On Thanksgiving morning this year, before my family woke up, I lay in bed checking my email and I happened to read this article in NCR by Michael Sean Winters about giving thanks for the upcoming reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Given that my research focuses on a group of nuns who had locations in and just outside Paris in the seventeenth century, I tend to spend a lot of time in Paris for my research and have visited Notre Dame every time I was there. My most recent visit was the exception—I had a chance this past summer to take students on a trip to Paris and, while we did a boat tour on the Seine which took us by Notre Dame (and we could see the work going on), it was not possible to visit the Cathedral itself.
However, something that Winters mentioned in his piece about Mary (who is, of course, Notre Dame—Our Lady) really struck me. He wrote, “I do not think the sanctity has been washed away with the grime. Earlier this month, the statue of Our Lady of the Pillar was carried back into the cathedral with vast crowds singing hymns to the Blessed Mother. … The return of the statue reminds us that this is a story with its origins in the life of a Jewish woman who lived 2,000 years ago. She had no education (and no original sin either), she never wrote a treatise, never invented a widget. Yet, through the centuries, the Blessed Mother has inspired some of the greatest works of art and architecture, none more beloved than the cathedral in her honor along the Seine River in the French capital.”
Specifically, the comment about her having no education and never writing a treatise reminded me about a book that I reviewed many years ago—interestingly enough that I was reading in a small studio apartment in the 13th arrondissement of Paris in 2018, the last time I visited Notre Dame. The book, Mothers of Faith: Motherhood in the Christian Tradition by Wilfred M. Sumani, SJ is a work of narrative theology in the African tradition that examines examples of mothers from both the Bible and Christian history. Sumani tells the stories of these various examples of mothers and then draws theological lessons from them by bringing together biblical texts, Christian theology, African traditions, and his conversations with mothers about their own experiences.
What Sumani’s book drew my attention to was the number of times that the Gospels mention—especially in relation to parts of Jesus’ childhood—was how Mary pondered things in her heart. His chapter thus identifies Mary as the “Mother of Meditation.” This is especially prevalent in Luke’s Gospel from the beginning with the Annunciation. Mary is described in this scene as being “greatly troubled” at the greeting of the Angel Gabriel, but she also “pondered what sort of greeting this might be” (Luke 1:29). This practice of Mary’s thinking over and trying to understand her experiences then continues through major episodes in Jesus’ childhood. First, after giving birth and being visited by the shepherds, the text explains that “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Then again, when Jesus is left in the Temple at age twelve, this part of the narrative ends, saying, “He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man” (Luke 2:51–52). While some of this might be a rhetorical device to explain how the Gospel writer knows these things about Jesus’ childhood, Sumani’s interpretation really stuck with me. He writes, “Mary has to put together all these pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of the mystery of salvation. She treasures ‘all these things’ and ponders them in her heart” (Sumani, 143). Thus, Mary is not just remembering what happened in this pondering, she is connecting the dots between the message of Gabriel at the Annunciation, the visit of the shepherds and their story at her child’s birth, and what Jesus says at age twelve and comes to understand who her child is. As Sumani continues, “It is Mary’s task to decipher these seemingly contradictory signs in order to create out of this corpus a coherent text” (Sumani, 145).
It struck me as I was reading that as a woman in theology, I can see the Virgin Mary as an inspiration. She was constantly reflecting on what she observed about Jesus and while we do not have her writings about Jesus, we do know that she thought about the meaning of everything that he was doing. That is, she was—in her own way—doing theology. In addition, she really didn’t just do theology, she then acted based on her beliefs. In John’s Gospel, Mary is the instigation for Jesus’ first miracle at the wedding at Cana. She has spent his whole life pondering these things in her heart and come to an unnamed (in the sense that she does not say it) conclusion about who he is. Instead, she goes to Jesus to report that the wine has run out and despite Jesus’ denial that it is not time for him, she tells the servers to follow his instructions (John 2:3–5). She put her faith in the conclusions that she had made of a lifetime of doing theology by pondering these things in her heart.
In his piece, Winters notes—as I referenced above—that Mary had no education and never wrote a treatise, but also that the biblical text places the Magnificat into her mouth. He writes, “The Blessed Mother encourages us Christians to humble obedience. She also points to the radicalness of God’s promises: The hungry he has filled with good things; the rich he has sent away empty (Luke 1)!” Even before her experiences with Jesus, she had concluded who God is and what his message is to the world:
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
my spirit rejoices in God my savior.
For he has looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness;
behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed.
The Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is from age to age
to those who fear him.
He has shown might with his arm,
dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart.
He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones
but lifted up the lowly.
The hungry he has filled with good things;
the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped Israel his servant,
remembering his mercy,
according to his promise to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever. (Luke 1:46–55)
I think that as we continue with this Advent season, let us ponder Mary’s message and think about what it would mean to follow her model—to be someone who ponders these things in our own hearts and then acts upon our faith, to prepare the world for God’s arrival by being God’s presence in the world and both caring for and making a better world for those in need. Like the renewal that comes with the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral, let us renew our hearts and do theology like Mary did.
And I hope that it won’t be too long before I can see Notre Dame Cathedral again.
Image of Notre Dame Cathedral from my trip with the students in summer 2024.
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