No. 46 (New Series) Summer, 2003
The Encyclical: “The Eucharist in the Church”
Because of her “interior dispositions,” she can be called the “Woman of the Eucharist.” Mary’s words at Cana, “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn. 2:5), are especially applicable to Christ’s command at the Last Supper, “Do this in memory of me.” “Mary seems to say to us: ‘Do not waver; trust in the words of my Son. If he was able to change water into wine, he can also turn bread and wine into his body and blood, and through this mystery bestow on believers the living memorial of his passover, thus becoming the bread of life.’”(54). There is “a profound analogy between the Fiat which Mary said to the Angel and the Amen which every believer says when receiving the body of the Lord” (55). At the Visitation, Mary became the first “tabernacle” in history with Christ “radiating his light through the eyes and voice of Mary.” Mary’s contemplating the face of her newborn Christ is an unparalleled model of love which should inspire us every time we receive Eucharistic communion.” Experiencing the memorial of Christ’s death in the Eucharist means continually receiving the gift and accepting – like John – the one who is given to us anew as our Mother. As the Church and Eucharist are inseparably related, so are Mary and the Eucharist. Finally, the Magnificat, Mary’s song of praise and thanksgiving of God’s fulfillment of his promises, and of the coming of God’s kingdom into history, can be read in a Eucharistic key. “The Magnificat expresses Mary’s spirituality, and there is nothing greater than this spirituality for helping us to experience the mystery of the Eucharist.” J. Neville Ward – Methodist, Promoter of the Rosary.
His obituary read: "He stood squarely in the catholic tradition of John and Charles Wesley." His spirituality is ecumenical – drawn from many religious traditions and tempered by his great acquaintance with contemporary literature. Fluent in French, he was deeply influenced by French Catholic spiritual literature, especially the L’Abandon à la Providence Divine by Jean-Pierre de Caussade. He freely cites from the novels and poetry of contemporary English and French literature. References to Balzac, Beaudelaire, Camus, de Lubac, Mauriac, Guardini, von Hügel, Simon Weil and many others are part of his writing. "His book on the rosary – Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy – begins with a quotation from St. Francis de Sales, and his work on prayer, The Use of Praying, by one from Albert Camus." Faithful to the Methodist tradition, he presents a warm and inviting image of Christ, to which Mary is directly related. "Love of the mother of Jesus is a natural outcome of the vision of his glory and also a means of keeping that vision clear, just as giving expresses love and also intensifies it." Mary is the unique representation of Christ’s message: "In the image of his mother there is a power of vital communication that is unique among created things. It has been part of the Christian joy to discover that much of what Christ signifies seems to have been given to her to carry and represent which otherwise would have eluded the grasp of faith." He was deeply influenced by de Caussade’s teaching on Divine Providence where "each passing moment [is] the veil of God and so also, when scrutinized and interpreted by faith, the unveiling of God." In this perspective, "Christian life is a matter of accepting the present disposition of things as from the hands of a loving Father and actively cooperating with him in doing his will as this is variously signified." He saw Mary’s response at the Annunciation as the perfect illustration of "accepting the present moment and doing his will" as that is variously signified. "‘Be it done unto me according to thy word’. . . . The words are the theme of a vocation with its sense of being haunted by some huge possibility, as being marked for some unknown glory of responsibility or pain which may make the word quite different from what it is. And the words involve her in keeping them in her heart and holding on to her vision, and still holding on at the foot of the cross." For the person of faith, "Every experience is a kind of annunciation, an announcement that God wishes us to receive something, do something, or endure something, and that if we are willing to say ‘yes,’ our receiving, doing, enduring will be the occasion of the eternal’s revelation of himself in time again." He described the Communion of Saints as the "bond between believers of mutual communion and of community, where living and departed look to each other for companionship." But, he continued, many of us need some finite summary and symbol that will assist our grasp of this infinite mutuality: "The Blessed Virgin Mary is the loved image of the vast world of mutual giving and receiving into which we have entered though faith in Christ; she is a living part of it who in being loved and honored gives access to the whole and to all that grace which God has chosen to mediate through the fellowship of the spirit." His first references to the rosary are in The Use of Praying (1967), in a chapter entitled "Helps." Here, he referred to an article from a Catholic newsletter which spoke of "the boredom which many Romans find in their traditional pieties such as the Rosary, and ended by making recommendations which look horrifyingly familiar to a Methodist, such as more extempore prayer, week-day preaching services, some kind of class-meeting – the very things that have died on us." He continues that, as a result of "our disunity, we have been (in a sense) forbidden to nourish our own spiritual life on any other fare than is produced by our own cooperative society," and he suggests "a sharing of each other’s knowledge." "In this much to be desired exchange of valuables, Methodists might consider taking the Rosary into their system. Not many know that John Wesley himself used the rosary, and the one he used is at present among the archives of The Leys School, Cambridge." The rosary is a symbol of "religious hoping and wanting" and is a "stimulus for praying in new ways." The mysteries of the rosary speak of human existence; they are "forms of experience" – illustrated in the life of Jesus and his mother. They are "images of reality." "Nothing can happen to us that is not contained there; all that is there can happen to us now. To pray the Rosary is to try yet again to keep in touch with life in its fullness, to insure that we do not evade or miss anything." His meditations on the mysteries of the Rosary amply illustrate that the biblical scenes, which the rosary presents, are "forms of experience." The first mystery – the Annunciation – is addressed to Mary, but also to us: "The normal way in which Christian faith becomes real is first the announcement of the gospel, that you are greatly favored, that the Lord is with you and means to make the present substance of your life the bearer of his love and truth, and then your decision to see how it goes when life is lived in terms of that annunciation." His meditation on the Visitation -- "Relations" – are thoughts on relations within a family. "Family life is always liable to founder on the hidden rocks and reefs of the unconscious life of its members. Christian acceptance of this involves the abandonment of all the extravagant expectations set up by the assumption that Christian family life ought to be a realm of frictionless loving." For those who wonder how to combine vocal prayer and meditation, he gives sound advice. It is not possible to "meditate discursively" while saying the Rosary. "It is enough to have a single thought in connection with each mystery, or simply to look at it in love and faith. But the saying of the Rosary is infinitely deepened in value if at other times we think about these great themes, penetrating as far as we can into their meaning." He suggested that there should be "new kind of lectionary for private devotion" which would include "a vast field of literature that helps to build up a Christian imagination." Music and art were also "helps" to prayer. "The Holy Spirit articulates far more successfully through Bach and Beethoven than through the boredom of the books of Chronicles." He thought that Marian devotion has found "its most satisfying expression not in formal prayer but in art, in the building of the great cathedrals and innumerable churches, in much painting and sculpture, and in such an outpouring of heavenly music that must often have stopped evil in its headlong course." Truly a "spiritual seeker," he probed literature, art, poetry for insight into prayer. In his chapter on "Helps" [to prayer], after commenting on many spiritual classics and methods of prayer, he concluded "It is a relief to remember that no books are required for the simplest form of prayer, which is contemplation."
1This article is indebted to a recent publication of the Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary: John A. Newton: "The Revd J. Neville Ward of Bath: ‘A Methodist Mariologist." (January 2003). 2Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy: A Consideration of the Rosary (Cowley, 1985) 108 3Friday Afternoon (Epworth Press, 1977), 57 4"Abandon," The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, 81-82. 5Five for Sorrow, 36 6Five for Sorrow, 2. 7Friday Afternoon, 61. 8The Use of Praying, (Epworth, 1977) 116 9The Use of Praying, 117. 10Five for Sorrow, intro. x. 11Five for Sorrow, 6. 12Five for Sorrow, intro., xii. 13The Use of Praying, 113. 14The Following Plough (Cowley 1978), 109. 15The Use of Praying, 123. Protestant Views on the Apostolic Letter on the Rosary "It is a letter of a spiritual and theological depth that I wasn't expecting – a letter that breathes an evangelical dimension, which has very much surprised me. In this letter, the Pope emphasizes that the rosary, more than a prayer of words, is a contemplation of the mystery. Certainly today's sensibility and quest is primarily to rediscover a place where the heart rests, where the soul contemplates the mysteries of God and also the ways in which this is possible. We, in our traditions, must rediscover the equivalent ways." --Stephan Tobler, Reformed Evangelical theologian, University of Tübingen (Germany) "The rosary is also a school of prayer for lifelong beginners like me, and increasingly it is being rediscovered as a way of prayer for Christians. Within the Anglican communion it has flourished for some time. Evelyn Underhill loved the rosary and so did Austin Farrer. John Macquarrie commends it in his book Mary for All Christians. With his apostolic letter last October, Pope John II set a small fire under this process of ecumenical rediscovery by offering an intensely Christocentric and contemplative interpretation of the Rosary . . . . "Pray as you can," John Chapman used to say, "not as you can’t." We can rest on the rosary as a climber rests on his fixed rope – it’s safe to dangle as long as the rope is anchored in the rock." --Carol Zaleski, "Foolish Prayer," Christian Century, Feb. 22, 2003. "One of the more remarkable acts of Pope John Paul II in the 25th year of his papacy has been to add Jesus’ life on earth to the praying of the rosary . . . . While this new directive may sail right over the heads to most Protestant Christians, it will change the way that millions of people pray for peace every day. . . .It suggests that Jesus’ life is as salvific as his death, and that the years he spent giving birth to love on earth are as full of light for us as the hours he spent dying on the cross. . .When asked why the pope had decided to make such a change now, a spokesman said, ‘He is making a statement at the end of his life about what’s important to him.’ Would that be life, perhaps? Not the divine life that awaits us later but the divine life that is open to us right now, as we walk ever more deeply into the resplendent mystery of God’s own light." --Barbara Brown Taylor, "Luminous Mysteries," Christian Century, Jan. 11, 2003. The Rosary: Prayer for Community and for the Journey Each year, the French Dominicans organize an annual rosary pilgrimage to Lourdes. The following are excerpts from an address given in 1989, by Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, O.P., the Master of the Order, on the prayer which "builds community and also propels us on our journey." It may seem a little strange that a prayer as simple as the rosary should be particularly associated with Dominicans. Dominicans are not often thought of as very simple people. We have a reputation for writing long and complex books on theology. Perhaps it is because at the center of our theological tradition is a longing for simplicity. St. Thomas Aquinas said that we cannot understand God because God is utterly simple. He is simple beyond all our conceptions. We study, we wrestle with theological problems, we strain our minds, but the end is to draw near to the mystery of one who is totally simple. There is a false simplicity of those who have too easy answers to everything, who know it all in advance. They are either too lazy or are incapable of thought. And there is the true simple, the simplicity of heart, the simplicity of the clear eye. And that we can only arrive at slowly, with God’s grace, as we draw near to God’s blinding simplicity. The rosary is indeed simple, very simple. But it has the deep and wise simplicity for which we hunger, and in which we will find peace. The Angel as Preacher The Hail Mary begins with the words of the angel Gabriel, "Rejoice Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you." Angels are professional preachers. It is their whole being to proclaim the good news. The words of Gabriel are the perfect sermon. It is even short! He proclaims the essence of all preaching: "The Lord is with you." In fact in the time of St. Dominic the Ave Maria only consisted of these words of the angel and those of Elizabeth. It was only later, after the Council of Trent, that our own words to Mary were added. So often we think of prayer as the effort that we make to talk to God. Prayer can look like the struggle to reach up to a distant God. Are we even heard? But this simple prayer reminds us that this is not so. We do not break the silence. When we speak we are responding to a word spoken to us. We are taken into a conversation that has already begun without us. And this creates a space in which we can speak in turn. Perhaps we can say even more. Meister Eckhart once said that, "We do not pray; we are prayed." Our words are the reverberation, the prolongation of the Word spoken to us. The Hail Mary is like a tiny model sermon. It proclaims the good news. But like all good sermons, it does more than that. It does not simply give us information. It offers a Word from God, a word that echoes in our words, a word that overcomes our silence and gives us a voice. For the Home and for the Journey The rosary is a prayer for the home, and a prayer for the road. It is a prayer which builds community and, also, which propels us on our journey. There is a tension here, which I shall explain. Think of the great pictures of the Annunciation. They usually offer us a domestic scene. The angel comes to Mary’s home. This is where the story begins, at home. The Word of God makes his home with us. And in a way, the rosary is often the prayer of the home and community. Traditionally it was said by the family and by religious communities each day. From the mid-fifteenth century we see the foundation of rosary Confraternities who met to pray together. So the rosary is deeply associated with community, a prayer that we share with others. But the angel’s greeting does not leave Mary at home. The angel comes to disturb her domestic life. She is propelled on a journey, which will take her to Elizabeth’s home, to Bethlehem, to Egypt, to Jerusalem. It is a journey that will lead to her heart being pierced, and to the foot of the cross. It is a journey that will eventually carry her to heaven and glory. So the rosary is also the prayer of those who journey, of pilgrims. I have come to love the rosary precisely as a prayer for my travels. It is a prayer for airports and airplanes. It is a prayer that I often say as I come into land at a new place, and I wonder what I shall find, and what I can offer. It is a prayer to taking off again, giving thanks for all that I have received from the brothers and sisters. It is a prayer of pilgrimage around the world. The structure of that journey marks the rosary in two ways. It is there in the words of each Hail Mary. And it is there in the structure of the mysteries of the rosary. Each Ave Maria suggests the individual journey that each of us must make, from birth to death. It is marked by the biological rhythm of each human life. It mentions the only three moments of our lives which we can know with absolute certainty: that we are born, that we live now and that we shall die. It starts with the beginning of every human life, a conception in the womb. It situates us now, as we ask now for Mary’s prayers, it looks forward to death, our death. Repetition When one prays the rosary, one rarely thinks about anything. We do not in fact think about the nature of preaching or the human story and its relationship with the story of salvation. Our minds are largely blank. Finally, it is true that when we say the rosary we often may not think about God. We may go for hours without any thoughts at all. We are just there, saying our prayers. But this may be good. When we say the rosary, we are celebrating that the Lord is indeed with us and we are in his presence. We repeat the words of the angel: "The Lord be with you." It is a prayer of God’s presence. And if we are with someone then we do not need to think about them. So, in the rosary we do not try to have thoughts about God. Instead we rejoice in the words of the angel addressed to each of us, "The Lord be with you." We endlessly repeat these same words, with the endless vital exuberance of the children of God, who take pleasure in the good news. |
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