The Secret of the Mother of God
What if grace is not something you earn, but something you learn to carry?
Let Me Tell You a Secret
Let me tell you a secret. It is a marvelous secret that has not been hidden from the world, but is so amazing that many cannot hold on to it. It slips through our fingers like so many grains of sand, and escapes our minds because it is too big for us to hold it all inside. Nevertheless, it is true. It is a wonder beyond wonders that awakens us to our lives in this world and the mission that we have been called to.
This isn’t a secret for a few, or for the chosen, or for those who have achieved some level of enlightenment. It is a secret because the tender devotion that we are talking about is so intimate within us that sometimes we can’t even see it’s working.
This is the secret of Mary, the mother of God, and how she brought Christ into the world, and how she can help us to bring Christ into the world again and again and again.
Do not worry and do not be afraid. You don’t have to be special or worthy to receive this secret. This is not a secret for the chosen, but for any whose hearts are open and who wish the tree of life to grow strong and proud. It is the whispered hope to all who hear the call of our Blessed Mother and run to her arms, knowing that no one who has ever run to her has ever been turned away empty.
Mary, Matrix of Creation and Tree of Life
Our Blessed Mother Mary is at the same time that sweet and tender girl who heard the voice of the angel, and the fierce mother longing to protect her child and take him away from the crowds that she knew one day would turn on him. She is the one who is present at all of the major turning points of Christ’s life, and even beyond through His ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Mother of God, she is the matrix of all creation, our own Divine Mother who helps us to be formed into the image of Her Child. As the daughter of God, she, like us, is a child in this world seeking wisdom and truth, meaning, purpose, and life.
In her was grace, and she was not alone in that. For that original grace that flowed so freely from Mary’s Immaculate Heart flows through us as well, though if we’re not careful, we can dam its flow and slow its progress.
Mary is the very tree of life upon whom the fruit of life did grow: the Christ, the one who creates, maintains, and sustains the cosmos. As our mother, she cares for us and helps us to raise that tree strong and pure so that Christ may come into our own lives and be born into the world to bring change, renewal, and redemption to all.
She is also the tree that we tend with our tender devotion, bringing compassion, mindfulness, and grace into the world so that the ground may remain fertile, the roots watered, and the limbs protected from the winds that batter.
Living In Mary: The Positive Way of Original Grace
When we learn to live in Mary, we are not just imitating her but taking on her spirit. Her cosmic hospitality that she demonstrated at the wedding at Cana. There she coaxed Christ into performing His first miracle so that people might enjoy the celebration.
To live in Mary is to learn how to trust again in the original blessing and original grace that the world is made in. Nothing is born broken, tainted, or damaged. Neither is it born pure, clean. All things are created good and blessed by the Creator for that goodness. Life intervenes, and through various chance and purposeful encounters, it flows out into the world.
Living in Mary means that we remember to bring out our best even at the end, that we provide that cosmic hospitality that invites other people to savor the delights of the world. As the psalmist says, “To taste and see that the Lord is good.” We sing with joy in the wondrous cosmic dance of the seasons and the many joys that arise throughout them.
Grace is ever-present. But like water, if we do not drink it, we are not hydrated. If we do not receive grace, if we do not pick it up and take it in, then we feel its lack. We collect grace in awe, in wonder, in delight, and through savoring them deep down within and finding such great joys in the life that we live.
Living With Mary: The Open Way of Spaciousness and Consent
Living with Mary may be the hardest spiritual act most of us will ever undertake. When we live with her, we see her fear and terror at the crowds growing around her son and all that that might portend for the future. We live with her in the pain of His crucifixion, as she stands there and watches the life drain from her beloved Son. We cradle his body with her as she holds him, still and cold, after the cross has done its work.
After savoring so much delight in her, it is difficult for us to surrender to this sadness and grief that often fills the world. We want to set them at odds with each other and say that they are opposed to each other, cosmic opponents fighting in the glorious battle for the fate of the cosmos. This is not so. Pain, grief, and sadness are a very real part of the world.
We receive them through the great spaciousness we learn by living with Mary, that open-heartedness that takes everything in to ponder it within. Sometimes, like Rachel, we refuse consolation and endure the grieving process, surrendering to it fully.
The Open Way, the Via Negativa, teaches us something more. It reminds us that when we are open, we allow people and events in our lives to enter through consent, not coercion. That they must want to be here, and so sometimes we have to let them go. At other times, events are out of our control, and all we can do is surrender to them and live with them.
We must accept the pain and fear that comes our way, but not allow it to lead us to self-erasure. With her, we learn to listen and to ponder all things in our hearts. That letting go and letting be sometimes means going into the secret hidden places within so that we can find the solace, the strength, the courage to stand up again.
In making space for the many sorrows of the world, we are opening ourselves up, so that with the great well of all delight and wonder that we collected, inner compassion can be born. Compassion reminds us that we live together, and only in that mutual care and indwelling can we all find peace, hope, safety, security, and blessing.
Living By Mary: The Creative Way of Tending the Tree
As compassion arises within us, its cousins, mindfulness and creativity, come along and join in the dance. Here we learn to live by Mary. In our devotion to her, we are tending the Great Tree of Life.
Mindfulness opens us to the present moment, allowing us to see things as they are, fully and completely without blinders. The openness that we have cultivated allows us to accept even the things that we do not want to hear or know, but are still true.
Compassion reminds us that we are not in this alone, but are able to act in solidarity together to tend the soil to ensure that it is enriched with compassion so that the roots can grow strong and firm and the tree does not fall over in the winds.
Our creativity teaches us how to find new ways to discover delight and new ways to savor it. New ways to see awe and wonder in all that is, and to make a spacious home for when pain arises.
We tend the tree by Mary because she shows us the way. She told the people at the wedding of Cana, “Whatever my son tells you, do it.” In the Magnificat, her beautiful prayer, she reminds us of the works of justice making that we are all called to do in toppling down the thrones, bringing the high low, and raising up the poor, the orphaned, and those who are in need.
By her wisdom and strength, we learn to tend the garden so the tree may grow strong and the fruit of Christ arise upon it.
Living Through Mary: The Transformative Way of Teshuvah and Tikkun
As we continue to tend the tree, we learn to live through Mary in the Via Transformativa, the transformative way. Here we practice the arts of teshuvah, the returning again and again, not just to the way but to alignment with the world and to ourselves.
Teshuvah is the pruning that we do upon the tree that removes the suckers from the branches so that the fruit may grow strong without its energy being diverted in other ways. It is not about guilt or shame. It is about learning when we are diverting our energy into things that are either not productive, good, or healthy for us, and returning back to the way that brings life and life more abundantly.
When the fruit has grown upon the tree, we invite others into the feast, the great celebration that comes as we share the fruit with the world. This could be in little ways, like helping those that we find in our lives go through troubles and travails. It could be giving money to a person or bringing them a meal. It could be helping someone find a place to live or someone to care for them.
In all of these ways and more, we share the fruit of the Tree of Life. This is tikkun, that glorious ability deep down within us where we become that font of original grace, bringing restoration and healing to the world to come.
In every act of mindfulness, in every act of compassion, in every act of creativity and justice-making, we are bringing repair and healing to the cosmos.
Through Mary, we find the strength in the heart to stand up when we need to stand and to ponder when we need to ponder, to celebrate in times of great joy and to mourn in times of sorrow. We do not do this alone, but with our community that we find along the way.
In this way, we live fully in this mutual indwelling, where we find ourselves simultaneously the mother of God and the child of God. We are the child, ever growing, maturing, and perfecting ourselves into the image of the divine Christ. And as mothers, we continue to tend the tree because the fruit does not grow once, or what use would the tree be? The fruit continues to grow as new flowers blossom, and they are pollinated and they mature to ripeness to be shared again and again with the community and the cosmos.
In living through Mary, we, like her, become a font of original grace, helping others to see the blessing that has always been around them and to wash away anything that has blocked the path so that the waters of grace and life may ever flow.
The Secret Given Back
Now you know the secret of Mary, the secret of the Mother of God, that she is our matrix that forms us into her beloved Christ child, and the Tree of Life that, growing within us, produces the fruit of life which is that same child.
Devotion to Mary, our tending of this miraculous tree, reminds us of the mutual indwelling that all things share in this cosmos. Everyone, everything has the seed of this tree rooted within them. It only needs to be watered and cared for to grow strong.
Blessed Mother, seed of the tree of life, matrix of the cosmos, font of original grace. Open our eyes so that we may see and our ears that we may hear so that we may be enraptured by the awe, wonder, and delight of this world, savoring it deep down and opening us up so that we may have the space for the tree to grow within us and under its shade to live through the many trials and tribulations that we meet in this life.
Help us to nurture our mindfulness and creativity so that as compassion arises within us, we can transform it and interpret it into many wonders that we can share. Give us the courage and the strength to step out in justice making and celebration so that we can share the fruit that we have grown with the world, that the world may be made better by it.
Through constant returning, we heal ourselves. Through repair, we heal the world.
In the name of your beloved Son, our Son, and our God.
Amen.