Ave Maria

This started out to be a rather long-winded post, but then I got hit upside the head by the reality of having a four year old and a newborn and realized that I don't have time for long-winded posts! So, the abridged version: I was recently reading a magazine article that asked me to pick a person who inspired me. I picked Mary the mother of Jesus. Being Catholic, maybe that's not surprising, but it goes deeper than that. Since becoming a mother, I've thought more and more about her, what her life must have been like. She is, to me, the best example of trusting God despite no matter what happens. We see her embracing whatever God sends her way throughout the gospels, from the nativity to the cross to the resurrection. We see her give birth to Jesus and then watch him die and then see him rise again. How did she do it? How did she handle it? Upon becoming pregnant with Jesus, her life was in danger. She could have been stoned for adultery! And yet, not only did she accept being the mother of Jesus humbly - "Behold the handmaid of the Lord" (Lk. 1:38) - she actually went on to praise God, completely faithful that He would fulfill what He promised. "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour." (Lk. 1:46,47) When presenting Jesus in the Temple, Mary is told that "A sword will pierce your own soul too." (Lk. 1:35) Mary never runs from difficulty or pain. This is almost impossible for me to comprehend. Across all faiths, it seems that the path to enlightenment is by embracing whatever God sends you at the moment, taking the good with the bad, but realizing that the transience of both does not change the nature of God. I can understand that mentally, but putting it into practice is another thing. The fact that she stands at the foot of the cross, helplessly, watching her son die. Did she have any idea at that moment about the resurrection? Then Jesus, ignoring his own pain, instructs his disciple John to adopt Mary as his mother (Jn. 19:26, 27). Mary always holds fast, she always stays the course. I would like to have that kind of strength, that kind of faith, and I would like my children to have it as well. I would like us to be brave enough to fulfill our purposes in life, whatever they may be, with the knowledge that doing so might sometimes cause us pain, and to be okay with that. The alternative is a life half-lived.

Note: The icon above shows the Blessed Mother holding a prayer that reads, in Greek, "Our Jesus Christ hear the prayer of your mother." It is located in the Church of the Dormition of Theotokos in Kondopoga, Russia.

Completion

There's this blog that is part of the daily "friends" list that I read, and all it is is this dude's love of G.K. Chesterton and endless quotes from the same. I hate that blog, but, you know, you don't want to hurt the writer's feelings, etc., etc.. And, also, there's the hypocrisy thing. Has this not started out as a blog of my love of Edith Hamilton and endless quotes from the same? Well, the tea party's over, lady. Today is the last Hamilton post in awhile. Future posts will draw on more diverse sources of information.

I believe Ms. Hamilton summarizes "The Greek Way" quite nicely on pages 255-258. Since we have not evolved much since the time these words were written (1930), her words are as appropriate today as they were then. Any notes in parentheses are my own attempts at providing context.

The opposition between the spirit and the mind which we are chiefly conscious of is that between the individual and the community... For nineteen hundred years (again, this was written in 1930) ...we have been in school to the foremost individualist of all time who declared that the very hairs of each man's head were numbered (Christ) .... It is not men's greed, nor their ambition, nor yet their machines, it is not even the removal of their ancient landmarks, that is filling the present world with turmoil and dissension, but our new vision of the individual's claim against the majority's claim.

Things were simple in days of old when the single man had no right at all if a common good conflicted, his life taken for any purpose that served the public welfare, his blood sprinkled over the field to make the harvest (coughoilcough) plentiful. Then a new idea, the most disturbing ever conceived, dawned, that ever human being had rights... The individual had made his appearance and nothing was to be plain and simple again; no clear distinction could be drawn any more between what was just and unjust...

Along with this realization of each unit in the mass has come an over-realization of ourselves. We are burdened with over-realization. Not that we can perceive too clearly the rights and wrongs of every human being, but that we feel too deeply our own, to find in the end that what has meaning only for each one alone has no real meaning at all...

Greek scientists... saw a whole made up of related parts, and with the sweep of their vision the old world of hodge-podge...fell away and a world of order took its place... Greek artists... saw that what is permanent important in a man and unites him to the rest...

(Modern) science has made generalization of greater truths than the Greeks could reach through a greater knowledge of individual facts. If we can follow that method and through our own intense realization of ourselves reach a unity with all men, seeing as deeply as the great tragic poets of old saw, that what is of any importance in us is what we share with all, then there will be a new distribution in the scale and balance held so evenly in those great days of Greece that may be ours as well...

The bitterest conflicts that have divided the minds of men and set family against family, and brother against brother, have not been waged for emperor or king, but for one side of the truth at the suppression of the other side... In our present...adjustment (the beginning of World War II) which not only seems to us, but is, more difficult than any before because we are aware of so much more, it is worth our while to consider the adjustments achieved in the past. Of them all, the Greek was the most complete.