The Window of My Love
Some of you will be familiar with the Anglican author and mystic Evelyn Underhill. She was born in 1875 and died in 1941, and she had an immeasurable impact of the renewal of Christian mysticism within the life of the Church. But among her less known writings is a little book published in 1906 titled The Miracles of Our Lady St. Mary, in which she gathered together this delightful collection of stories and legends about St. Mary’s presence in the life of the Church throughout history. And one of my favorites of these tales is the story of an old sacristan who served in the Church of St. Peter in Rome.
The story goes that he had great devotion to Our Lady St. Mary, and one day he noticed that the lamp that burned in front of her altar was running low on oil. And the text says, “Now the lamp that burned before the shrine of the Blessed Apostle Saint Peter was full of oil even to the brim… Therefore this sacristan, for that he was old and somewhat slothful, bethought him that he would take a little oil from Saint Peter’s lamp, and therefrom replenish that of the Blessed Virgin Mary… This he did, thinking no harm of it… And not on this day only, but on many others, he fed the lamp of his Lady from out the superfluity of oil which Saint Peter’s suppliants offered at his shrine.
“Nevertheless, that holy Apostle was greatly vexed at it; for he was of opinion that in this church, wherein his confession was, he stood higher than all other saints, yea, even than the Queen of Angels herself. And he could not endure that the oil of his lamp should be taken in order that a brighter flame might burn before that Lady’s shrine. Therefore one night he came from Paradise and appeared in a vision before that sacristan while he slept, and with angry looks he saith to him, ‘Wherefore, oh sacristan, have you taken the oil from my lamp?”
“Said the sacristan, ‘Saint Peter, I did but borrow a little that the lamp of Our Lady Saint Mary might be fed.’ The Apostle replied, ‘God’s Mother hath much honour in many lands, and many shrines and pilgrimages there are established in her name: but this is my house, wherein my body lies, that is the very Rock on which the Church is built, and here I can in no wise suffer that you do the Lady Mary this courtesy at my expense… Behold, I keep the key of Heaven, and none can enter in save them to whom I open; and if you be so hardy to come thither, that have given me less oil that the Blessed Virgin may have more, very surely I shall shut the door in your face.”
And so the old sacristan is thrown into despair that now he will never enter the gates of heaven. But that night St. Mary appears to him and she says, ‘My very dear friend and faithful servant, be joyful and fear not, for none can harm you while you have my love. …for though the Apostle Saint Peter refuse to open the door of Heaven to let you in, yet is he powerless to keep you from the Celestial City so long as you do call upon my name. Very truly he keeps the keys of the door of Paradise, but so soon as he hath shut it against you, I, of whom my anthem saith, ‘Coeli fenestra facta es,’ [which means, ‘I am the window of heaven’] shall open the window, that thereby you may come in. This will I ever do for my friends that fail not in my service; for the door of Heaven is a very narrow gate, and Saint Peter keepeth it exceeding straitly, but the window of my love is very wide.’” And so his heart is put at ease.
This same story is preserved in slightly different forms. The simplest and most humorous is probably this one: Peter complains to Jesus that he’s seen people walking the streets of gold who he did not let in the pearly gates. How are they getting in? Jesus says, “Oh, that’s my Mom; she let’s them in the backdoor.”
These stories are getting at something very essential, and they recognize that there are really two religions in every religion. There’s the religion of fear, and the religion of love. The religion of rules, and the religion of mercy. And in these stories that have been told and passed down through the Church, and importantly which have been told and passed on more by the people than by the priests, Peter has come to represent the scary side of religion, the institutional gatekeepers, who too often have used fear, and legalism, and threats of eternal punishment to keep people in line.
But the hearts of the faithful, the hearts of those who have truly come to know something of love, have always understood that that can’t be the whole story; that love and mercy must triumph in the end. And so Mary came to represent the subversive love of a mother, who will turn none of her children away. She subverts the patriarchy, the hierarchy, the rules, the laws, the judgment—and allows everyone to privately have a laugh at the finger-wagging priests.
Again, in every religion there are at least two religions. There’s the religion of the canon lawyers and the theologians, and there’s folk religion, the religion of the people, what the hearts of the people intuitively know and believe. Now the official theologians of Christendom will tell you that Mary is not a goddess, she is not a member of the Trinity, and she is not to be divinized in the way that Jesus is. And yet this has always been held in tension with popular devotion in the Church in which she’s often very much looked like all those things she’s not supposed to be, while the officials remind you, “This isn’t really what it looks like!”
And I think this is because on a very deep level, the human heart knows that we need a mother; knows that we need to recognize the feminine archetype within ourselves, within the world, and within the life of God. And Mary has come to bear that archetype for Christians throughout the ages. And the theologians have worked to keep God all-male, and to keep Mary in her place; and all the while folk religion has whispered, the grandmothers have whispered, “Don’t worry, Mom will let you in the backdoor.”
Patriarchal religion may attempt to suppress the feminine, but she will always find a way to re-express herself. And so I tend to say, “Why not?” Why not let St. Mary be the face of the Motherhood of God? We’ve always said that Christians best see the qualities of God in the lives of the saints, and so why should we not see God’s motherhood in the life and face of St. Mary? It seems a peculiar thing to get worked up over, and one very much rooted, consciously or unconsciously, in the patriarchal need to keep the masculine elevated at all costs.
Now Mary, of course, was not just an archetype, but a real flesh and blood woman of history. And today in the Gospel reading we hear her sing her Magnificat, “the Song of Mary.” They’re words that she proclaims while pregnant with Jesus, during a visit with her cousin Elizabeth, who is also pregnant, carrying the one who will become John the Baptist. And in her song she envisions a God who “scatters the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, who brings down the powerful from their thrones, and lifts up the lowly; who fills the hungry with good things, and sends the rich away empty.” It’s a vision of the world turned upside down and redefined by the demands of justice. And so we see a Mary in this song who isn’t simply meek and mild, but whose compassion is also fierce and on the side of the oppressed.
Again, there are two religions in every religion; there’s the one that seeks to maintain the status quo, to maintain power for the powerful, and wealth for the wealthy; and there’s another that looks to upend all of that. And there’s no question about which one Mary represents. And while stories about her life and ministry are sparse, especially within the Gospel record, early Christians did pass on some of the memories, and we see Mary emerging in those stories as a leader and matriarch within the early Jerusalem church.
St. Maximus the Confessor, who gathered a lot of these stories in the 6th century, wrote that after Jesus’ Ascension, Mary “took charge of every good thing, and while she was dwelling in the land, she was herself the model and leader of every good activity for men and for women… And that is why she then instructed the holy apostles in fasting and prayer… she did not win an easy and effortless life and was not made carefree from all labor and ministry—far from it! … it is said by truthful teachers and has come to us that her holy hands were very calloused from frequent prostration [in prayer]… She was teacher and queen of all… those who hope in [Christ’s] name, men and women, his friends and disciples, so she had care and concern for them all. … But she was not only an inspiration and a teacher of endurance… she was also a co-minister with the disciples of the Lord. She helped with the preaching, and she shared… in their struggles.”
And so we see her in her old age as elder, leader, and mentor. It’s an important rounding out of our understanding of who she was. Maximus also records what had become a popular story by his day. He tells us that when it came her time to die the angel Gabriel appeared to her once more; he said “Your son and Lord bids you: ‘It is time for my mother to come to me.’” And she replied, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me now again according to your word.” And so she calls for all the disciples to return form their travels to Jerusalem, and they gather around her on her deathbed. She promises to intercede for them always, gives them her final blessing, and takes her last breath.
They bury her in a tomb, and close the stone over the door. And then Thomas arrives late from his preaching in India. I must see her one final time, he says. So they go to open the tomb, and discover that her body is gone; she’s been taken body and soul into heaven. And so began the tradition of the Assumption of Mary, which is one of the names of this feast day. And this remained a popular belief throughout the Church, but was not proclaimed doctrine in the Roman Catholic Church until 1950, and in our tradition we still hold it as an optional belief.
I’m not so interested in whether or not it “really” happened this way, as in what it might mean symbolically. And very interestingly, Carl Jung got excited when this was declared doctrine by the Roman Church in the 50s. He wrote: “If the Assumption means anything, it means a spiritual fact which can be formulated as the integration of the female principle into the Christian conception of the Godhead. This is certainly the most important religious development for 400 years.”
He saw it as the Church finally allowing the feminine to be taken, body and soul, into God. Of course, that isn’t how the Church understood it, but he felt this was essentially a subconscious admission at the doctrinal level of what the heart has always known—that the masculine and feminine must be balanced and integrated for their to be wholeness.
And so, however you understand these symbols, and however Mary fits into your own spiritual life and Christian understanding, may we remember that there are always two religions in every religion, may we make room for love, for mercy, for the subversive and for the feminine. May we listen to what our grandmothers have intuitively known, even while the theologians may have said otherwise, and may St. Mary pray for us always. Amen.
