It’s just an idea I have, that if I say something about Mary on this special day when we celebrate her birth, it should be something she teaches me that I find meaningful. Therefore, I’d like to dedicate the post today to an idea that I find has far-reaching implications, and that I see Mary as exemplifying—participation.
Participation is the real way that we gain knowledge of truth, which is knowledge of the world as it is experienced first hand and unmediated. We all participate to one degree or another in the world of each other’s lives. We share in what is important to one another, and often we do it well enough to let down our guard and step into the other's shoes. Participation, in its most real sense, means seeing through the eyes of another. It is the experience of spiritual union.
When we consider Mary, we see her act of participation as being such that it allows the Christ to come into the world through her. The one with whom she chooses to participate fully is the Holy Spirit. We see in Mary’s participation a surrender of the stance of selfhood in order to yield perfectly to the power of God. Thus participation, in a way that augments the experience of self, paradoxically must relinquish the claim to self in order to be realized. To participate in the being of another one must be willing to take upon himself or herself the deepest and most primary aspects of the other.
Mary teaches the kind of active surrender in which one gives oneself completely though without passivity. It is the act of maintaining one’s purpose and identity in the world while joining it to a secondary or greater purpose; that is, joining to a purpose or identity outside oneself, be it human or divine. Participation in this sense is a realization of true intersubjectivity through which acting subjects reciprocally share the deepest aspects of selfhood.
Mary shows us the way of participation; it is the way of prayer in which the depth of one’s being says to God, “Be it done according to your will; I offer you my all, my everything.” Mary, in giving herself, in her surrender, discovers her role as the predestined mother, the new Eve, a role in which she participates through her womanhood in the coming of life.
Have played this over and over. Surely my heart will burst if I watch and listen even one more time. But I will. Merci, Diacre Dan.
Posted by: Gabrielle | September 08, 2006 at 10:34 AM