God's Method: To Jesus through Mary

Madonna and Child with God the Father
and Cherubim by *clairity* on flickr

Well, in yesterday's post, I made a mistake in transcribing the words of the Nicene Creed, from the fragment Et incarnatus est: I left out the words by the Holy Spirit. I've since fixed it, but noticing the mistake reminded me of the great proximity between the Holy Spirit and Mary. the Word 'by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.' 

When I was 20 years old and lived in Washington, DC. I would often go to the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and look around at the great and diverse treasury of Christian symbolism there. I loved the crypt church, the grotto of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the simple wooden statue of Mary outside the chapel of the Eucharist. I was provoked, however, by the phrase 'to Jesus through Mary' which I saw at a certain shrine there. I asked a friend about it, and he gave a sentimental defense that did not move me at all. Yes, I loved Mary, but I had no difficulty addressing Jesus in prayer (and I still address Jesus directly in prayer!). 

As I pondered this question, I left it open, but that same year I would come across a reasonable articulation of that insight into the Christian mystery. In the very first sentence of his book on the rosary, The Threefold Garland, Hans Urs von Balthasar says: "Christian prayer can attain to God only along the path that God himself has trod; otherwise it stumbles out of the world and into the void, falling prey to the temptation of taking this void to be God or of taking God to be nothingness itself" (19). What is the path, the method, that God has trod? The very path laid down in the Creed: the Son, the Word, 'by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.' Christ is the one who was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and if we seek another christ, a christ different from the one preached in the Creed, we will find only an idol of our own making, an abstraction, an ethical or political ideal. And so today, I confidently pray veni Sancte Spiritus, Veni per Mariam. 

I would mention, by the way, that the phrase 'to Jesus through Mary' comes from St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, who recommended a devotion known as total consecration to Mary. Now, I have never been moved to make this devotion, but it is interesting that this year it started on Ash Wednesday, giving this year's Lent a particularly Marian character. So, as I ponder the Creed, I will be pondering Mary's mission in the Christian mysteries.