, that the Jewish
prohibition against images was to get rid of all the millions of
false images - of the Venus, Daphney, Nymphs, Apollo etc. type of
imagery - to teach the ineffability of the one invisible, infinite
God and to get back to man, all men, as the image of that one God
in preparation for that one God becoming incarnate in His image.

     In this general connection, Rabbi Heahel was also very helpful
on the matter of religious intentions.  There is always the danger
that when we say we undertake an action for a certain religious
intention, this will become a nice thought and then we go ahead and
do what we would be doing anyway with this sort of intention gap.
In this connection Heshel says, in a section starting on page 107,
that here again we have the emphasis on not only hearing the word
of God but keeping it; on not only saying "Lord, Lord", but of
doing the will of the Father in heaven.

     The thought here is not that we are doing any less than we can
in seeking and obeying God 's will and in being sensitive to his
grace and providence. Rather, it is to prepare us for those who
might come to us and say that cultivating a Mary Garden or giving
attention to nature symbols is somehow an escape in an ivory tower
which has nothing to do with the needs and action in the world.  On
the contrary, we are advocating a way of looking at the world so
that everything we see not only makes think of God, the Creator of
the world, but also makes us think of the way we are to act in
obedience to God's call and will through Jesus and Mary.

     Perhaps, however there has been an overemphasis on the
undertaking of a Mary Garden as a project just thinking of the work
in itself for religious intentions - in the thought that, let's
say, we are offering up this mornlng's work in the garden for the
intention that our friend so and so will be healed of sickness or
will return to the sacraments or something of this sort.  An
example of this might be the sort of intentions that are listed on
the green sheet of the Our Mother of Consolation school Mary Garden
where there is no direct connection between the work or symbolism
and the intention. This approach to intentions has the kind of idea
a little bit, let's say, of magic where somehow we are getting a
handle on God so that if we say so many wheels or beads of prayers
we will somehow put the pressure on God to give us what we ask for.
There is no question that God has asked us to pray, and in fact has
placed us in a position where no matter how hard we try to
accomplish good works, we will not be able to accomplish them
unless we turn for aid to the Holy Spirit,  where we see that
"unless the Lord build the house, the builders build in vain".
This is not to questlon the fact that God wants us to pray, and
that he helps us in answer to prayer, and further that he wants us
as the people of God united to Mary to pray to Him through her in
honor of his union with her.  What is objected to is the idea that
we are doing the specific acts as a basis of expecting specific
actions in response from God.

     What this comes down to then is that we do not undertake the
Mary Garden for pious intentions superimposed on the work, (this as
I say, would be a sort of magic), rather we undertake the work
first of all to produce an attractive, healthy, well-kept garden;
to venerate in it Christ's redeeming action and Mary's response to
his call to collaboration; to recall, reflect on, and emulate,
Mary's collaboration; and finally, to pray to and with Christ, in
union with Mary united to him, for the assistance of the Holy
Spirit and of God's or rather God the Father's providence in our
performance of our duties and our responding to the providential
calls and opportunities God sends to us to further our work beyond
the call of immediate duty of our state of life.

     In other words we care for the garden in response to God's
fundamental command to Adam to dress and keep the earth; and
through the symbolism and ordering of the plants around and image
of Mary and Jesus, we honor the redemption and Mary's participation
in it.  Through the symbols we constantly have Mary and Jesus in
mind, but as we garden, our mundane, solicitous houghts and
concerns also well up within us.  Realizing our own limitations,
and meditating upon what God's will is for us - to the extent that
we conclude that he wants us to turn to his assistance in prayer
for the accomplishment of what is close to our hearts and seems to
be what he wants us to do, we pray to him.  But we do not so to
speak have the garden, plant the garden as a project, or do any
specific amount of the work as a way of somehow getting something
out of God.

     In rethinking the whole question of the Immaculate Conception,
we can turn to Pope Pius IX's Bull, Ineffibilis, of December 8,
1854, in which he proclaimed the dogma of the Imrmaculate
Conception, to see the reasons that he gave for it.

     First was the passage from Genesis 3, 15, regarding the enmity
God placed between the devil and the woman.  If there is to be
enmity between Mary and the Devil, there can be none of the devil,
or evil, or sin in Mary. Otherwise, she would, so to speak, be
casting out the devil with the devil's help, as Christ pointed out
to his critics with respect to himself in the Gospel.

     Secondly, Mary as the second Eve was to show forth the
faithful Eve, the way Eve would have been if she had not succumbed
to the serpant.  Just as there was the collaboration in evil
between Eve and Adam, so therefore there would he the collaboration
in good and holiness between Mary and Jesus.

     The third reason he gives is the fact of Mary's sinlessness in
the Gospel. There is nothing in the Gospel that says that Mary
sinned or was anything less than perfect, as opposed to persons
like Peter and other disciples who asked Our Lord certain questions
and were rebuked for asking them.  Mary's relationship was within
her heart, rather than being corrected or rebuked for being wrong
or presumptious and so forth.

     The fourth reason given is the one mentioned most frequently
which is Mary's dignity as the Mother of God: that it wouldn't be
fitting or make sense to have God born of a sinful Mother.

     Fifth ,Pope Pius lX, gives the liturgy as a witness ‹ the fact
that the Liturgy applies to Mary the many passages from Wisdom and
the Canticle of Canticles and so forth, indicating the thinking of
the Fathers of the Church on this point.

      Finally, I propose, a sixth point would be that if God wanted
to set up a model of collaboration for us, he wouldn't give us a
sinful one.

<A NAME="Male Female">5/26/66</A> - <B>Male, Female & God</B>

     The thoughts developed up to this point about Mary through our
closeness to medieval nature symbolism, and in terms of what this
means for our faith; about her holiness and the Immaculate
Conception, and what this meant for Mary's mind and will and heart;
and, in particular, about Mary's responsiveness to the word and
will of God and grace, need also to be examined further in terms of
the relationship between masculine and feminine.

     In the West we have had an overly passive concept of
femininity and womanhood and an overly active concept of
masculinity and manhood.  With respect to Mary this lead to an
over-emphasis on her sort of passive fullness of grace, as though
just to be there and have grace indwelling in her was all that
there was to it, without emphasis on her active responsiveness to
grace - reflecting recent theology and the distinction made between
sanctlfying grace and actual graces.

     Again, sanctifying grace has been regarded as somewhat passive
in terms of the indwelling of grace in the soul as sart of a
terminal point, whereas the actual graces have been thought of more
in terms of graces needed for your state of life to somehow carry
out your duties without falling into sin.  What would seem to be
needed with respect to Mary's fullness of grace is the concept that
not only did she do the right thing, or respond in the right way to
tha Annunciation, let's say, but that by the Immaculate perfection
of her nature, together with the fullness of grace, she had an
active eagerness for and predispositlon and attunement to God's
will such that when it became manifest to her in various ways she
either eagerly, and wiliingly, and lovingly, and instantly
responded to it in an active way and maintained fidelity to it - or
if it was not something to which she was called to respond to
immediately, then she pondered this in her heart

     This brings to mind all the parallels and parab]es of the
grace of God and the word of God being sown into our hearts - the
supernatural virtues of God and Mary being rooted in our hearts -
and of ourselves being engrafted onto the vine of Christ: the
parallels and parables to the sowing of seeds in the soil.  But of
course the principle of growth does lie in the seed; and the warmth
of the sun of course energizes growth and calls it forth so to
speak. Thus, there is no question that the growth of the roots,
stems, leaves and flowers, can be spoken of as a response of the
seed to the sun as the plant grows up seeking the light.  And, of
course water which is the analogy of grace does actually or in
principle come down from above and, in clrculating through the
plant, infuse its entire growth.

     Yet, without a good soil, without the full complement of
minerals and so forth, the seed is not able to respond to the call
of the sun even with all the assistance of the waters of grace.
While we can't exactly say from this viewpoint that the soil itself
responds actively to the call of the sun, I do think that
considering both the mineral sphere of the earth and the biological
sphere, the biosphere as it has been called, of the earth together
- in other words considering the plant and the soil together as
being the earth - we can certainly say that the earth responds to
the sun of warmth and the rain of grace.

     From this viewpoint, the seed is to be seen as part of the
earth, having evolved through the evoluntionary process the life,
of more specifically, having evolved through the evolutionary
process out of the basic original mineral nature of the earth which
of course in turn came from fire, gasses and liquids, (fire,  air
and water).

     Thus, this very plant life of the earth is an active response
to the sun of creation.  The over-emphasis on the passivity of the
earth and of mother earth apparentlyi n a way comes from
considering the soil and the earth as somehow separate from the
plant, and not seeing the plent and the soil as together part of
the earth or as together comprising the earth.

     On the other hand the distinction between the plant and the
earth - or the distinction between, rather, the seed and the soil
within the unity of the earth - nevertheless gives us a
relationship on the basis of analogies of which as illuminated by
divine revelation, we are instructed of the relations between
heaven and earth and between God and man.  This of course applies
as well to the rain which is also part of the earth.

     When we move up to the analogy to the natural and supernatural
level then the earth ls so to speak man's soul and the seed is the
word of God and the rain of grace is the supernatural grace of God.
But, man's soul must be compared not only to the soil but to plant
life and to the activity of animal life, so that the response to
the seed of the word of God and the rain of grace is indeed an
active one just like the combined reaction of soil and seed in
reaching up to God as a plant.

     It would seem to me that one of the historical errors of the
more passive religions of the East, such as India and so forth, is
that the female principle has been seen in terms of this passivity
rather than an active rising up to meet the male principle, like a
seedling reaching toward the light.

     Further, in the Eastern religions the earth and the world are
to a great degree considered as Maya or illusion - as somehow being
an emanation or a manifestation of God, such that all is one and
this is a sort of breathing out, such that our destiny is simply to
overcome the error of our separation and illusion and somehow
become reunited or rediscover our unity, which existed all the
time, with our source, the one God.

     This is opposed to the Western concept that the world is
actually created as the handiwork of God which does have a diginity
and distinct existance of its own, albeit, sustained by God and
having been made by God. While it does have its ultimate destiny in
union with God, nevertheless this is a union of love and adoption
and not simply a reabsorbtion into a source. There is a distinction
between Creator and creature, and their union is one of love in
which they become reunited as distinct poles and persons.

     Thus, I think that from one view point the understanding of
Mary has been too passive, in a way, somewhat like these eastern
religions, but pehaps more from an overemphasis of activity in the
West.  It would certainly seem, to the extent that you can
generalize, that these western religions have even been more
passive, and that perhhaps a very important thing for the world
will be the rethinking of Mary's role in terms of the more active
response to the word and grace and call of God.

     Thus in the developing dialogue between East and West, for
example between Christianity and Buddhism and Hinduism, an actively
responding feminine princlple or feminine person of Mary as the
model of the active role of the feminine principle may very well
provide a thelogical and philosophical means of perhaps stimulating
the type of activity and reform in countries such as India where
there is mors passive acceptness of sickness and illness and lack
of aocial renewal.  It can be seen how ultimately universal all
these questions which come up in respect to Mary are in connection
with the whole world situation.  The more we get into these other
areas, the more evident is the the central position of Mary and her
relationship to Jesus.  And the thinking through of this, in all
its profundity, is really the key to whole relationship of the
world to Christ.

     In the analogy of the seed, when you get up to the level of
human or rather animal and human reproduction, there the human
person or animal is formed by the coming together of the male seed
and the female ovum; but the new fetus, the new person, primarily
is formed from the female ovum and of course nourished by the
female person.  Some of the characteristics of the new fetus and
person come from the male seed and some of them come from the
female, so that the analogy is very different from that of the
plant seed sown in the earth where the earth primarily sustains and
nourishes.

     While it indirectly supplies characteristics of the plant in
terms of the amount of and balance of the nourishment sustained,
basically the form of the plant comes from the seed sown in the
earth as opposed to the coming together of the male seed and the
female ovum where both contribute.  This has been determined
biologically within the last hundred years or so, and this in turn
has profound implications for the relationship between man and
woman developed when woman was thought of as the earth and man as
the seed, so to speak, so that the seed was more important than the
earth and the seed somehow contained the plant in miniature so that
it was given greater importance.

     But when you come up to the animal level, both the male seed
and the female earth, so to speak, have an equal contribution.  In
fact in a material sense the female contribution is even greater -
and I know in Sheeben's Mariology, this point is brought up in
connection with the virgin. Biologically it was not, shall we say,
physically impossible or materially impossible for Christ to have
been informed from Mary, under the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit
without actual physical impregnation with male seed.  It could be
said that Mary was so humble, so wide open to grace that she was
impregnated by God.

     In moving up the scale from plant life to animal to
supernatural li