Mary--Queen of Heaven, Refuge from the Rain

The Oratory in Oxford. The man in the photo is
counting the steps to the altar. He is getting
married soon.

I ducked into to the Oratory Church of St Aloysius Gonzaga in Oxford for two reasons. First, it was pouring rain. When I left the library, the sky was blue, but this is England, not San Diego. Weather changes quickly.

Second, J.R.R Tolkien, author of Lord of the Rings faithfully attended this church and had a well-known devotion to the Virgin Mary. He once wrote to a friend that his, "own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity " were found in "Our Lady."  I hadn't known the location of the church, but in the rain, it was the place with an open door. 

The building is a soaring French Gothic structure. Inside, a couple was marking off the length of the center aisle. A priest appeared and they began discussing an upcoming wedding ceremony. Another priest entered from a side door with a rainbow-colored feather duster and began to dust the statue of St. Philip Neri, founder of the Congregation of the Oratory, the priests that serve this church. A family entered, sheltering as I was, and asked me questions about the church. I knew nothing. I needed to get out of the entryway. 

I headed up the right aisle and found the Lady Chapel. Somehow, even on a rainy afternoon, a celestial light was streaming down on the statue of the Queen of Heaven and the Holy Child. There was a small stool in the alcove. I sat down and just gazed at the beauty and serenity. I had once served a church with marvelous stained-glass windows. I retreated there when stressed or perplexed to let the virgin blue, prophetic reds, and royal purples just surround me with light and beauty. Today, I could hear the rain, and I knew I was taking refuge on so many levels.

    

To study women in Christianity, is to circle round the figure of Mary of Nazareth. There is no other female figure considered more holy or held up as model of virtue and faith. She is often idealized as the perfected vision of womanhood and motherhood. I see her as a model of discipleship. She submitted to the Spirit and God guided her life according to a larger plan of redemption and renewal.

The Gospel of Luke, introduces Mary as a thoughtful, prophetic witness to God’s care for the lowly and oppressed. Luke locates her in an extended priestly family awaiting the coming of the messiah. One of my summer school professors, Fr. Nicolas King, S.J. calls the Gospel of Luke, “the gospel of the Holy Spirit” because it is abundantly clear from the very beginning that the Spirit of God is in charge of the story* Fr. King, a humble, witty Jesuit, told us to look for the Spirit’s fingerprints by looking for language that points to something or someone “being filled”—an act of saturating something that is empty, parched or open  or "fulfilled"—a word that points to something promised that has now been delivered. I loved hunting the gospel these fingerprints of the Spirit.

Fr. Nicholas King, S.J.
Photo from Kevin Mayhew Ltd.

From the first sentence, the gospel writer claims to be writing a “narrative of the things that have been fulfilled among us.” (1:1). The “things” Luke will describes as being fulfilled are the hopes and visions of Israel as foretold in the Old Testament. Even the names of the observant Jews from the priestly family introduced in chapter one push this aim.  Zechariah means “the Lord has remembered”; Elisabeth means, “My God has sworn an oath,” Mary--a Greek form of Miriam, means “beloved” or “wished for child.”  John means “God has been gracious.”  The names point to the specific holy role each must enact. They are actively expecting God to intervene in their troubled word filled with political intrigue and religious oppression and fulfill the promise for a new king and a renewed kingdom.

The Spirit actively is filling those who are a part of God’s action. Gabriel, the angel who visits Zechariah to announce John the Baptism’s birth says, “there will be joy and exultation…and he shall be filled with the Holy Spirit right from his mother’s womb.” (1:15). Gabriel appears a second time to Mary and says, “The power of the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore that which is conceived is holy and will be called Son of God” (1:35). Later in the chapter, Elisabeth hears Mary’s greeting and “Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit” (1:41) and she recognizes that Mary is carrying a special child. Soon Zechariah gets his voice back when he affirms his son will be called John and Zechariah is “filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied” (1:64). Every one in the family from young to old is filled with God’s Spirit and a part of God’s plan.

Mary, we are told “kept these events in her heart” (2:51). Other translations use the words “ponder” or “treasured.”  The story continues throughout the gospel. Jesus full of the Holy Spirit (that descended on him like a dove) returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the desert (4:1). He returns to Galilee in the power of the Spirit (4:14) where he reads the scroll in his hometown synagogue that declares, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, therefore he has anointed me to give good news to the destitute. He has sent me to proclaim freedom to prisoners and recovery-of-sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (4:18-19).

Like mother, like son. Being aware of the Spirit-at-work to bring God’s promises to fulfillment, is the characteristic that sets Mary apart as a model of discipleship. Her steadfastness to say “yes” to the uncontrollable actions of the Spirit, even when that led to puzzlement, social rejection, and great personal suffering is why she remains known to Orthodox Christians, the “theotokos,” the God-bearer, to Catholics as “mediator,” one who intercedes for those who suffer or are in great need, and to Protestants as an exemplar of discipleship that walks in the way of the Spirit.

After a few minutes, I stood and surveyed the front of the sanctuary. Two rows of ornamental statues stood behind the altar. A list identifying them was posted on a nearby column. It named the figures on the reredos (so that is what they are called)!  Many of my favorite women in Christian history were there: St. Frideswide, St. Hilda, St. Helen, St. Winifred, St. Edith, St. Bertha, St. Gertrude, St. Julia, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Cecilia, St. Monica, St. Teresa.

I serve and worship in a post-reformation, holiness church, where no ancient saints are depicted. I know the word saint means one who seeks to live a holy life. These statues honor ordinary people who lived their faith with courage and humility. Others noticed and were helped. As an ordained women, I have some differences with the Catholic church, but honoring women and men-- mentors in the faith who have followed Jesus-- is not one of them.

When the rain slowed, I walked back to the entrance of the church. I turned and surveyed the sanctuary. Jesus was right in the center surrounded by statues reminding all who enter the church that many of his followers point the way to active faith energized by the Spirit. As I neared the exit, there was one more statue, I paused to see who it was: Joseph. Everybody in the family, present and accounted for.

* Quotations from: The New Testament: Freshly translated with a cutting-edge commentary. Nicholas King, S.J. (Kevin Mayhew Ltd: London, 2004, 2012).      

Search under the floors and on all the walls

Statues, busts, markers and gilded portraits adorn the streets and halls of Oxford. They pay tribute to political and literary luminaries, saints, clerics and heretics. The lives they remember are truly remarkable, and they are nearly all male lives. Perhaps that once seemed normal but not now. It seems as if some of the human race, especially those women who lived equally well or stood courageously are missing from the story that is being told. I am on a sabbatical pilgrimage preparing for a class in Women in Christianity, and I am on the look out! 

On my first night eating dinner in the Hall at Christ Church, I was enthralled by being served at long tables knowing that Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll (author of Alice in Wonderland), William Penn (founder of Pennsylvania), John Locke (influential educational theorist), and beloved John Wesley (a founder of Methodism), all sat at these long tables underneath the soaring vaulted ceiling. Their pictures all hang on the walls. Perhaps they, too, heard the three loud raps by the gavel declaring: Dinner is Served!

Once a chair is found at the long table a grace in Latin in offered:  Translated: In the neediness of our human condition, which invites your compassion, almighty God and heavenly Father, we give you reverent thanks for the food which, in your kindness, you have lavished on us for the sustenance of our bodies; and we also beg that we may use it without greed or excess and with enjoyment. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

As the first course was served, I asked our tutor: “Are there women's portraits in The Hall?” She pointed to the front. Next to a portrait of Henry the VIII—king when Christ Church was founded in 1525-- was his daughter Elizabeth I with her curly red hair.

By the time our dessert had come around, talk had turned to Frideswide, the patron saint of Oxford. Before the founding of the Oxford colleges, Henry the VIII’s first queen, Catherine of Aragon (recall Henry VIII declared himself Supreme Head of the Church of England when the pope would not agree to annul their marriage), had come on pilgrimage to the very site where, Christ Church would be built. The queen stopped to visit the shrine of Saint Frideswide asking that the saint bless her pregnancy and grant her a male heir. Her prayers were not answered.

A couple of days later, I went to morning prayer in the Lady Chapel. Afterwards I asked a canon of the cathedral who had presided to show me the location of the wall of Frideswides' double monastery. I had read that part of the old abbey wall was incorporated into the cathedral. He pointed below my feet. Frideswide’s bones  and the original wall lay somewhere beneath where I was standing. He pointed to a rectangular structure in the north corner and said, “That is Frideswide’s shrine.”

        

Frideswide was the daughter of a local ruler named Didan and his wife Safrida, whose land bordered the River Thames. One version of her story (there are several) is she was born around the year 650 and died either in 727 or 735. Desiring to devote her life to prayer Frideswide took a vow of celibacy. This greatly disturbed another local ruler, Algar, who wanted to marry her. When Frideswide refused, he tried to kidnap her, and she fled to Binsey, a town up river. Algar pursued her and tried to lay his hands on her. Frideswide prayed and a clap of thunder and a lightening strike stopped Algar and blinded him. Frideswide was instructed in prayer to tap the ground with her staff and water appeared. Algar’s eyes were washed, his sight returned, and humbled he went on his way never to bother Frideswide again! The place where water flowed, is marked by an ancient holy well in the parish church yard in Binsey. (On a later day I found the well, more about that in another blog.) The dramatic miracle and Frideswide’s consistency in her vow of prayer and celibacy, convinced her father to support her founding a priory with twelve other women devoted to prayer.

The nunnery was destroyed by Vikings in 1002. In 1122 a chartered Augustinian monastery claimed the same spot which was a well-visited pilgrimage site until 1525 when the Bishop Wolsey began planning for what would become Christ Church, a college that was to be an educational testament to the glory of God and the mind. During the Reformation, a rather zealous canon mixed the bones of Frideswide with those of a former nun, Catherine Dammartin,who had married the Zwinglian Regius Professor of Divinity, Canon Peter Martyr Vermigli. In later centuries the women's remains were sorted and today Christ Church, Cathedral of the Church of England in Oxfordshire, keeps the shrine open as place of prayer.

Around the corner from Tom Quad and the Cathedral is Christ Church’s picture gallery. It has wonderful Tuscan-school depictions of the holy family and a couple of large renderings of the five Sibyls—the ancient Greek female oracles who prophesied at holy sites. The small museum didn’t take long to view, and as I turned a corner into a hallway, I came face-to-face with a newly completed portrait of a woman who looked like she walked out of the classroom. To see a modern woman’s face among the Madonnas and Greek ideals of womanhood stopped me in my tracks. Who was she? Why was her portrait here among the greats of the art world? 

A photo from  the Christ Church website
of the unveiling of the portrait. 

Judith Pallot, Emeritus Professor of the Human Geography of Russian, became the first woman lecturer at Christ Church in 1979. Women were admitted as students in 1980. Her portrait shows a warm smile and a Russian tea cup and a well-disguised tablet computer on her desk. The descriptive marker beside the portrait says in the coming months, this portrait will be moved to the Great Hall. I asked one of the Canons where the portrait will be placed. He didn’t know but said, “One of our old deans will come down. Several hundred years is enough of a tribute for him.” At last, the Hall will have a modern woman on its walls and a holy saint in its foundations. 

My first few days in Oxford retaught me what I know but easily forget. Look for the the contribution of women in the history of every place and time. Dig a little. Ask questions. She is always there.