We read first that Anne, the "spinner", creates the "petal-soft, rosewhite, / filament starbright" of Mary, who is to be greeted by an angel with the words "Hail, full of grace". Mary, in her turn, is the "weaver" (a traditional image), creating the "fair-flesh of Christ / fabric unpriced" (meaning beyond price, though He will, ironically, be bought and sold), while her "virginal womb" is "God's dwelling-place". Christ, then, becomes the cloth, "stretched upon a tree / temple-veil nail rent / silken sheath blood-sprent"; the "sheer humanity / cloaking God's face". The most important aspect of the Christian faith - the salvation of humanity - is thus represented here in terms of a very homely and ordinary female activity: the making of cloth. Traditional images, both literal and metaphorical, are combined with others derived from the Bible (such as the "temple-veil"), while words such as "unpriced" and "sheath" (foreshadowing the shroud) are ironically prospective of Christ's Crucifixion and Death.
In the final stanza, the crucially important salvific significance of all this to humanity is finally made clear, albeit still within the parameters of the imagery of cloth:
Anne was the spinner
Mary was the thread
Christ is the cloth
I go garmented.
Through Christ's suffering and death, thus, and by means of the necessary obedience of His Mother and grandmother, the speaker, representing humanity, is saved from the sinfulness of Adam and Eve and enabled to "put on [the garment of] the Lord Jesus Christ" as St Paul enjoins us.
In Sr M Julian Baird's much briefer "Virgo Potens" - whose title immediately confronts the readers with an unusual association of words with both male and female connotations - sin and salvation are more explicitly contrasted, within the specific context of the Immaculate Conception. The power of sin may mar the Creation by imprisoning the natural world and even the cosmos - "blind the star, / stifle the sunlight, / web all the winds / in a mesh unbreakable" - but the power of the Blessed Virgin in the service of her Lord is greater: "her immaculate heart alone / could cradle God".
Moving on to the theme of the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which has not been proclaimed an essential element of belief, but is a doctrine based on revelation dating from the early years of the Church, the orthodox teaching on the subject is as follows: The Church holds that Mary was a virgin at the time of the conception of Christ (by means of the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit - a miracle which humanity must not attempt to understand); and that she retained virginal status throughout her life.
In addition to poems proclaiming or celebrating the theme of Mary's virginity, such as "Total Virgin" by Jessica Powers (Sr Miriam of the Holy Spirit) and "The Virgin Mother" by Sr Maura, SSND, there are also lyrics which draw an intimately personal parallel between the Blessed Virgin's fruitful virginity and the lives of the nun-poets themselves. One of the most moving of these is "A Nun to Mary, Virgin" by Sr M St Virginia, BVM. Here, Mary is an inspiring example,a shield, and a source of loving consolation for the trials of misunderstanding and ridicule of her virginal life which beset the speaker: "I had gone fruitless and defenceless, Lady, / had it not been for your strange Blossoming; / ... my having life had been a thing to mourn for, / passing none on ... Without you, I had cringed beneath men's scorn for / skylarks that soar not, trees that do not bloom ..." Our Lady, in offering her Child to the speaker - and to nuns and virgins everywhere ("a million maids") - allows them to "[find] in [her] themselves: and justified". The gradual crescendo of belief and certainty builds up inexorably in the last sentence to the emphatic power of that final line.
We come now to the theme of the second of the Christological dogmas, that of the divine maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary as mother of God and thus of the whole human race. In chapter 8, clause 53 of Lumen Gentium (1964:61), the teaching of the Church on this issue is given as follows:
The Virgin Mary, who at the message of the angel received the Word of God in
her heart and in her body and gave Life to the world, is acknowledged and
honoured as being truly the Mother of God and Mother of the Redeemer.
Since the Council of Ephesus in 431, which countered the Nestorian heresy in proclaiming Jesus Christ to be both fully divine and fully human, Our Lady has held the title Theotokos, or God-bearer. In addition, she is acknowledged as the Mother of the whole of humankind, on the basis of Christ's words to her and to His beloved disciple, John, from the Cross (John 19:26-27):
When Jesus, therefore, had seen His mother and the disciples standing whom He
loved, He saith to His mother, "Woman, behold, thy son". After that He saith to
the disciple, "Behold, thy mother". And from that hour, the disciple took her to
his own.
The work of the nun-poets sings the praises of the Blessed Virgin in both these contexts. Thus, for example, in "Secrets", Sr M Ladonna, SND describes Mary as marked by "rapture" during her pregnancy, a blessed state acknowledged by all aspects of nature and the supernatural, but a mystery to her "wonder-eyed" neighbours, who saw only "that her eyes were wells of awe - / but in heaven Gabriel knew."
The same poet writes in "Garden Enclosed", the "garden" referring to Mary's soul, "enclosed and guarded well":
My lady is God's Mother
all holy, virgin white,
she is His perfect creature;
she is His first delight!
The concluding stanza of the poem comes close to the claim of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who once described Our Lady as a "Woman-Trinity", a statement perilously close to heresy, were it not used in the metaphorical context of poetry. Not only the Child, but the "Father, Son and Spirit, / the Blessed Trinity" are content to live in the "select enclosure" of the Blessed Virgin's soul.
Dr Margaret Mary Raftery
BA Hons, HDE, MA (UND), M Phil (Oxon), PhD (UOFS)
Senior Lecturer English Dept, UOFS, Bloemfontein, South Africa
February 2000
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