Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

(Just a quick little warning…today’s reflection is a longer read than usual...there’s so much I wanted to share with you today!)

You may know (or if you didn't, you could probably guess) that I've a great love for Our Lady, Saint Mary. Now, before I go too much further, let me just say that I totally understand that some Episcopal folks are wary (to say the least) of devotion to Our Lady and other saints, and there are some good historical reasons for that wariness. For one, a lot of popular Christian devotion in the middle ages saw Jesus predominantly as Judge, leading many folks to seek other mediators (Our Lady and the saints) with the One Mediator, Jesus Christ. This distorted our relationship with God, definitely, and also with the saints--they were no longer family, friends, siblings, but additional personal advocates or lawyers through whom we sought to gain leverage and influence on what we thought to be a complex heavenly bureaucracy (modeled after earthly royal courts) bent on juridical pronouncements of salvation or damnation.

I hope that in the years since the reformation that we've come a bit of a way towards recovering a healthier relationship with the communion of saints (of which we're all members even now!), and that we'll continue to make progress in this regard! In the meantime, I'll affirm a few things: 1) the saints intercede for us in the same way that our family and friends intercede for us--they pray for us because they love us and desire good for us. They don't have special powers of mediation of their own, but share in the One Mediation of Jesus Christ in the same way we do (though perhaps more perfectly)--which is to say, we all offer to God, through Jesus Christ, all that we are, all that we have, and all that we love; 2) We need to guard against worshiping the saints. Worship is different from honor and veneration, all of which are different from prayer which (as a means of communication or way of response) is more of a "how" than a "what." Only God is worthy of worship--we adore God because of who and what God is in Godself, and this adoration ought to inform the whole course and pattern of our lives. The saints are worthy of honor and veneration, and the honor we give them is not to do with who they are/were in the themselves but with how who they were was transparent to God, with what God did in and through them, with who God was in them; 3) Finally, your salvation does not at all depend on whether or not you invoke the prayers of the saints. Your salvation is in Jesus Christ who loves you very dearly, so dearly that he died to take away your death and rose again to give you his life!

Why mention all of this? Two reasons: 1) Our reading from the First Epistle of John today speaks of mortal sins. That reminded me of Anglican theologian Martin Thornton writing in his book English Spirituality that, since at least as far back as William of St Thierry (11th C), the Anglican spiritual tradition regarding sin has been much more pastoral than juridical. Our understanding of the Sacrament of Confession, for instance, is not so much that it’s a means by which we’re cleared by a stern judge and more that it’s a way by which a relationship with a loved one is submitted to Love and repaired by Love. Moreover, we’ve tended to think, in Anglicanism, of sin not as mortal or venial (which refers to sin’s severity and therefore invites speculation as to what is an appropriate punishment, a juridical impulse) but as arising from infirmity or malice (which invites us to consider what in us is most in need of healing, a pastoral impulse). Reading John helped me remember Thornton’s writings on the juridical/pastoral distinction and how an emphasis on the one or the other dramatically affects how we experience various aspects of our faith: including our understanding of our relationship with God and even with the saints.

Which made me think of reason 2: May is the Month of Mary!! Traditionally, May was a month in which folks consciously performed daily acts of love and kindness in honor of Our Lady, probably for no other reason than that you can't spell Mary without May. Well...okay there's likely a lot more to it than that: the glories of the spring put people in mind of the graces that God gave Our Lady, and there were likely traditions going way way way back by which Mary as both Queen of Heaven and Mother of the Resurrected Lord Jesus was eventually understood to be the original May Queen, a figure representing Easter joy and the loveliness of spring. There's a lot we could unpack here. But suffice to say, May is a wonderful excuse to remember our Mother, Saint Mary, to share with her the surpassing joy of the Resurrection, and to consider what it might mean to live lives so closely patterned after Christ's that every month is May!

I've included here, below, a handful of verses from one of my favorite Marian hymns, from 1870, written by The Rev'd Alfred Gurney, of Saint Barnabas, Pimlico, London (I know it best, by the way, as sung to the jaunty tune of The Lincolnshire Poacher). Granted, it's sentimental as all get out, but what I find particularly compelling about the hymn is the way that Mary's identity is completely caught up in the joys of Christ and, in fact, points the way to the worship of Jesus. There’s something about the hymn that, to me, is both full homely and radiantly divine (to borrow some terminology from English saint, Dame Julian of Norwich). In many ways, it's a sterling example of the pastoral Catholic tradition still very much alive in Anglicanism! Happy May!

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+

from The Happy Birds Te Deum Sing, by The Rev'd Alfred Gurney
The happy birds Te Deum sing,
'Tis Mary's month of May;
Her smile turns winter into spring,
And darkness into day;
And there's a fragrance in the air,
The bells their music make,
And O the world is bright and fair,
And all for Mary's sake.

To love the Mother, people say,
Is to defraud the Son.
For them, alas, there dawns no May,
Until their hearts are won:
Then, when their hearts begin to burn,
Ah, then, to Jesus true,
And loving whom He loves, they learn
To love Saint Mary too.

How many are the thoughts that throng
On faithful souls to-day!
All year we sing our Lady's song,
'Tis still the song of May:
Magnificat! O may we feel
That rapture more and more;
And chiefly, Lord, what time we kneel
Thine altar-throne before.

'Tis then, when at Thy feet we pray,
We share our Lady's mirth;
Her joy we know who hail to-day
Thy Eucharistic birth;
That trembling joy to Mary sent,
Ah, Christians know it well,
With whom in His dear sacrament
Their Saviour deigns to dwell.

Yes, Mary's month has come again,
The merry month of May;
And sufferers forget their pain,
And sorrows flee away,
And joys return, the hearts whose moan
Was desolate erewhile
Are blithe and gay - once more they own
The charm of Mary's smile.

Thy Son our Brother is, and we,
Whatever may betide,
A Mother, Mary, have in thee,
A guardian and a guide;
Thy smiles a tale of gladness tell
No words can ever say;
If but, like thee, we love Him well,
The year will all be May!