Autor: Little, Joyce

Buch: The Church and the Culture War

Titel: The Church and the Culture War

Stichwort: Maria: Mutter, Mutterschaft; Ms Fiat, Schöpfung, mehr als passive Empfängnis; Hochzeit zu Kana

Kurzinhalt: Gertrude von le Fort ... "First comes creation which is the glory of God, then comes conception which is the humility of woman, and only then comes action which is the power of man."

Textausschnitt: THE MOTHERHOOD OF MARY

136a Mary's role as mother is one which begins at the Annunciation with her active consent to bear Christ into the world. In Mary's "Let it be done unto me" we have the perfect intersection of activity and receptivity. In Mary's Fiat we see also the distinctly feminine element in all of that creation which God calls into existence ex nihilo. For every creature, male and female, who is called into existence out of nothing must receive in order to be. And every disciple, male and female, who is called to share in the redemptive activity of Christ must first receive in order to act. (Fs)

136b But Mary's consent is more than a purely passive receptivity. Her consent is active and participatory. She wills what God wills, and in so doing she brings to the situation the one absolute power with which God has invested his creation. As Gertrude von le Fort has pointed out in The Eternal Woman, "Surrender to God is the only absolute power that the creature possesses."1 At the same time, Mary brings to the situation that one specific attribute which God has entrusted to the feminine side of his creation, the power of conception. To quote le Fort again, "First comes creation which is the glory of God, then comes conception which is the humility of woman, and only then comes action which is the power of man."2
136c It is important that we understand here precisely what le Fort has in mind when she speaks of the humility of woman. In the first instance, it involves a fundamental imitation of God. The woman in her humility stands in the same relationship to the man as God in his humility stands in relationship to all of humanity. For God in creating, just like the woman in conceiving, engages in an activity which remains largely hidden and anonymous: "God is a hidden, a silent, an invisible God. In His creation, He remains in a sense anonymous. This helps us to comprehend our previous assertion, that the power which collaborates also cocreates. Woman, therefore, as the hidden collaborator, represents the anonymity of God; she represents it as the one side of all that is creative."3

137a If we consider motherhood as restricted entirely to the conception of a child, we can see how the activity of the woman in conceiving the child is so hidden that, until recently in human history, men were inclined to take almost all of the credit for that conception. Men, or so it was thought especially by men, supplied the human beings; women supplied only the place, the womb, where those human beings could grow and mature until such time as they could survive outside it. (Fs)

There are, however, two far larger and more important senses in which the woman as conceiver is engaged in work which is for the most part hidden and anonymous. The first of these has to do with the biblical notion of motherhood. Eve is characterized as bearing a man into the world (Gen 4:1), and Christ speaks of his own hour, in John's Gospel, in terms of the rejoicing a woman experiences for having brought a man into the world (Jn 16:2) [eg: Stelle stimmt nicht]. The implications are obvious. Motherhood is not, as we might say today, simply biological. It is more than just conceiving and giving birth to a child. It has to do with raising that child up to adulthood. And that responsibility has always been seen as lying much more with mothers than with fathers. Both Eve and Mary are rightly viewed as bearing men into the world. (Fs)
137b The job of raising up a child to adulthood is, however, largely a hidden, anonymous, and too often thankless responsibility. As le Fort notes, "Between birth and death lies not only the achievement of the successful, but the unending weariness of the way, the continuous monotony, all that belongs to the needs of the body and of life."4 And making the role of motherhood all the more inconspicuous is the fact that the more successful the woman is in raising her children, the less likely her own contribution will be seen. If her children fail, we may well inquire into their home life; if her children succeed, however, we shall in all likelihood congratulate the children. (Fs)

137c We have, I think, a good example in Scripture of how attention tends to focus more on the child than on his mother, in the Gospel of Luke, where we are told that Christ grew in wisdom and knowledge (Lk 2:52). Much ink has been spilt over this passage, first, trying to understand how a being who is truly divine could grow in wisdom and knowledge and second, calling our attention to the fact that Christ was truly human inasmuch as he too had to learn like the rest of us. (Fs)
138a But no child, Christ included, simply "grows" in wisdom and knowledge as though in some preprogrammed and automated fashion. Children grow in wisdom and knowledge because someone is teaching them, guiding them, attending to them every day of the week, every week of the year. How often do we read that passage and miss Mary's presence in it? Her role at his conception is prominent, her role at his birth is prominent, but her role in bringing a man into the world is hidden, inconspicuous. (Fs)

138b There is, however, an even larger and more comprehensive sense in which motherhood stands for the hidden, the anonymous, the inconspicuous. If there is any event in Scripture which underscores this, it is surely the wedding at Cana. Seen from the side of Christ, we have in the Gospel of John the initiation of Christ's public ministry by the first sign or miracle in which he changes water into wine. This event not only has Eucharistic overtones, it also has implications with regard to Christ's "hour", an expression which in John's Gospel refers ultimately to Christ's crucifixion, which is simultaneously his exaltation, his installation as king, his universally effective salvific act, and his return to the Father which is also his return to that glory which was his before the creation of the world. The cosmic implications are quite literally staggering. (Fs)

138c Seen from the side of Mary, however, the wedding at Cana takes on entirely different dimensions. What we have here is a domestic crisis, a potentially embarrassing situation in which the wine has quite simply run out. The host of the wedding party has discovered his own resources to be insufficient to meet the obligations he undertook. He is powerless to mend the insufficiency. Not an unusual situation, we can surely all agree, but also not an event of cosmic proportions. Who are these people? We never even learn their names. Who cares if they are momentarily discomfited? We have all been there, and we know that the sun does not stop in the sky when these things happen. Life's embarrassing moments have no cosmic significance. Or do they?

138d At Cana we have an extraordinary exchange between mother and Son, the significance of which I think perhaps we do not yet fully understand. When Mary tells Christ that the wedding party has run out of wine, his answer takes the form of a question, and that question has quite a harsh ring to it: "O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come" (Jn 2:4). We might think that if ever there was a moment for Mary to claim her rights, to stand on her dignity, to assert her authority as his mother, this was surely it. Nothing like that happens, however. Instead, Mary addresses herself to the stewards, saying "Do whatever he tells you" (Jn 2:5). (Fs)

139a On one level what we have here, as many Scripture scholars point out, is an act of faith which goes beyond anything which any of his other disciples could have mustered at the time. On this level Mary is the model of the true disciple. But she is also his mother, and we must look beyond the level of discipleship alone to appreciate the full implications of her response. It has been suggested, and I think with good reason, that Mary's response has a direct bearing on Christ's statement that his hour has not yet come. In effect, by addressing the stewards as she does, Mary indicates that she as his mother is releasing him to his hour. Certainly her actions here do precipitate the beginning of his hour and set him on the path to Jerusalem and the cross. (Fs)

Beyond that, I would suggest that Mary's response is also an answer to the question which Christ puts to her, "O woman, what have you to do with me?" Again let me advert to The Eternal Woman, where le Fort discusses the motherly woman and raises the question, "Does this motherly woman owe herself to the strong man or to the weakling?"5 Le Fort's answer, of course, is to the weakling. (Fs)

139b At Cana Christ is the strong man. Mary knows this. The weak man is the host, who faces the embarrassment of a wine shortage for which he is responsible and about which he can do nothing. Mary approaches her Son on that man's behalf. When Christ asks her what she has to do with him, she seems not to answer. Certainly she does not fall back on any of the answers we might expect from her. She does not identify herself with him, as a mother might reasonably be expected to do under such circumstances. Instead, she turns away from him and to the stewards. She addresses them, not him. In so doing, she places herself on the side of their host. Her answer to her Son, or so I would suggest, is that she has to do with him precisely because she has to do with others. If she is releasing him to his hour, she is also simultaneously taking up her own place in his hour, the place of intercessor on behalf of the weak, the vulnerable, the helpless. In so doing, she ceases to be mother to him in order to become mother to others, a shift which he acknowledges by addressing her as "woman", not as mother. (Fs)

140a It is not out of line, I think, to suppose that before his hour begins, she is still involved in the task of bringing a man into the world and therefore is not yet in a position to bring the world to that man. If that is so, once his hour begins, Mary the mother, whose responsibility it once was to raise up a weak child into a strong man, becomes Mary the woman, who as a truly motherly woman now has the responsibility to bring to him the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of others. She who was his mother becomes at the advent of his "hour" woman to him and mother to us. This shift in her motherly responsibilities is in this same Gospel reaffirmed and sealed at the Cross where Christ in the culmination of his hour, looking at his mother and at the beloved disciple who stands for all disciples, says to Mary, "Woman, behold, your son!" and to the beloved disciple, "Behold, your mother!" (John 19:26-27). (Fs)

140b Mary is most prominent in the Gospels at two points in the life of Christ: first, at his conception and birth where she assumes the responsibility of bearing a man into the world and, second, at the inauguration and culmination of Christ's hour where she assumes the responsibility of bearing other men and women to Christ. In both instances she assumes the role of mother, first, in relation to Christ and second, in relation to others. In both instances she appears only to disappear into the anonymity of her calling. Indeed, the fact that she remains for the most part so inconspicuous in the Gospels is the best evidence we have of her fidelity to her vocation. For as mother she is entrusted with the task of attending to the little things, the vulnerable persons, the inconspicuous and, by popular standards, the unimportant events in life. In so doing, she stands as a constant reminder that our popular standards are wrong. (Fs)

140c Is the fact that they have run out of wine at this wedding party in Cana really worth bothering about? Mary certainly thinks so. So much does she think so that she is prepared to make it an issue with her Son. She is willing to ask what she as his mother really has no right to ask, that he exercise those divine and messianic prerogatives which are his by virtue of his Father, not his mother, those powers which once exercised must necessarily set him on the path to Jerusalem, to the cross, to the culmination of his "hour". Having raised him to manhood, she must relinquish her own role as his mother that he might now do the will of his Father. But her own role as mother does not end here; in a sense, we can say that it most truly begins here. For she whom Christ now addresses as woman is the one whom we are now invited to address as mother. (Fs)

141a In a general audience given in January 1979, Pope John Paul II said, "Motherhood is woman's vocation ... yesterday ... today ... always; it is her eternal vocation ... a mother is the one who understands everything and embraces each of us with her heart.... Today the world is hungrier and thirstier than ever for that motherhood which, physically or spiritually, is woman's vocation as it was Mary's."6 (Fs)

141b Nothing demonstrates more clearly the poisoned character of contemporary human and social values than the fact that this kind of statement is not only unappreciated by so many of us today but is actually ridiculed as trivializing the importance of women in the Church and in the world. Motherhood is seen in some circles today, and those circles seem to be expanding, as demeaning to women because it removes them to such an extent from what is valued as the really important, which is to say, the conspicuous achievements in society. Mothers, after all, do not make a lot of money, do not often get their names in the papers, rarely are invited to appear as guests on the Phil Donahue Show (unless their children or husbands or perhaps even they themselves have done something outrageous and therefore conspicuous), and most demeaning of all, are asked to attend not to the big problems in the world or to the important questions of their own self-fulfillment but to the petty and, on a cosmic scale, inconsequential needs of others. The baby needs diapers; the husband needs clean shirts; the third grader needs help with his homework; the teenager needs a talking-to. Even when one gets away from all of this—a night out at a neighbor's party where one might relax for awhile—the host, it turns out, needs wine. It never ends, and it never seems to lead anywhere. (Fs)

142a When we find ourselves starting to think that way, we must either dismiss Mary or we must begin to accept that we have wandered rather far from the path of our calling. If these things do not matter, if they are not worth attending to, if they have no enduring value or importance for us, we have surely, as Catholics, lost our bearings and lost them badly. We have forgotten that life for the most part does not consist in great crises and great achievements. It consists in small crises and oftentimes even smaller achievements. The first step of the baby is far more symbolic of the reality of our lives than was the first step of Neil Armstrong on the moon. Even worse, we have forgotten that the value of life does not reside primarily in extraordinary pleasures and unceasing self-fulfillment but in ordinary pleasures and unceasing concern for the welfare of others. Worst of all, we have forgotten that our God is a humble God, who is present to us not primarily in extraordinary and public acts of power but in the ordinary and hidden acts of love by which he sustains our daily life, our normal activities, our ordinary achievements. (Fs)
142b Henri J. Nouwen in his book Out of Solitude quotes a professor at Notre Dame as saying, "I have always been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I slowly discovered that my interruptions were my work."7 Those of us who pursue a career are all too prone to define for ourselves where the importance of our work lies. We are constantly tempted to dismiss the demands others make on us as a waste of time, their needs as far less significant than the projects to which we have committed ourselves. We can become quite convinced that we are doing what God wants us to do and that he himself would not wish to see that work disrupted by the paltry loose ends of other people's lives. (Fs)

142c What we fail to understand is that if these interruptions are a waste of time, then Christ's life was a waste of time. For when we read the Gospels attentively, we discover that the story of his life is one long sequence of interruptions. The blind Bartimaeus interrupts his departure from Jericho, a woman interrupts his dinner in the home of Simon the leper, a centurion interrupts his entry into Capernaum, Jairus interrupts his meeting with the crowd, the woman with the hemorrhage interrupts his attempts to get to Jairus' daughter, his disciples interrupt virtually everything; even Mary interrupts his enjoyment of the wedding. The list could go on and on. One might even say that the crucifixion interrupts what could have been a splendid messianic career. Those were not interruptions, of course. Those were precisely the people he came to help, the things he came to do. When so much of his work consisted of attending to those who interrupted him, why should we suppose our own lives to be any different?

143a If we find in Christ the revelation of such a notion of vocation, we find in Mary its essence. For motherhood might almost be defined as an interrupted or ruptured life. A mother begins by believing that she can never entirely do her own thing, so involved is she in doing things for others. She ends by discovering that in doing things for others, she is doing her own thing. Yet here at the heart of motherhood we also find ourselves at the heart of discipleship. For we are called upon to love one another as Christ loves us, to serve one another as he serves us Qn 13). (Fs)

143b If we had only the revelation of Christ's achievements to go by, we might well be justified in thinking that extraordinary, visible, public, and powerful achievements are the only ones worth seeking. But we have also the inconspicuous and largely unrecorded achievements of Mary to go by, achievements which, precisely because they do go unrecorded, stand as an irrevocable witness to the importance of both the ordinary, hidden, invisible, anonymous activities of human life and the ordinary, hidden, invisible, anonymous activities of divine love. (Fs)
143c If men by and large have been entrusted with responsibility for the prominent, public achievements of our history, that is not because they are superior to women. It is because women by and large have been entrusted with responsibility for the deeper and therefore much more hidden achievements of our daily lives and, even more perhaps, for the small and ordinary needs of our daily lives. To the woman who points out "They have no wine" is entrusted the enormous responsibility of attending to those who have no food, no water, no clothing, no shelter, no family, no friends. Le Fort beautifully sums up the true role of the motherly woman when she says: As the motherly woman feeds the hungry, so also does she console the afflicted. The weak and the guilty, the neglected and the persecuted, even the justly punished, all those whom a judicial world no longer wishes to support and protect, find their ultimate rights vindicated in the consolation and compassion that the maternal woman gives. For her the words of Antigone will always be valid: "Not to hate, but to love with you, am I here."8