Ave, Maris Stella
Hail, Star of the Sea
Teach Us to PrayThe presence of Mary has always been one of silence for me. When I was asked one day to speak about Mary, I found myself wondering how to talk about her without betraying the silence she seems to bring to me. I drifted back to childhood, hoping to see some pictured memory. I saw a long line of Marian images which taught me of her ever-present guardian motherhood.
I see myself, a child before her image. It is the late 1950's in the pre-conciliar era of the church. I have placed a statue of Mary on a small end table to the left of the top of the stairs, on the second floor of our house. This little May shrine is at the intersection of all the upstairs rooms, and faces a long hallway which seems to be a natural road of procession. There are spring flowers spilling out of two small vases - lilacs and forget-me-nots which, when dry and fallen, look like scattered ochre stars dotting the cable and floor around the statue. I am quiet yet imploring ...gazing hard at Mary, I remember that she smiled at Therese of Lisieux dispelling the nightmare of the child's physical and mental suffering. With a child's confidence, I take for granted she will smile or speak to me.
As I wait for her to move, I become quiet inside and some fears go away. The violence of grade school children recedes. Mary is gazing back at me with outstretched arms. From the palms of her hands beams of light fall to the base of the statue. As I see her pray, I begin to pray.
I see myself as a child during Advent visiting the area churches with my family. My brothers and sisters and I are all tumbling over one another to see the lights, wreaths, ribbon-wrapped roping, and the cribs surrounded by tiny pine trees. Our final stop is reserved for the church of the Friars Minor: St. Elizabeth of Hungary. This church displays a crib, which is practically a little town of Bethlehem. We kneel before the crib, and I look at Mary. This time she is not looking at me but at her baby. She is rapt in contemplation, which as a child not even knowing what the word means, I see only as love. She is looking without distraction at her child. As she looks, I look. As she contemplates and loves, I love.
It is 1968, I see myself as a Jesuit novice, trying to fit into an order so beyond my natural abilities and scope. I become obsessed with a feeling that I will never "make it" -in any sense- and cold despair pours into my heart, body and spirit. I am lost and sinking in a vast and dark inner sea. There is only one place to go, one refuge, one last hope.
I sneak out into the spring night, and see in the distance the small Mary Chapel on the grounds of the novitiate, a gift of a woman benefactress. The night is heavy with the scent of Japanese magnolias, and the chapel of cool grey stone reflects the light of the moon which is not warm and incandescent, but faint and blue. The waxen magnolia petals cover the ground and the scent seems ironically unpleasant by night - funereal and stifling. I open the door and see the image of Mary facing me directly. She seems cold herself, lit by the fluorescent moon, and I imagine we both shiver as the visit begins.
She is standing on a crisp crescent moon and her hands are folded in prayer. I weep and beg and repeat the Memorare over and over again. My eyes grow puffy and red, my feet stiff and cold, my hands damp and white. I am in that familiar state of spent grief.
Jesuit Bulletin. Fall 1985. p.8-9.
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Page Last Updated: October 6, 2001
