Community in Mission

This past week we celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Fatima. (And, given my mention of Fatima, you may wonder why I have Our Lady of Guadalupe pictured here, but more on that in a moment). But as for Fatima, with all the emphasis on the magnificent teaching and prophetic fulfillment of that apparition, something that has always intrigued me is that she would appear of all places in a town called Fatima. Why Fatima, a town that recalls the daughter of Mohammed?

Indeed, I have often heard that Muslims hold our Blessed Mother Mary in high regard. This reverence may stop short of our devotion but there is said to be a respect for her in the Muslim tradition.

Now, I first learned this from the great Archbishop, Fulton Sheen in his book, The World’s First Love. I read it 25 years ago and have pondered it ever since. I would like to present excerpts from the chapter entitled “Mary and the Moslems” [sic], reflect on its significance and ask a few questions. Please note that the book was written in 1952 and therefore some of the spellings are not the modern ones. Here are the excerpts:

The Koran, which is the Bible of the Moslems, has many passages concerning the Blessed Virgin. First of all, the Koran believes in her Immaculate Conception, and also, in her Virgin Birth…..The Koran also has verses on the Annunciation, Visitation, and Nativity. Angels are pictured as accompanying the Blessed Mother and saying, Oh Mary, God has chosen you and purified you, and elected you above all the women of the earth. In the 19th chapter of the Koran there are 41 verses on Jesus and Mary. There is such a strong defense of the virginity of Mary here that the Koran in the fourth book, attributes the condemnation of the Jews to their monstrous calumny against the Virgin Mary.

Mary, then, is for the Moslems the true Sayyida, or Lady. The only possible serious rival to her in their creed would be Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed himself. But after the death of Fatima, Mohammed wrote: Thou shalt be the most blessed of women in Paradise, after Mary. In a variant of the text Fatima is made to say; I surpass all the women, except Mary.

This brings us to our second point; namely, why the Blessed Mother, in this 20th Century should have revealed herself in the significant little village of Fatima, so that to all future generations she would be known as “Our Lady of Fatima.” Since nothing ever happens out of Heaven except with a finesse of all details, I believe that the Blessed Virgin chose to be known as “Our Lady of Fatima” as pledge and a sign of hope to the Moslem people, and as an assurance that they, who show her so much respect, will one day accept her divine Son too.

Evidence to support these views is found in the historical fact that the Moslems occupied Portugal for centuries. At the time when they were finally driven out, the last Moslem chief had a beautiful daughter by the name of Fatima. A Catholic boy fell in love with her, and for him she not only stayed behind when the Moslems left, but even embraced the Faith. The young husband was so much in love with her that he changed the name of the town where he lived to Fatima. Thus the very place where our Lady appeared in 1917 bears a historical connection to Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed.

Missionaries, in the future will, more and more, see that their apostolate among the Moslems will be successful in the measure that they preach Our Lady of Fatima. Mary is the advent of Christ, bringing Christ to the people before Christ himself is born. In any apologetic endeavor, it is always best to start with that which the people already accept. Because the Moslems have devotion to Mary, our missionaries should be satisfied merely to expand and develop that devotion, with the full realization that our Blessed Lady will carry the Moslems the rest of the way to her divine Son. She is forever a “traitor,” in the sense that she will not accept any devotion for herself, bit will always bring anyone who is devoted to her to her divine Son.

A beautiful reflection by Archbishop Sheen and one we can surely hope will come to pass. Relations are much more tense however between Christians and Muslims today than in 1952.

This leads to my first question.

Do Muslims today still manifest the reverence to Mary that Sheen described in 1952? I have seen a few people in Muslim garb at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception here in D.C., but I was not sure if they came to pay homage to Mary or just tour. I think we Catholics ought to be careful before we presume too much of what Muslims today think of Mary. The lines in the Quran quoted by Sheen are impressive but that does not mean that Muslims either know them well or interpret them as we would wish? Hence, I am merely posing a question here. If any of you know of good sources that answer the question of the Muslim stance on Mary I would be grateful if you can point it out. The answer to this question has a lot of bearing on my speculations to follow.

Astonishing Fact – I have already noted that it nothing less than astonishing that Mary should appear in a town called “Fatima.” Surely this is no mere coincidence and, as Sheen aptly points out, heaven does nothing without purpose. That we are not to merely pass over this detail, is very clear to me. “Our Lady of Fatima,” has a different ring when we think that Fatima is more that a place, Fatima is the Daughter of Muhammad, and the greatest woman in Islam. “Our Lady of Fatima” sounds and feels so different when it is heard in this context of person not place. It is hugely significant.

Third Secret of Fatima? For many years, before its revelation, I was sure that the Third Secret of Fatima had something to do with the Muslim question. Frankly I figured it likely described a great conflict with the Muslim world that would arise and lead to great suffering for the Church, even a kind of Babylonian captivity, but that ultimately Mary’s Immaculate Heart would triumph by the power of God. Imagine my chagrin when the third secret was finally revealed with a less than worldwide, apocalyptic content. Granted, the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II was a serious and significant matter but it was less than the worldwide conflict I had expected. It is also true that his would-be assassin was Muslim, but the plot was likely more communist and Russian in origin. In the end my theory was rocked back on its heels and fell flat.

But still we are left with Fatima. Why Fatima? Why a town bearing the namesake of Muhammad’s daughter? It seems clear that Mary will play an important role in the years ahead as the Muslim/Christian conflict likely grows sharper. Perhaps, as Sheen notes, she will be the bridge that connects two vastly different cultures, the common mother who keeps her children talking. Right now this connection seems little pursued, even, as far as I can tell, by the Vatican. But here too allow a question from me. Are there any of you who know if Our Lady of Fatima has any role in Vatican-Muslim dialogue?

The Guadalupe connection – I wonder too if the history of Our Lady of Guadalupe presents some historical parallels to our current struggle with the Muslim world. In the early 16th Century in Mexico, missionaries had made only meager progress in bringing the Aztec people to Christ. It was a combination of the sometimes rude and cruel treatment of the indigenous people by the Spanish soldiers, and also of the fearful superstition surrounding the Aztec gods. These gods required horrific human sacrifices and kept the people locked in with this fear that, unless they fed these gods, their greatest god, the sun, would no longer shine.

Into this fearful and suspicious setting entered Mother Mary. The miraculous image she left in 1531 was richly symbolic: Her face is a mother’s face, gentle and compassionate, unlike the frightful Aztec gods who wore fierce masks. Her features seem to be both an Aztec and European, two cultures are combined in kindness and peace. Her attitude is one of humble prayer, so she is clearly not a god. She is a merciful mother who consoles and prays for us. She is to be honored but not adored. The black band around her waist means that she is with child and offers Jesus to the people. Her message is about him. The sun was the greatest of the Aztec gods and, by standing in front of the sun, Mary shows that she is greater than all their gods. The moon represented to them the god of darkness and death. That she is standing on the moon is a sign that these powers too have been defeated by the son she bears.

Mary brought the breakthrough. Within ten years over 12 million Mexicans came to Christ and entered the Catholic Church.

This history is paralleled in many ways today in the current tensions with the Muslim World. In many Muslim lands today conversions are few. Part of the reason for this is a strong aversion for the western culture from which Catholicism comes. Another reason includes many alleged grievances that Muslims have of American and Western “mistreatment.” Finally, a large factor is fear. Leaving the Muslim faith is likely to get you killed in many parts of the Muslim world. So, it is a combination of a wide cultural gulf, alleged grievances, and fear, that keep conversions low. All not unlike 16th Century Mexico.

Is Mary key? It took Mary to bridge all these similar gaps between the Aztecs and the Christian Missionaries. Might Mary also be that bridge today when similar gaps divide? Time will tell, but one of her greatest Modern titles is Our Lady of Fatima. And then, there is the crescent moon upon which Mary stands in the image of Guadalupe. In modern times the crescent moon is the symbol of Islam. Mother Mary of Guadalupe, by God’s grace, was victorious and overcame the false religion of the Aztecs with love and humility.

Might this crescent moon on which Our Lady of Guadalupe stands also point to our times, and the crescent moon of Islam? Might it indicate that her victories, by God’s grace, are not at an end. Perhaps we can hope that what our Lady of Guadalupe was to the Aztec people of Mexico, Our Lady of Fatima will be to the Muslim people of the world.

As always, I invite your comments and answers to my questions.

I also want to invite any of you who would like to accompany me and some other folks from my Parish and Washington DC as we go to Gaudalupe in in October 8-15. For more info contact my parishioner,  Deborah Vanzego at [email protected] or 202-408-4641. We’d love to have you come and still have space available.

Here is “Immaculate Mary” sung in Arabic

One of the darker passages in the Scriptures comes just after the Fall of Adam and Eve. God is announcing the consequences they have ushered in, and, having spoken to Adam of the arduous quality of work and the hostility of the natural world, God turns to Eve and says,

I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in sorrow you shall bring forth children; yet your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you. (Gen 3:16)

The Hebrew word מָשַׁל (mashal) means variously, “to have dominion, reign, or have ruling power over another.” The New Jerusalem Bible Says, “He will dominate you.”

While the text is not absolutely clear, the “rule” spoke of here does not seem to be a mere benign rule of headship by the husband, but rather, a headship marked by tension, domination and easily open to abuse.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says of this passage:

The harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now destroyed: the control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination.(# 400).

Every man experiences evil around him and within himself. This experience makes itself felt in the relationships between man and woman. Their union has always been threatened by discord, a spirit of domination, infidelity, jealousy, and conflicts that can escalate into hatred and separation. This disorder can manifest itself more or less acutely, and can be more or less overcome according to the circumstances of cultures, eras, and individuals, but it does seem to have a universal character.

According to faith the disorder we notice so painfully does not stem from the nature of man and woman, nor from the nature of their relations, but from sin. As a break with God, the first sin had for its first consequence the rupture of the original communion between man and woman. Their relations were distorted by mutual recriminations; their mutual attraction, the Creator’s own gift, changed into a relationship of domination and lust…Nevertheless, the order of creation persists, though seriously disturbed. To heal the wounds of sin, man and woman need the help of the grace that God in his infinite mercy never refuses them. (#s 1606-1608)

In calling this a “dark passage” I merely call to attention the concern and critique by some that God seems to speak of this domination by way of approval, that Eve is somehow deserving of this, and that abuse and exploitation by men is to be her lot, by God’s will.

I do not agree with this concern since, as is the case with many of the dark passages of Scripture, we must be careful to distinguish that not everything the Bible reports or describes, means it is reported with approval. Eve’s experience is the result of Original Sin and the poisonous climate it has introduced. And, while God reports the effect, and even connects himself to it by way of primary causality, it is this sin and its poisonous climate that God spends the rest of scripture addressing and healing.

Thus the thought that this passage gives even tacit approval to the abuse of women cannot stand. Yet, some in the past may have invoked it as such, and some today, mainly feminists, critique it for such a possible misinterpretation.

That said, I have seen this passage strangely and sadly fulfilled in a small number of women who struggle with on-going issues of physical and emotional abuse by husbands and “boyfriends.” The vast majority of women are able to break free from physical abuse, unless and until the abusive man gets help to assuredly end his sinful behavior.

But there are a certain number of women I have met and counseled who habitually return to men who abuse them. In this, there is a kind of literal fulfillment of the text that her desire will be for her man, but he will (abusively) dominate her. There are, of course, many factors, such as low self esteem, poor family modeling, financial pressures and so forth.

Yet, one of the stranger and darker reasons I have gleaned from the women who return to abusers is caught up in the phrase, “your desire shall be to your husband.” There is something of a fine line between anger and passion, between a man who is virile and a “go-getter” and one who, on a dime, turns to anger and abuse. Powerful men are attractive to some women. Yet many (not all) powerful men are also aggressive and possessed of a temper. Their strength and their struggle are closely related. Many women intuitively know this, even if they have not consciously worked it all out. What they like in their man is closely related to what they hate and suffer from.

So, I am not so sure that every woman who returns to an abuser is simply lacking in self esteem or financially trapped etc. Some return knowing exactly what they are doing, despite counsel to the contrary. Their reasons are caught up in the complicated intersections of desire described above.

Please note dear reader that I am not reporting this with approval, I am simply observing it and trying to understand it. I, like most of you, would counsel a woman who is being physically abused to stay away unless and until the problem can be resolved. But some do not, and I cannot merely write them off as foolish for it.

But let us be clear, what ever the choice of the woman ultimately is, we cannot forget that the one who abuses is guilty of a great sin and in no way can the scriptures be seen to grant any approval whatsoever.

All of this makes me mindful of a very popular but dark song from the 1970s when I was in High School. It was by Jackson Brown and was called “You Love the Thunder.” My understanding of the words, in effect, have the man who is singing  say to the woman, “You really like my anger (thunder) and my abuse (rain) and they’re really worth it, given what else you get with me.”

I remember being quite alarmed by the words and also troubled that no one else seem bothered. (Frankly, most of my High School peers never paid much attention to the words of songs, they just like the melodies. But I have always been very sensitive to the words). I also understand that the words can be interpreted differently by others. But I remain alarmed by the words seem at best arrogant, and at worse celebrating of anger and abuse.

Consider the darkness of these words:

You love the thunder and you love the rain
What you see revealed within the anger is worth the pain
And before the lightning fades and you surrender
You’ve got a second to look at the dark side of the man ….
You love the thunder, you love the rain
You know your hunger, like you know your name
I know you wonder how you ever came
To be a woman in love with a man in search of the flame
Draw the shades and light the fire
For the night, it holds you and it calls your name
And just like your lover knows your desire
And the crazy longing that time will never tame…

These words are, to me, an “affirmation” of Genesis 3:16, but a Genesis 3:16 that is frozen there, having made no progress out of the climate of sin that caused it. Yet Jesus came to heal that and restore God’s original plan for marriage where a man clings to his wife in love and out of his delight says “She is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” Loving the thunder and lightning (i.e. what they represent) is not the way forward, it is backward.

So, no,  God does not approve or affirm the abuse of women, or of men for that matter. God points to it, only to set about healing it.

How say you?

One of the graces of deeper prayer, if we persevere through the years, is that the Lord to turn us upward and outward. And, gradually our prayer turns more toward God and is less anxious about our own aches and pains. For now, it is enough to give them to God and trust his providence. Gradually, we simply prefer to experience the Lord quietly, in increasingly wordless contemplation. God draws us to a kind of silence in prayer as we advance along its ways. But that silence is more than an absence of sound, but instead results from us being turned more toward God. An old monastic tale from, I know not where, says:

Sometimes there would be a rush of noisy visitors and the silence of the monastery would be shattered. This would upset the disciples; but not the Abbot, who seemed just as content with the noise as with the silence. To his protesting disciples he said one day, “Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self.”

Yes, as prayer deepens and becomes more contemplative the human person is turned more to God and a kind of holy silence becomes private prayer’s more common pattern. This does not mean nothing is happening, the soul has communion with God, but it is deeper than words or images. It is heart speaking to heart (cor ad cor loquitur). This is a deep communion with God that results from our being turned outward again to God. And the gift of silence comes from resting in God, from being less focused on ourselves, more and more on God: Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and with (holy) fear and trembling stand, ponder nothing earthly minded….. Yes, there is a time for intercessory prayer, but not now. Don’t just do something, stand there. Don’t rush to express, rest to experience. Be still, know that He is God. An old spiritual says, Hush….Somebody’s callin’ my name. Yes, pray for and desire holy silence, praying beyond words and images. Here are the beginnings of contemplative prayer.

St. Paul speaks of the unspeakable quality of deep prayer as well, though his experience likely goes beyond what we call contemplative prayer:

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell. (2 Cor 12:2-4)

Yes, it is “un-sayable,” words fail. St. Augustine was said to remark of the Christian mysteries: If you don’t ask me I know. If you ask me, I don’t know.

Another gift that is given to those who are experiencing deeper prayer is a sense of spaciousness and openness. As the soul is less turned inward and increasingly turned outward, it makes sense that one would experience a kind of spaciousness. Those who have attained to deeper prayer often speak of this. Scripture does as well. Consider some of the following passages:

1. For the Lord has brought me out to a wide-open place. He rescued me because he was pleased with me. (Ps 18:19)
2. I called on the LORD in distress: the LORD answered me, and set me in a large place. (Ps 118:5)
3. The Lord brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me. (2 Sam 22:20)
4. You have not handed me over to the enemy but have set my feet in a spacious place. (Psalm 31:8)
5. Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness: you have enlarged me when I was in distress; have mercy on me, and hear my prayer (Ps 4:1)
6. And I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts. (Psalm 119:45)
7. And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth (a Hebrew word which means latitude or width), saying, “For now the LORD has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.” (Gen 26:22)

See how consistently this spaciousness is mentioned. As we are turned outward and upward to God we soon enough experience the spaciousness, and latitude of knowing God. No longer pressed and confined by the experience of being turned inward (curvatus in se), the soul has room to breathe. Many people who begin to experience contemplative prayer, though not able to reduce the experience to words, express an experience of the the spaciousness of God. But this spaciousness is more than a physical sense of space. It is a sense of openness, of lightness, of freedom from burden and from being pressed down, it is an experience of relief. But again, all who experience it agree, words cannot really express it well.

Yes,  here too is a gift of deepening prayer to be sought: spaciousness, and that openness that comes from being turned outward and upward by God. An old Spiritual says, My God is so high, you can’t get over him, He’s so low, you can’t get under him, he so wide, you can’t get round him. You must come IN, by and through the Lamb.

Two gifts of the deeper prayer we call contemplative prayer, prayer which moves beyond words and images, beyond the self to God Himself.