O THOU most high, who are the deepest mystery,
may we open our hearts to thy wisdom, that was before heaven and earth existed, thy wisdom
which is the eternal virgin mother of light.
--from the Liturgy on Festivals of Our Lady
Present at the creation, Holy Spirit compatriot, mother of light, her
womb the womb of the cosmos, the womb of the Word, in the mystery of the Godhead, she, his
mother, our mother, was there. She was and always will be.
Before the heavens and worlds existed, she was there. And out of her
the Christ came forth foreshadowing the day in earth time when she as earth mother and
virgin would give birth to Eternity in a baby, a baby destined to live and to die.
But her son would live again in resurrection. Through her and through
her son, all beings were graced with the vision of life as resurrection, the meaning of
Easter, the meaning of life. Mary, mother of light; Mary mother of Christ; Mary mother of
us; Mary, mother of resurrection.
As if buried in the midst of Mary’s body, dead to
appearances, his first resurrection was from the womb of the Holy Lady. It was she that,
as a vehicle of Sprit, delivered him from the chamber of her being, bringing him to birth
and to the threshold of earth’s theater.
Every birth of a Master must be in some sense a resurrection after a
crucifixion, from a Good Friday to an Easter. Submitting himself to nature’s climate
in another earthly incarnation was surely to him a kind of death, a reflection of the
emanation from God which ushered in the Day of Manifestation. Entering humanity, his cross
prefigured in her womb, his descent into matter was nothing less than crucifixion as he
passed from the etheric realms into the coarseness of the earth’s vibratory matrix.
As he took upon himself new bodies each more dense than the other, his Eternal Spirit
further covered itself in elements of earth until his baby identity cuddled in the closure
of Mary’s womb. Mary loosed him from his self-imposed restraint, his birth a
resurrection into a new world--the world of earth. He now was one of us.
In our catholic tradition Our Lady has ever been present in the
processes of birth, life, death, and resurrection. In the preternatural realm she was
present with the Father "before heaven and earth existed" in the feminine aspect
of the Divine One. Prefigured in the hidden life of God, Our Lady has always been
associated with the third Person of the Holy Trinity, God’s Wisdom.
From her mystical womb, manifestation came forth; the life of God
proliferated in new modalities of life and light, the life and light which occupies every
human consciousness though covered over with earth-stuff. However obscured, our faith
affirms the presence within and among us of that light of Christ. And always has Our Lady
been present in the mix of matter and spirit which make our world.
With Jesus Our Lady lived the life. She was the shadow of his presence.
She shared his path, went his way, felt his pain, suffered his torment. At the foot of the
cross, she shared his death, and with the Apostle John, presented him in Resurrection to
the Father, the first great Offertory.
No graven enclosure, no cross or death, could enfold or imprison the
one who had become the Christ. Encompassed in a cloud of prayer and love--Mary’s
prayer and love--the cross became a bow which launched his spirit into the heavens as an
arrow across the horizon of its path. Christ is risen. He is born again, born into the
house of his Father.
From the womb of Mary to the womb of rock, he was born anew into yet
another realm, the realm of Spirit from which he had come; his return to the heavenly
precincts was a resurrection of body, a body of spirit, newness, and ever-recurring life,
eternal and immortal in the heavens. What had appeared to be a Way of the Cross was a Way
of Life, a Way to Resurrection, a new birth into a consciousness of Being. He had
traversed the plane of earthly experience, the hills and valleys of earth life. He had
crossed the barriers and obstacles strewn along the passageways of time. Through the
conduit of consciousness, he had experienced resurrection. He had entered the One.
The Resurrection of Christ showed forth the deathlessness of death in
the most dramatic way possible. He demonstrated once and for all the primacy of Spirit.
It is a lesson of resurrection that the meaning of life is not to be
found in a never- ending cycle of earth lives; neither is that meaning to be found within
an endless maze of obstacles and enclosures without exit. The resurrection is an assurance
that the Christ life within each of us will find its exit from the wheel of rebirth. The
resurrection assures us that Christ is the Lord of karma, the Lord of death, and the Lord
of life! For us too, there will be a day of resurrection!
In the prayer of the Liturgy we renew our Act of Faith: "that
all his sons shall one day reach his feet, however far they stray."
Christ is within us, entombed in our own consciousness. At times we
think him dead. But there are times when we feel him stir. There are times when we feel
within us the quickening that promises rebirth and resurrection. There are times when we
know he will come forth.
The old man is dying; the new man is coming to birth. Already within
the sensitivity of our souls, we too feel the presence of Our Lady, our Mother, again a
mother of life, again a Mother of Resurrection. Her energies, now as World Mother, bend to
touch the Christ within each of us. The Christ rises again in us. He lives in us. This is
the meaning of resurrection.
It is in the resurrection that all men, all women, and all creatures
find their end, their purpose and their destiny. We are assured by Holy Scripture, by
Tradition, and by intuitive insight--by all of Revelation, that our end is no end at all,
but rather a beginning. With the Apostle Paul we proclaim the Indwelling Christ as our
hope of glory, as we travail in birth again that Christ be formed in us! Involution,
Evolution, and Rebirth, these Divine processes, these channels of the life of Christ
support us and lead us to resurrection and peace. Mary has given us the Christ of the
resurrection. And Christ is within us! We follow him to that same resurrection and peace
and dare to say with Paul: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet
not I, but Christ liveth in me..." (Galatians 2:20) ,
...there is a peace that passeth understanding; it abides in the
hearts of those who live in the eternal; there is a power which maketh all things new; it
lives and moves in those who know the self as one. May that peace brood over you, that
power uplift you, till you stand where the One Initiator is invoked, till you see his star
shine forth.
(The Benediction, Holy Eucharist--Shorter Form) Amen.
