Mary: The soul of Advent
By James Hindes

Mary personifies for us the attitude and mood of Advent. Because of the qualities of her soul a place could be prepared for Christ on earth. For her the expectation of Advent, Christmas, was a physical event. For us it is an event in the soul and spirit. Yet it will not occur automatically. We must strive for the mood of Advent.

From Mary’s encounter with the archangel Gabriel we an learn much about preparing for Christmas. The stages Mary’s soul went through upon hearing the Annunciation are described in chapter one of Luke’s Gospel. She did not simply say “yes, Lord.” Upon hearing the words “Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you,” she was at first startled; in the words of the Luke: “troubled greatly.” She allowed herself to be deeply touched by the supersensible experience. Without an openness to new experience no one can ever grow. Mary was troubled, moved in her soul. Being addressed by an angel was not an everyday occurrence and yet she was able to experience it. This openness allowed the spirit to speak to her mightily – powerfully. At first she was not strong enough; a certain natural confusion, even fear stirred within her. A soul that admits no confusion, no fear, is a soul dead to life, to the subtle currents of spirit that constantly stir the surface of human lives Mary can be moved by events.

But after the surprise and disorientation, a second, more reflective part of her soul comes into play. She “…considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be.” After the feeling comes reflection; her intellect begins to work and permits her to master the initial alarm caused by her encounter, and to consider rationally the nature of the spiritual experience. The clarity she achieves enables her to perceive the further words of the angel. Her clarity enabled the angel to continue speaking and reveal the birth of Jesus, “the Son of the most High.”

In the next stage, Mary reveals a side of her soul that does not belong to the traditional picture of a quiet, modest, humble maiden who is so filled with faith that she unthinkingly embraces the will of God as her own. In this third stage we see the greatness of Mary from a different perspective. Like modern human beings who no longer wish to be treated like children, either by other human beings or by God, Mary wants to know more. She needs to reconcile her human consciousness with the thinking and intentions of the spiritual world. An angel has told her something which does not make sense. Her faith in herself is great enough for her to expect to understand the answer given by an angel. Furthermore, she has the courage to ask: “How can this be, since I have no husband?”

Mary does not believe in limits to knowledge. She has faith in the spiritual world. She has faith in herself. She believes that human questions will be answered. Ultimately, without knowing it, she believes that the spirit in man, the spirit that strives to consciously to understand and grasp truth is of the same nature as God’s spirit, and can therefore understand the ways of God, not all at once, perhaps, but slowly, one step at a time. Gabriel acknowledges and affirms Mary’s bold striving for knowledge. He says to her “The Holy Spirit will come upon you…” her soul striving for knowledge and greater consciousness will be filled with the Holy Spirit.

This is the counter-pole to Eve in the Garden of Eden whose striving for knowledge was met by a caricature of the Holy Spirit, Lucifer, the light bringer, who appeared in the form of a serpent to deceive Eve. The irony of that tragic story lies in the fact that Eve would already have had to have tasted the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil before she could be expected to see through Lucifer’s temptation and know that it was evil. Mary, with the same desire to know as Eve, could benefit from the millennia of human development which had taken place between the Garden and Nazareth. Thanks to Eve’s achievement, ( knowledge and therefore the ability to discern) Mary, was able to recover from her shock, quietly reflect and discern what kind of a spiritual being had addressed her. With the power of discernment gained from Eve’s experience, Mary knew she could trust the being speaking to her.

Her questioning heart is given the answer culminating in the sentence, “For with God nothing will be impossible,” which can also be translated, “No word of God is without power.” A “word of God” is like a spiritual impulse which always has power to reach its goal. A “word of God” can also be carried in the heart, where it has the power to transform, to make things happen. Faith is the ability to hold in one’s heart what one has come to think, as Mary held the word of God in her heart. Later in the Gospel Elizabeth says concerning Mary “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” The soul of Mary was filled with the truth that an impulse originating in the spirit will surely find its fulfillment.

Only now after three preliminary steps can Mary’s soul take the final step into devoted resignation to the will of God. She says “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your word.” This surrender to the will of God does not result from the desire to have another power run her life. It is neither blind faith nor blind resignation. She unites herself with the will of God out of knowledge. She is at peace.

The peaceful atmosphere which should hold sway during the weeks of Advent is not simply given to us. We must struggle for it. Any peace which does not reckon with the tensions in the soul and in the world is an illusion. What we think of as the Advent mood of Mary’s soul is not an attitude one can simply assume, like a pose of devotion. It must be achieved. We must be prepared to be startled, troubled, thoughtful and reflective, to believe in knowledge and then to devote ourselves to the will of God. Cultivating those four steps we can prepare for Christmas, transforming the soul into a dwelling place for the Coming One.