“He said: Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” (Luke 26-38)

On this morning before Christmas, we reflect on Mary, her inner fears, and her boundless graces before God.

The angel Gabriel’s words to Mary at the Annunciation, “Hail full of grace!” find their way into our artistic, literary and spiritual legacy.

Here is a very brief sampling of how Mary is celebrated as the Mother of Jesus, the Mother of God.

Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) was an American artist, and first African-American painter to achieve international recognition. His father was a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Tanner is considered a realist painter and influenced by his fellow Philadelphian Thomas Eakins.

Tanners later paintings were based on biblical or religious subjects, including “the Annunciation” (1898), which today is among the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In this painting, the angel Gabriel is represented as a column of light and forms the shadow of a cross. Tanner’s intent is to focus on Mary’s inner life of wonder. The acceptance of the angel’s message includes the more demanding ascent to the cross that would mark her heart as the Lord’s handmaid.

Born in Prague in 1875, Rainer Maria Rilke’s deeply spiritual poetry takes on a range of human emotion as well as the inner motives of saints and those who aspire to the religious life.

Here in “The Annunciation” (1911), Rilke speaks to the fear in Mary’s heart as well as the angel whose message would change Mary’s life and all of creation.

“Annunciation to Mary,”

by Rainer Maria Rilke

 The angel’s entrance (you must realize)

was not what made her frightened. The surprise

he gave her by his coming was no more

than the sun or moon-beam stirring on the floor

would give another, — she had long since grown

used to the form that angels wear, descending;

never imaging this coming down

was hard for them.

 (O, it’s past comprehending,

how pure she was. Did not one day a hind

that rested in a wood watchfully staring

feel her deep influence, and did it not

conceive the unicorn, then without pairing,

the pure beast, a beast which life begot,-)

 No, not to see him enter, but to find

the youthful angel’s countenance inclined

so near to her; that when he looked, and she

looked up at him, their looks so merged in one

the world outside grew vacant, suddenly,

and all things being seen, endured and done

were crowded into them: just she and he

eye and its pasture visions and its view,

here at that point and at this point alone:-

see, this arouses fear. Such fear both knew. 

Ordained in 1948, Monsignor James Turro is the most senior priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, N.J. He is a professor of New Testament Studies at the Immaculate Conception Seminary on the campus of Seton Hall University.

Distinctive as a scholar and preacher. His “Reflections…path to prayer,” published in 1972, remains a favorite of mine for its motifs on the profoundly scriptural insights.

A forgotten truth:

Mary is an opportunity

for encountering Christ.

Our forefathers

seemed to have understood this well,

and to have expressed it in allusions of rare charm.

This surely what they sought to say

when they spoke of Mary as:

“House of Gold,”

“Ark of the Covenant,”

“Gateway of the Great King.”

They conceived of Mary

as the precious container

that drew its meaning and beauty

from the precious One contained,

Christ.

Mary is a “place” for meeting Christ.

 

Our Lady of Refuge, Castroville, CA.