Sacred Feminine Conclusions

One of my New Year's resolutions is to produce a manuscript on the topics covered in this blog, using these writings as a springboard for a book. I have overloaded myself with the theology of the sacred feminine written by others. Now it is time for deep contemplation and a focus on personal experience. The time draws near for me to enter fully into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil, and so will end this first phase of the journey. But it is far from over, I am sure.

What can I conclude for you at this point? Jesus revealed that we should call God our Abba, Father. And we should call Mary our Mother. The Word of God and the Church's Tradition also reveal a divine nature that is feminine, one in perfect union with the masculine nature of God with which Christians are most familiar. The Word (Logos) and Wisdom (Sophia in Greek) are one. Jesus is both Word and Wisdom. At the heart of the Trinity is Holy Wisdom, the feminine nature of God, held in the bosom of the Father.

 La Paloma by Holly Sierra

The Holy Spirit, in the "Cosmic Dance", is the Person who proceeds from the Father as eternal Bride and from the Son as eternal Mother in the mystical sense, though all members of the Trinity are the perfect union of masculine and feminine. And since Mary is the focus of our image of spiritual Motherhood, it is she who leads us to her Son, our Savior, and to the Divine Sophia. The Blessed Mother works in a unique union with the Holy Spirit of Wisdom to intercede for us, to be our Advocate and Mediatrix of All Grace; indeed, as Co-redemptrix. In my devotions, I call the Holy Spirit by the Hebrew names, Ruah Ha Kodesh and Ruah Elohim, and sometimes use the Greek appellation for Wisdom, Sophia, keeping in my heart the knowledge of the feminine nature united with the masculine in our Creator.

What is needed then, from my perspective, is a deep, sapiential Marian devotion. A Sophian Marian devotion takes us profoundly into the mystery that links the divine with all of creation. It is the ability to see God in all of nature and in the human soul. It is to value equally God's male and female images in humanity, and to fully embrace stewardship of our Earth. It does not deny the goodness of the body, but rather honors the body as the temple of the Holy Spirit, exemplified and supremely manifested in the Virgin Mary. Under the protection of her mantle, we too may become holy--sacred vessels of the divine.

 Madre Natura by Holly Sierra

Thank you, dear readers, for following me on this journey to the heart of the sacred feminine. I may be back from time to time to update you on new developments and the progress of my book. In the meantime, go to Mass, pray the Rosary daily, and contemplate the meaning of what has been here revealed. To Jesus, Word and Wisdom, through our Holy Mary, Mother of God!!

Deification of the Virgin

I found the following excerpt from a blog which illuminates the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Mary:

"It was a class in Anatomy and Physiology, and the lesson on microchimerism, that concretely illustrated for me those two dogmas. Learning that every child leaves within his mother a microscopic bit of himself—and that it remains within her forever—the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was instantly illuminated.

Mary, then, was indeed a tabernacle for the divinity—not for a limited time, but for all of her life. Thus the Immaculate Conception made and makes perfect sense: God, who is all-good is also completely pure; the vessel in which he resides, then, must also be pure, or it would not be able to sustain all of that light.

And this relates directly to the Assumption of Mary as well. In the psalms we read 'you will not suffer your beloved to undergo corruption.' Christ’s divine body did not undergo corruption, but ascended into heaven; it follows that his mother’s body, which contained a cellular component of that divinity—and a particle of God is God, entire—would not be permitted to undergo corruption, as well.

It could not be otherwise. The God particle, commingled with humanity, necessarily preserves humanity, and calls it to himself. This is incarnational. It is eucharistic, from the beginning. It is our life, conceived in light" (http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/05/lovemaking-with-the-lights-on).

Next is an excerpt given in explanation of the difference between being divine by nature and deification by participation:

To sum up simply, Mary is a goddess by participating in divinity, through grace, to a higher extent than most humans can or will. However, all saints (that is, all who arrive in heaven) do and so Mary with all the saints could rightly be called gods and goddesses. But this in no way compromises monotheism of the one triune God, whose divinity is through itself (found in comments on the blog, Mary and Mariology: Divinizing Mary?).

These both struck me as interesting because the Catholic Church has often been accused of divinizing Mary and elevating her to the level of a goddess. In the case of the first excerpt, the only disagreement I might have is the argument that a particle of God is God entire. But a particle of God is certainly divine, and modern science sheds light on and validates Catholic teaching regarding Mary. As I have discussed before, Charlene Spretnak posed the question in Missing Mary as to whether the Blessed Mother would have been ontologically changed into a quasi-divine (or semi-divine) being by virtue of carrying Jesus in her womb, and the author implied that she would have.

The second excerpt reflects the theology of early Church Fathers who said that "God became man so that man might become gods." This means that people are not divine by nature but have the potential to be deified through participation in the divine nature. Rather than referring to Mary as semi-divine, I believe she should be understood as a divinized human being, with her deification being utterly unique by virtue of her Immaculate Conception and her physical motherhood of God the Son. I agree with Spretnak that modern science gives evidence that the traditional, cosmological, biblicalplus veneration of Mary and her full spiritual presence needs to be returned to the Church. Mary is officially honored with the unique status of hyperdulia by the Church, and so she cannot be relegated to being merely another in the communion of saints or just a model of discipleship.

The Church does not call the saints gods and goddesses, so I would discourage that practice. But I do think there is too much stigma attached to the word goddess. The name "God" typically implies a male deity. In polytheistic religions, there were multiple gods and goddesses with varying ranks of power. In Catholicism, there is one God in three persons, and this God is neither male nor female, but pure spirit. "Goddess" simply means a female deity. If the masculine version can be used to describe the one, true Creator, then why is there such repulsion in the idea of the Almighty being called Goddess? The argument is that "goddess" implies a polytheistic, pagan religion, but the same could be argued that pagans also used the word "god".  In fact, there was a monotheistic religion pre-dating the Judeo-Christian tradition which believed in an entirely feminine trinity (the maiden, mother, and crone). One interpretation of history is that the patriarchal conquerors of the people who worshipped the Great Mother created an all-male version of this trinity. The idea of God in three persons is correct, but both variations are incomplete.

This is why devotion to Mary is so important, as well as the revival of the ancient Wisdom tradition of the Old Testament that was also practiced by the early Church, in which God was understood to have a feminine dimension. We need religion that honors the sacred feminine and the bridal-maternal aspects of divinity. We need to see the hidden Sophia, who is part and parcel of Christ, and who is manifested in His human Mother.

The Mother in the Trinity

“I, the fiery life of divine essence, am aflame beyond the beauty of the meadows.  I gleam in the waters, and I burn in the sun, moon and stars . . . . I awaken everything to life.”  --the voice of God revealed in the visions of St. Hildegard von Bingen and recorded in her book, Liber Divinorum

Just to explicate a little further on the Motherhood of God in the Trinity, I will use a human analogy.  The feminine principle, which I will call the "Bride", is contained within the Father.  Human marriage symbolizes this divine union, a God who has both a masculine and a feminine nature.  The Son is generated from this union.  The Holy Spirit comes into personhood as the maternal Love proceeding from the Father and Son, as a woman (bride) becomes fully mother only once her child is born.  The Father, then, is also inherently "Mother".  Ruah Ha Kodesh, the Holy Spirit, can be mystically understood as the womb of God.  St. Hildegard of Bingen, recently made Doctor of the Church, saw the universe as an egg contained in the womb of God:

Hildegard, called the Sibyl of the Rhine, saw a vision from God of divine, feminine beings who were named Sapientia, Ecclesia, and Caritas.  These Latin words, respectively, mean Wisdom, Church, and Love.  While orthodox in her Catholicism, God appeared to Hildegard as Mother.  Her trinity of the divine feminine is almost exactly akin to my vision of Sophia at the heart of the Trinity, with the correspondences of Holy Wisdom, Holy Mother Church, and Shekinah (divine presence/glory cloud).  Surely Love is the divine Presence.  Ecclesia revealed herself to Hildegard as "the true, hidden Church".  Again the theme of the hidden quality of the feminine nature of God comes to the fore.  The following poem seems to indicate the feminine trinity within the Trinity.  Note the third wing which "hovers everywhere", a clear reference to the action of Ruah Elohim, the Spirit of God. 

O power of wisdom!
You encompassed the cosmos,
Encircling and embracing all in one living orbit
With your three wings:
One soars on high,
One distills the earth’s essence,
And the third hovers everywhere.
Hildegard von Bingen, O virtus sapientia

In September of 1999, Pope John Paul II told a crowd of pilgrims at St. Peter's Square that God has both a male and female nature and can be referred to as "God the Mother".  A similar declaration had been made by his predecessor, Pope John Paul I, shortly before his death, who said, "God is both mother and father and is more mother than father."  There is a long stream of Catholic tradition which acknowledges the motherly nature of God and the association of Lady Wisdom with the Holy Spirit, understood in feminine terms both by some early Fathers of the Church and in Judaism, before the birth of Christianity.  Yet it seems that this tradition has been intentionally suppressed, and language about God remains terribly lopsided toward the patriarchal.  Let us walk with the sainted abbess Hildegard awhile and see what else our Holy Doctor might reveal... 

God as Unity

God is beyond human comprehension in a certain sense, but we can have a personal relationship with the Almighty. God is neither male nor female. God's revealed name is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We can know something about God's nature through the Bible and Church Tradition, and through the guidance of the Holy Spirit in personal revelation. Yet we are still limited by human language and symbolism to grasp and articulate the ineffable mystery of the triune Godhead. If we are humble, we acknowledge what little we actually know.

As both women and men are made in the image of God, we can use language for God in both masculine and feminine terms. The truest way I have found to comprehend the nature of God is as the spiritual unity of the masculine and feminine dimensions of being. Again, God is not divided into male and female principles; God is pure spirit. When I refer to masculine and feminine principles, it is by way of analogy to our human condition and our ideas regarding the qualities typically associated with a particular gender. The creation story of Genesis and the marriage of man and woman teach that men and women together are a symbol of the sacred unity that exists in God. A man and woman being flesh of the same flesh and bone of the same bone, coming together in love and open to procreation, gives us a glimpse into the divine nature. God is the perfection of family relationship.  At the same time, both men and women are unique, equally valid images of the divine.

So when I point out that names like Ruah, the Hebrew for Spirit, and Hokmah and Sophia (Hebrew and Greek for Wisdom, respectively) are feminine in gender, that is not to say that God is a woman any more than God is a man. It is to emphasize that Elohim, the Hebrew name for God, is grammatically expressive of a divinity that perfectly contains the union of what we understand as male and female, and that this gives us a clue to follow.

To incorporate the language of Mother in reference to God, or to refer to the Holy Spirit as "she" in some cases, such as in the manifestation of the Spirit as Lady Wisdom, in no way infringes upon divine revelation. To call God both "he" and "she" simply equalizes theological language that has excluded the truth of the unity of God, that has historically been excessively patriarchal, resulting in untold damage to the psyche and spiritual life of all humankind. Not to mention the devastation of planet Earth, so often characterized in feminine terms and treated in ways that parallel violence toward women. Nevertheless, it would not be appropriate to change the revealed name of the Trinity--the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Also, for the matter of consistency, the use of male pronouns for all members of the Trinity in the liturgy is perhaps more efficacious. This would not exclude, however, sermons and homilies that focus upon the motherhood of God or references to God's "feminine face", as I have occasionally heard spoken by priests at Mass. Then again, referring to the Holy Spirit as she in some contexts in order to reflect the often bridal-maternal nature of this divine Person within the Trinity would most fully characterize God as divine family unity, that which our human family unity mirrors.

 Woman Clothed with the Sun by Duncan Long

Names like Spirit-Sophia, used by Catholic theologian Elizabeth A. Johnson, point to the personification of the Holy Spirit as "Lady" in the Wisdom Books of the Bible. Holy Wisdom as "she" is not merely a grammatical coincidence; it is a full-fledged theology of the Spirit of God in bridal-maternal terms. The Holy Spirit could rightly be called the mystical "feminine nature" of the Trinity. Like all members of the Godhead, the Spirit is fully an expression of divine unity. However, the "Mother Love" of God is most clearly revealed through the Third Person. And Mary, being the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit and Mother of the Church, reveals so personally the sacred feminine in divinity. Jesus said that those who have seen him have seen the Father. Likewise, a personal relationship with Mary helps us to "see" the Holy Spirit/Sophia. This is why, especially in a heavily patriarchal culture, Marian devotion must be emphasized and encouraged, not marginalized. More homilies, hymns and prayers to Mary in the liturgy, and fuller celebrations of her feast days (that is, a return to more traditional expressions of devotion), would provide a greater balance to our community worship.

How we name things does matter. A rose by any other name may very well smell as sweet, but the name of rose brings to mind vividly what the rose is and what it symbolizes. Exclusively male terms for God do not bring to our minds and hearts the truth of God's unity or the fullness of God's love. Woman must understand that she is as complete an expression of the image of God as is man, and man must also comprehend this revelation.

Ruah Elohim

"Again (v., 27), how could Adam (and Eve) be made in the image of the Elohim, male and female, unless the Elohim were male and female also? The word Elohim is a plural formed from the feminine singular ALH, Eloh, by adding IM to the word. But inasmuch as IM is usually the termination of the masculine plural, and is here added to a feminine noun, it gives to the word Elohim the sense of a female potency united to a masculine idea, and thereby capable of producing an offspring. Now we hear much of the Father and the Son, but we hear nothing of the Mother in the ordinary religions of the day. But in the Kabbalah we find that the Ancient of Days conforms himself simultaneously into the Father and the Mother, and thus begets the Son. Now this Mother is Elohim." (http://www.sacred-texts.com/wmn/wb/wb59.htm)

When I met my husband, I asked him if he had a religion (big question for a first date!). He told me that he practiced Kabbalah, which I had never heard of, so of course I was intrigued. Kabbalah is basically Jewish mysticism. I found a book about this religion so that I could understand what my new boyfriend was into. In Kabbalah, the Tree of Life provides the framework for understanding spiritual levels of being and the nature of God. It's very complex, but the idea that captured my imagination was the explanation of the Hebrew word Elohim, which in English is translated as God. God is obviously a singular word, but when God speaks the words, "Let us" in the creation story of Genesis, we get a glimpse of the trinitarian nature of God, God in three persons. In Catholic tradition, the Son is begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from both as the Love generated between them. But this begetting and proceeding is a simultaneous process, not a temporal one-after-the-other. I see the Spirit as the "Mother Love" of the Trinity.

 Mary and the Holy Spirit

As the initial, quoted paragraph above states, Elohim is comprised of a masculine plural added to a feminine noun. When I contemplate Catholic writer Thomas Merton's theology that Holy Wisdom (Sophia) is the Ousia of God, God's primordial essence of being, and that Sophia is inherent to (contained in) all three persons of the Trinity, the meaning of the word Elohim is perfectly crystallized. The Spirit of God is pictured in the creation story, hovering over the waters like a mother bird over her eggs, as the divine power of generation. In Hebrew, this person of the Trinity is named Ruah Elohim. As I have discussed before, Ruah is a feminine word. We find in Ruah Elohim, who is the Holy Spirit (Ruah Ha-Kodesh), the manifestation of the maternal aspect of God. The Holy Spirit is Lord, as the Nicene Creed states, not because the Spirit is particularly male or masculine, but because the Spirit is a divinely equal member of the Trinity along with the Father and the Son, both of whom Sacred Scripture calls "Lord".

It has become increasingly apparent to me that the Lady Wisdom of the Bible fleshes out, so to speak, the nature of the third person of the Trinity. Rather than remaining a kind of impersonal, ambiguous entity running the risk of becoming the marginalized member of the Godhead, we see clearly in Sophia the bridal-maternal character of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, if we consider the profound indwelling of Mary by the Spirit of Wisdom, especially as articulated by St. Maximilian Kolbe, we can comprehend the basis of Marian devotion as a reflection of the intuitive understanding that the mission of the Holy Spirit is accomplished particularly through the Mother of God.

Kolbe goes so far as to say that Mary is a "quasi-incarnation" of the Holy Spirit, while being clear that this relationship is not the same in nature as the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures of Jesus, who is fully God and fully man. Mary is purely human, but Kolbe sees Mary as the ultimate sanctuary of the Holy Spirit, in as close a relationship as is possible of the strictly human with the divine. Mary does nothing apart from the Holy Spirit. Kolbe teaches that Mary's soul is completely permeated with the Holy Spirit, so her being is in perfect harmony with the mission of this Spirit of Wisdom. According to the saint, this is why Mary could call herself the Immaculate Conception at Lourdes. Because the Holy Spirit is the uncreated Immaculate Conception, Mary is the created Immaculate Conception. Therefore, veneration of Mary reflects adoration of the Holy Spirit.

It is also important to note that this inseparable union between Mary and the Holy Spirit does not obliterate Mary's unique personality and essential qualities as a human being. Because she was from her conception free from sin, Mary could most completely experience God's grace and achieve the holiness that the Spirit worked, and continues to work, in her. Precisely because she is not bogged down and separated from God by a sinful nature, Mary can be that much more Mary. I think that one reason people are so drawn to the Blessed Mother is that we quest for the "authentic self", in pop psychology terms. We see in Mary a fully actualized human being. This is the goal of all mystics who desire unity with God. The more we have Christ in us, the more our true selves we become. By losing ourselves we find ourselves, as Jesus taught his disciples about Life. 

At RCIA on Sunday, the teacher talked about prayer and its nature as a personal relationship with God. She said that we can focus prayer to any of the members of the Trinity, in whatever way brings us closer to God. She spoke of being initially confused about the Holy Spirit, but that she is now a "Holy Spirit person".  I shared my use of the Hebrew name Ruah for Spirit in my prayers. I find it very beautiful, and for me at this time in my journey, Ruah Elohim, such an eloquently poetic name, is my preferred call to God. It fills my imagination with an image of God that is both Father and Mother, with a focus on the immanent, maternal Presence (Shekinah) of our Holy Creator.

Why God Is Called Father

"A good book to read concerning power, authority and the politics of language is The Church and the Culture War by Joyce A. Little (Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 1995).
On page 148 of her book, Joyce Little discusses God as Father.  'Now the God of Israel is Holy (Psalm 99). The word "holy" is rooted in the word "separated" (1 Chron. 23:13). God, being pure Spirit, has a certain "separation" or otherness to His material creation. This otherness of God is further revealed when He sent His only Son to the world instead of Himself. Even though we are created in His image, God the Father keeps His distance from matter to a certain extent. For this reason, the title "Mother" is not appropriate for God, since the words: "mother" and "matter", are etymologically related (Latin root: mater-). God is not Mother Nature or Mother Earth. Also mothers during pregnancy are biologically joined to their child, but fathers are physically separated. Even though fathers love their children, there is still a certain degree of distance as compared to mothers. Once again this "separation" of father from child is related to the "separation" (Holiness) of God from creation. The God of Israel is called Father not because He is male, but because He is Holy' " (from the online article, "Mother God" @ http://users.binary.net/polycarp/momgod.html).

The above excerpt is one of the best explanations I have encountered regarding why God is specifically called Father. Though the Bible often uses maternal images to impart understanding of the nature of God, it never calls him "Mother".  Little's theology echoes that of George S. Montague in Our Father, Our Mother, with the idea that the male image of fatherhood reflects God's transcendence. While God is equally our Divine Mother, his official title, Father, is connotative of his separateness from creation; that is, we humans are not divine and neither is anything else in the material world. However, God does dwell among us in the 3rd Person of the Trinity, known as the Holy Spirit, who is often especially understood in bridal-maternal terms. But it is Mary, in her complete union with this Spirit of Wisdom, who best reflects the immanence of God's motherly nature. It is she who has been revealed, by Church Tradition through the Holy Spirit, with the titles Mother of God and Mother of the Church, to manifest for us an image of the sacred feminine by which we can most adequately experience God as daughter, bride, and mother.

 Madonna of the Rosary - Murillo

Using the traditional language, Jesus' incarnation as the God-man can be understood most simply by virtue of his having a divine Father in heaven and a human Mother on earth, making him both fully human and fully divine. His existence as a human being illustrates that we can literally see our Father God in him, and also glimpse God as Mother through his own Mother, Mary, for she is the Mother of God. The way Mary loves Jesus is the way God loves all of his children like a mother. And she also represents the divinized state of being to which we aspire, when we too will inherit a glorified body and live eternally with God as his children. Mary reigns as our Mother, our Sister, our Queen, our Intercessor and Advocate. She is the Mediatrix of All Graces, working in complete harmony with the Holy Spirit of Wisdom who dwells within her to bring about our salvation, not in an equal way to her Son, but uniquely with him.

It still hurts sometimes, this overwhelmingly masculine language ascribed to God. Why is the motherhood of God so hidden? I believe it is because Wisdom, the Sophia at the heart of God, who is equally part and parcel of all Persons of the Trinity, is the Holy of Holies. Without Mary, we just can't get at this mystery at all. Without Mary, the Christian story is truly impoverished and lacking in the fullness of our beautiful faith. Brothers and sisters in Christ, fully embrace God as your Father, for it is a privilege granted to us by our Savior, and also fully embrace Mary as your Mother, for she is Jesus' sweet and holy Gift of Love. With Mary, our family is complete.

Lady Wisdom (Sophia)--Emanation vs. Creation

Lady Wisdom in the Bible is described as an emanation, an eternal generation, and a creation, yet we see from the following explanation that, theologically, she cannot be all three of these things. Yet she could be both an emanation and an eternal generation, as Jesus, Wisdom Incarnate, indeed is:

Emanation is a necessary and infinite number of generations that extends from the nature of the One. Everything extending from it is therefore consubstantial. Eternal Generation is a necessary and numerically single bringing forth of the Person of the Son, not the divine nature of the Son eternally extending from the nature of the Father. The Father and the Son are therefore consubstantial. Creation is a voluntary act of God that begins in time. God creates by divine fiat, not by extensive emanation. This extends from the will of God, not the nature. Therefore, Creation and God are not consubstantial but distinct in essence. Do we not then see that Creation and redemption cannot extend from the nature of God or else it would be eternal and Consubstantial with him?  --from The Trinity by Gordon Clark, p. 115

In Wisdom 7 we find, "Wisdom is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty..."  That is clear enough, that she extends from God and is therefore consubstantial with Him. Her nature is divine.

In Sirach 24 Wisdom tells us, "I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and covered the earth like a mist." This connotes something more like a birth, a bringing forth, an eternal generation. And we see Wisdom herself participating in the act of creation, covering the earth to make it teem with life, like a mother bird spreading herself over her eggs. Again, her nature is divine.

In Proverbs 8 Wisdom says of herself, "The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago." Here we have her as the first of all of God's creative acts, and we sense a certain but mysterious distinction between her and God. Her nature appears to be as a creation. Are there indeed two Wisdoms, as St. Augustine suggested, one created and one uncreated?

I think what we must do to understand this plurality, as well as anyone can possibly understand the nature of God and his relationship to his works, is to take all that has been written in regard to Lady Wisdom together and see if we can get a clearer picture. In the order that the Wisdom Books appear in the Bible, we follow a gradual revelation of the entirety of the nature of Sophia. Wisdom is unquestioningly eternal and consubstantial with God; therefore, we can certainly conceptualize her as the feminine aspect of the Godhead. However, we also see her as God's link with creation, a pure spirit who is sent to dwell in the earth and among God's people. Wisdom was created in this sense, that she was poured out into all of creation, permeating all things and bringing them to perfect order. She has become both an aspect of God and a part of the created universe.  "Whoever finds me finds life," she promises in Proverbs 8, hinting at both the physical and spiritual realms.

We can conclude that Jesus is indeed the Eternal Wisdom, but we also find in the liturgy of the Catholic Church the accommodation of these passages of Wisdom to Mary, the Throne of Wisdom. Catholic monk and spiritual writer Thomas Merton, in a letter, described Mary as a kind of personal manifestation of Sophia. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that Mary is the dwelling of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (721). As I have previously put forth, Wisdom is clearly part and parcel of all members of the Holy Trinity (which Merton also affirms in the same letter), and therefore the idea of Wisdom indwelling Mary is compatible with official Church doctrine. Holy Wisdom in the Old Testament prefigures (is a type of) both Jesus and Mary in the New Testament, and indeed also prefigures (and is mystically synonymous with) the Holy Spirit.

We see the Blessed Mother as embodying the feminine, maternal qualities of God and possessing within her the pure spirit of Wisdom, who is at once emanation and eternal generation of God, as well as the binding force between God and creation, and a living being of creation herself. As the Church teaches, there is an inseparable spiritual connection between Jesus and his Mother. This great mystery is the mystery of the Incarnation of Jesus through Mary, and it is something that we can only contemplate and hope to someday grasp in its divine fullness.

Ave Sophia

Holy Wisdom, gentle is your mercy

holding us in light unseen--

 the scent of purple woven
through this ineffable tapestry--

Ruah, wind of mortal and divine,

what imprint lies behind?

Trees dance with you,
seeming almost human; gingerly
 we place our palms to bark, listen
 for a heartbeat quickening--

the meeting of sap and blood
in mutual veins

You laugh in twilight clouds-become-roses,

the in between worlds where
the Fay play in peripheral vision,
and we hold our breath, still the spirit,
lapse into gilded reverie and 

almost remember...

It is painful. It is longing.

It is exquisite, bittersweet bliss. 

And then I open my eyes, and you are a 

dream whose bridal train

vanishes, a whisper at the end

of the aisle--

Julian of Norwich & "Mother Christ"

Today I discovered Julian of Norwich, but at the moment I don't know what led me to her.  Little is known of the life of this Catholic mystic.  She was an English anchoress who lived from 1342 to c.1416.  Julian became gravely ill, and in a near-death experience had a vision from God and spent the next 20 years writing about it.  Her XVI Revelations of Divine Love is believed to be the first book written in English by a woman.  So why did I not learn of her in college as a student of English literature?  She was Catholic, and she was a woman.  I suppose those were two large strikes against her.

At any rate, I had remotely heard of Julian before.  Sarah Ban Breathnach quoted her in Simple Abundance:
"All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing shall be well" (according to Julian, God said this to her).  Famed 20th century poet T.S. Elliot even borrowed from Julian's writings.  Once again, odd to not have heard of her academically before!  Well, I ordered her book from the library, but for now let me give you a sampling I found online (http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/julianbib.htm).  Julian's theology of the Divine Mother is well-developed and echoes my own theology, which I have been recording here.  I will let it speak for itself for now, and undoubtedly Julian of Norwich is a topic to which we will return!

 Blessed Julian of Norwich

"Thus I saw that God rejoices that He is our Father, God rejoices that He is our Mother, and God rejoices that He is our true Spouse and that our soul is His beloved wife.  And Christ rejoices that He is our Brother, and Jesus rejoices that He is our Savior. (Ch. 52)

These virtues and gifts are treasured for us within Jesus Christ, for at that same time that God knitted Him to our body in the Maiden's womb, He assumed our fleshly soul…. Thus Our Lady is our Mother in whom we are all enclosed and out of her we are born in Christ (for she who is Mother of our Savior is Mother of all who shall be saved within our Savior). And our Savior is our true Mother in whom we are endlessly born and never shall come to birth out of Him. (Ch. 57)

Thus in our creation, God All Power is our natural Father, and God All Wisdom is our natural Mother, with the Love and the Goodness of the Holy Spirit —who is all one God, one Lord. And in the knitting and in the one-ing, He is our most true Spouse, and we are His beloved Wife and His fair Maiden. With this Wife He is never displeased, for He says: "I love thee and thou lovest me, and our love shall never be separated in two." (Ch. 58)

…the Second Person of the Trinity is our Mother in human nature in our essential creation.  In Him we are grounded and rooted, and he is our Mother in mercy by taking on our fleshliness. And thus our Mother is to us various kinds of actions (in Whom our parts are kept unseparated) for in our Mother Christ, we benefit and grow, and in mercy He redeems and restores us, and, by the virtue of His Passion and His death and resurrection, He ones us to our essence. In this way, our Mother works in mercy to all His children who are submissive and obedient to Him. (Ch. 58)

As truly as God is our Father, so truly God is our Mother. (And that He showed in all the showings, and particularly in those sweet words where he says "It is I" — that is to say" "It is I: the Power and the Goodness of the Fatherhood. It is I: the Wisdom of the Motherhood. It is I: the Light and the Grace that is all blessed Love. It is I: the Trinity. It is I: the Unity. I am the supreme goodness of all manner of things. I am what causes thee to love. I am what causes thee to yearn. It is I: the endless fulfilling of all true desires.") I understood three ways of looking at motherhood in God:  the first is the creating of our human nature;  the second is His taking of our human nature (and there commences the motherhood of grace); the third is motherhood of action (and in that is a great reaching outward, by the same grace, of length and breadth and of height and of depth without end)  and all is one love. (Ch. 59)

The mother can give her child such from her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with Himself; and He does it most graciously and most tenderly with the Blessed Sacrament which is the Precious Food of true life. And with all the sweet Sacraments He supports us most mercifully and graciously. (Ch. 60)

This fair lovely word "mother" is so sweet and so kind in itself, that it can not truly be said of anyone nor to anyone except of Him and to Him who is true Mother of life and of all. To the quality of motherhood belongs natural love, wisdom, and knowledge — and this is God….The kind, loving mother who is aware and knows the need of her child protects the child most tenderly as the nature and state of  motherhood wills. And as the child increases in age, she changes her method but not her love. And when the child is increased further in age, she permits it to be chastised to break down vices and to cause the child to accept virtues and graces. This nurturing of the child, with all that is fair and good, our Lord does in the mothers by whom it is done. Thus He is our Mother in our human nature by the action of grace in the lower part, out of love for the higher part." (Ch. 60)

Holy Wisdom--Created or Uncreated?

Wisdom, as an attribute of God, is holy and eternal. And as I have discussed before, Wisdom as a spirit is the feminine aspect of the Second Person of the Trinity and is thus divine. (She is integral to each member of the Trinity.) Jesus is both the Word Incarnate and Wisdom Incarnate. But what of St. Augustine's idea that there is also a created Wisdom? This idea is intriguing, as it lends itself to the notion of an eternal spirit who is feminine only in nature. And the Bible does use the word "created" at times in reference to Wisdom. But having two Sophias seems too theologically complicated, and there is another possible explanation for Wisdom's close association to the natural world.

I have previously discussed that the word created can denote something of a birthing process, such as a work of art that is brought forth by divine inspiration. Also, some early Church fathers felt that "created" used in reference to Wisdom could not be meant in the strict sense of the word, because that would contradict references to Wisdom as divine and begotten by God. I think that what we have here, in keeping with the manifold nature of Sophia, is a feminine emanation of the Spirit of God. As I continue to maintain, Wisdom, the feminine aspect of God, is part and parcel of the Trinity, not a fourth person.

Remembering my triquetra symbol of the feminine aspect of God being at the heart of the Trinity, where the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit intersect, we can imagine the masculine aspect flowing into the center. The feminine aspect receives the masculine, then reflects God's power outward, into creation. It is the Virgin Spirit Sophia, divine emanation of the Holy Spirit, who is the aspect of God that dwells in creation, permeating all things. She is the Spirit of Earth, if you will, the World Soul. Mary is so strongly associated with Wisdom, because Wisdom is the link between God and creation, and Mary is the link between God and humanity. And in Mary dwells this same Sophia. (There is one aspect of Wisdom that one might say is created, which is to be found in the humanity of Jesus. The human nature of Jesus could be considered as created Wisdom. Yet Jesus' human and divine natures cannot be separated.)

 Emerson's World-Soul, by Frederic Edwin Church, El Rio de Luz (1877)

In our Catholic tradition we refer to Mary as Mother. She, our spiritual Mother in heaven, is human like us. We do not want to lose this profound existential truth by confusing her with God's maternal aspect. In Mary we want our focus to be on the mystery of the Incarnation. Mary is typically the one we call Mother in our religious devotion, so that we do not lose our minds trying to understand Jesus as having two mothers (not unlike trying to imagine two Wisdoms). Yet we can come to know God as Mother, Imma, by meditating on God's Wisdom, and through Mary experience God's motherly love.

Wisdom--Person or Personification?

Every time I think I have a theological question regarding the "gender" of God resolved, I get befuddled again by my continuous studies. In regard to the biblical Wisdom, there seems to be no definite answer. I took the question of the nature of Wisdom to my priest, who expressed that Wisdom is not a person/spirit, but rather an attribute of God and one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit that we receive at Confirmation. But he also said that he saw no problems with my theology of Wisdom as the feminine aspect at the heart of the Trinity, revealed through the Church and Mary.

Theologians over the centuries and into modern times have contemplated Sophia in the Wisdom books. Some see her only as a personification of an attribute of God. Some see her as the Logos, Son of God, and therefore she is divine. Others see her as a created spirit who is eternal. St. Augustine believed that there were two Wisdoms--one created and one uncreated.

The notes from the Catholic Bible on Sirach 1 say, "Wisdom: here the author speaks of true wisdom, namely God's external revelation of himself. Throughout the book he describes in great detail just what wisdom is; sometimes it is divine; sometimes it is a synonym for God's law; sometimes it is human. But the author makes clear that even human wisdom, properly understood, comes from God."

In no other instance is an attribute of God so personalized. Wisdom in the Old Testament may indeed prefigure Jesus, and so we see through her the feminine aspect of the Second Person of the Trinity, and we must in that case understand her as divine. For this reason some Church fathers argued that the word "created", which is at times used in reference to Sophia, cannot mean made in the strict sense of the word, as in the creation of the world, because that meaning would contradict other references to the begotten nature of Wisdom.

But is there additionally a created Wisdom? Such an idea might clear up some confusion on the one hand, while causing additional complications on the other. There are certainly multiple types of Wisdom, and indeed she is described as manifold. As an attribute of God, Wisdom is holy and eternal but is not a person. However, it seems sure that there is a Wisdom developed in the Bible as a divine, feminine spirit who is intimately linked to creation. A succinct summary of this theology is given in the caption for this Holy Wisdom icon by Zachary J. Roesemann:

He says, "The Holy Wisdom is one of the only ways traditional Christian art depicts a feminine aspect of God. Wisdom is mentioned several times in the Old Testament, always personified as a woman. The New Testament, in turn, teaches that Christ the Word is the Divine Wisdom. Icons therefore link the image of Sophia with the image of Christ to make clear that Holy Wisdom and the Word are two aspects of the same Person (my emphasis). This is further reinforced by the presence of Mary and John the Baptist, who appear in their traditional poses around the throne of Christ...Wisdom reveals that the transcendent mystery of God actually comes personally into our world. And we are reminded not to box God in through our language, but instead to rejoice in the many ways God manifests the Divine love for us."

And so today let us rejoice in our Wisdom Jesus!!

The Holy of Holies

I am interested right now in the Holy of Holies and its relationship to Jesus' mission and mystical connection to his mother, Mary. The Holy of Holies was the inner sanctuary of the Tabernacle, and later the Temple, in Jerusalem in the Hebrew Bible. The Ark of the Covenant, which held the Ten Commandments given to Moses, was kept there during the First Temple. Only the High Priest could enter the Holy of Holies, the Most Holy Place, once a year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, to offer the blood sacrifice and incense before the mercy seat. It is significant that the Holy of Holies was hidden by a veil, and that this veil was torn at the time of Jesus' crucifixion.

by A.L. Gardere

In the wilderness, on the day that the Tabernacle was first raised up, the cloud of the Lord (Shekinah) covered the Tabernacle. There are other times that this was recorded, and instructions were given that the Lord would appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat with its two statues of cherubim, and at that time the priests should not enter into the Tabernacle (Leviticus 16:2). Upon completion of the dedication of the Tabernacle, the Voice of God spoke to Moses "from between the Cherubim" (Numbers 7:89). [Information on the Holy Holies has been paraphrased from Wikipedia.]

With respect to my using the triquetra symbol to visualize the nature of God, we can think in terms of an outer court, which contains the masculine principle, the Lord, and an inner court, which contains the feminine principle, Lady Wisdom. I am understanding the Holy of Holies to mystically represent the intersection of these two principles, which is reflected in the bridal chamber of the Song of Songs in the Old Testament. The Beloved (the groom) and the Shulamite (the bride), symbolize God's relationship with his Sophia, Jesus' marriage to Ecclesia (the Church), and the mystical union of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant, where the "glory cloud" presence of God (Shekinah) dwells. Human marriage between a man and a woman most perfectly represents the union of the masculine and feminine principles within God.

 triquetra

Jesus came to restore humanity and the human soul to the family of God, and to reconcile the masculine to the feminine in the unity of Pure Love. In the Old Testament, Israel (God's people) was compared to an unfaithful wife who God brings back to himself. In the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, Daughter Zion is seen in heavenly glory as the New Jerusalem, representing the redeemed people, God's bride.

The teachings of Jesus, the Bible, and the Church are available to us as the "pearl of great price" which is hidden until the right time (like the Holy of Holies behind the veil), for those who have "eyes to see" and "ears to hear."  Jesus' saving act tears the veil. The way of Wisdom, which I believe is reflected in this understanding of the unity represented by the Holy of Holies, leads to this pearl. When the Ark of the Covenant, which had long been lost, is seen in Revelation in God's Temple in heaven, there is revealed the great sign, the woman clothed with the sun, with the moon beneath her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She is in labor to give birth to the most holy male child, who is taken by God and seated at his right hand, saved from the ancient serpent waiting to devour him. This woman is simultaneously Mary, Queen of Heaven; the Church, Bride of Christ; Daughter Zion, the New Jerusalem--who, with her divine Son, represents the restoration of the people to God and his Wisdom.

Mary is thus understood as Mother of Jesus, Daughter of God the Father, and Bride/Sanctuary of the Spirit. The Incarnation of Jesus in her womb is the Holy of Holies, the Most Holy Place.

What Is Mysticism?

 Joan of Arc

Maternal Indigo chronicles my personal, spiritual journey, particularly as relates to the path along which I am joining the Catholic Church. It is a journey that analyzes what has gone before, my past beliefs, and the ongoing evolution of my religious thinking and experiences, with a particular slant toward the mystical. But what, exactly, is mysticism, and what does it mean to be a mystic? When we think of mystics, Joan of Arc or Hildegard of Bingen may come to mind, or poets such as William Blake. But what about "ordinary" people like you and me? Can we also lead a mystical life? My belief is that if this is so desired, then certainly it can be.

In a general sense, mysticism can be a belief in or experience of a reality surpassing normal human experience, especially perceived as essential to the nature of life. It can be understood as the transcendentalism of Emerson's "transparent eyeball" and be marked by "peak experiences", otherwise known as a state of "flow". For Emerson this translated as a stream-of-consciousness style of writing. Self-consciousness melts away, and the human becomes one with the universe. This type of experience may occur as an artist paints, a poet writes, a dancer performs, or a gardener pulls weeds. Meditation is often used to achieve this state of unity with all of creation. It is the detachment or nonattachment described by great spiritual thinkers from various traditions. In a creative endeavor, the artist seems to be divinely inspired, and the resulting work is a collaboration between human will and a higher power. I have had many such mystical experiences of a creative nature.

In Christian theology, mysticism is a system of contemplative prayer and spirituality aimed at achieving direct unitive experience of the divine. It is an immediate consciousness of the transcendent or ultimate reality of God. In some cases, awareness of the presence of God rather than union with Him is the reality. This was the case for me when, at the age of 8, God called me to be baptized while attending Sunday school, a message I heard directly in my head. A similar experience occurred last fall when God called me to the Catholic Church for a meeting with the Virgin Mary, where her presence and message were mystically made known to me.

Visions and miracles are other types of mystical experiences. Hence the inner voices telling Joan of Arc to lead an army and the special knowledge she received to prove the message was from God, the apparitions to Bernadette by the Virgin Mary at Lourdes and subsequent spiritual and physical healings, and Hildegard's and Jane Leade's personal visions of the Virgin Spirit Sophia. The only possible test of authenticity from a Christian perspective is personal transformation, both on the mystic's part and upon the part of those whom the mystic has affected. The Catholic Church has strict criteria for deciding upon the authenticity of an apparition of the Virgin Mary, for example. Has conversion taken place? Are the fruits of the visions good and holy? Have others been lead to God as a result of the visions and miracles?

 Our Lady of Lourdes by SakuraHaze

Mysticism inspires a sense of mystery and wonder. What was once obscure, strange, and enigmatic is divinely revealed. Sometimes a mystical experience is a purposeful goal, while at other times the peak experience occurs accidentally, as it were, while washing one's hair or chopping vegetables for a soup. Often a repetitive ritual of a physical nature engages the logical left brain so that the creative processes of the right brain have a chance to be released. Inspiration means a state of being filled with the spirit. A combination of study, prayer, and meditation, or the carrying out of some routine task, or becoming lost in a creative endeavor, may bring about the presence of Holy Wisdom; and suddenly one understands, a hidden meaning is disclosed,  and the "ah" moment when we see into the nature of God and existence is reflected in our own souls.

The Immaculate Queen

"In Greco-Roman Christianity, probably because of the dangers of Gnosticism, the biblical images of God as female were soon suppressed within the doctrine of God. God as Wisdom, Hokmah in Hebrew, or Sophia in Greek, a feminine form, was translated by Christianity into the Logos concept of Philo, which is masculine and was defined as the Son of God. The Shekinah, the theology of God’s mediating presence as female, was de-emphasized; and God’s Spirit Ruah, a feminine noun in Hebrew, took on a neuter form when translated into Greek as Pneuma. The Vulgate translated Ruah into Latin as masculine, Spiritus. God’s Spirit, Ruah, which at the beginning of creation brings forth abundant life in the waters, makes the womb of Mary fruitful. In spite of the reality of the caring, consoling, healing aspects of divine activity, the dominant patriarchal tradition has prevailed, resulting in seeing the female as the passive recipient of God’s creation; and the female is expressed in nature, church, soul, and finally Mary as the prototype of redeemed humanity. Because God as father has become an over literalized metaphor, the symbol of God as mother is eclipsed. The problem lies not in the fact that male metaphors are used for God, but that they are used exclusively and literally. Because images of God as female have been suppressed in official formulations and teaching, they came to be embodied in the figure of Mary who functioned to reveal the unfailing love of God" (from online source quoting from "The decline of the Feminine and the Cult of Mary").

The above quote nicely summarizes what I have been getting at regarding my concerns about the use of language that obscures the truth of the nature of God as both a paternal and maternal deity. My guess is that the de-emphasis of the feminine was indeed a reaction to the heresy of Gnosticism and also to the prevailing paganism of neighboring cultures. There is a point on which I differ with the above argument; that is, I don't agree that the Church sees the feminine as the passive recipient. The Church is quite clear that the Virgin Mary actively participated in God's plan for the salvation of humanity, a teaching from Vatican II that I have previously quoted. Still, it is true that the bridal-motherhood of God has been so hidden that the natural outlet for the need of all of humanity, both male and female, to bond with the maternal aspect of God was necessarily embodied in the extremely high veneration of the mother of Jesus. Praying to Mary for her help and intercession is, to my mind, much different from praying to other saints; for she reveals the feminine face of God, and so in a mystical way prayers to her are most certainly not only prayers to the Mother of God, but prayers to God the Mother through her. Mary is not considered to be divine, except by virtue of her deification in partaking of the divine nature of her son, as I have discussed before. Yet symbolically she is understood as the Maternal Matrix, or Cosmic Mother.

 Immaculate Queen, Woman of Revelation 12

Charlene Spretnak discusses this dimension of the Blessed Mother in Missing Mary.  In her book, Spretnak laments what she perceives as the marginalization of Mary in the wake of Vatican II, which resulted in the removal of her statues in many churches, a decline in praying the Rosary, and a reduction of Mary's full spiritual presence. (It does seem, however, that we are now in a phase of  revival of Marian devotion and the Rosary.) Spretnak referred to those Catholics who wish to have the Holy Spirit feminized and suggested instead that Marian devotion needs to be brought back with a closer look at how growing the Christ child in her womb would have changed Mary ontologically, resulting in a unique, "quasi-divine" person. Personally, I really don't like the term, quasi-divine. I agree that Mary was truly unique among all of humanity and that no doubt she was transformed by the experience of becoming pregnant with the Son of God, sharing his blood and receiving his DNA into her own body. Perhaps it could even be said that by this miracle her process of divinization was begun while she was still on earth, before being assumed into heaven. This mystery of Mary being filled with the Holy Spirit and Wisdom is infinitely profound.

 

The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner

Spretnak discusses the efforts of the Vox Populi, a campaign for the declaration of a fifth Marian dogma, to officially grant Mary the titles of Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate. Pope John Paul II used the title Co-redemptrix, and I understand that he was in favor of the dogma, but the current pope, Benedict XVI, is not. Allegedly Mary has appeared to a woman in the Netherlands as the Lady of All Nations and requested that this dogma be proclaimed so that she can be fully empowered to bring true peace to the world. There is something that makes me very uncomfortable about the effort to try to force this Marian dogma. The Lady of All Nations purportedly referred to herself as "who once was Mary" to this Dutch woman, and I really don't imagine Mary changing her name in this way. New dogma cannot be proclaimed on the basis of a personal revelation. 

At any rate, Mary is a human being and symbol of the sacred feminine, but there must be acknowledged that  in God there is a divine feminine source. Many Catholic writers, Scott Hahn included, express that the Trinity is a family, composed of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who is the Love that unites them. Hahn seems to catch on to the trouble with this single-parent family image, because he goes on to say in one of his books that no family is complete without a mother, and that Jesus gave us his own mother as our spiritual mother in heaven. Still, if the Trinity represents a complete family, of whose image humanity reflects, then there must necessarily be a divine aspect that is feminine.

In my previous post I named this divine aspect Sophia, using the triquetra symbol to illustrate the divine feminine within the Trinity, a parallel dimension to the masculine persons of the Trinity, naming her Holy Wisdom (Hokmah in Hebrew), Ecclesia (Mother Church, the Bride of Christ), and Shekinah (the Presence, or glory cloud, of God). Sophia is identified in the Bible as a manifold presence who has not been completely revealed. I believe that Sophia's primary manifestation is through her indwelling of the Virgin Mary and all that Mary represents. An image of this idea may be found in the Book of Revelation, when the woman who gives birth to the divine child is given the "wings of the great eagle" to flee the ancient serpent, who is Satan. 

Woman of Revelation 12

From her immaculate conception, I believe that Mary was filled with Holy Wisdom, the Virgin Spirit of God's maternal Love, and that as such a pure soul, she is the emissary of the Holy Spirit to the world. To pray to Mary is to honor her divine motherhood and the Maternal Matrix, the feminine aspect of God found in Wisdom/Ecclesia/Shekinah and embodied in the Virgin Mary. By many names she has revealed herself to the faithful, and great signs, miracles, wonders, and healing have occurred at those sights of holy ground. Our Lady of Grace, Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Guadalupe. Holy Mary, our Blessed Mother. 

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Holy Wisdom in the Trinity

 triquetra

Recently one night when I was trying to fall asleep, I saw a vision in my mind of three intersecting circles. I tried to picture what shape would appear in the areas of intersection but couldn't clearly see it. Last evening, despite my lack of drawing skills, I sketched the three circles joined together. As it turns out, this ancient symbol is called a triquetra, representing a variety of spiritual/religious ideas, prominent among them the Holy Trinity. Often it is difficult to articulate a concept merely with words, so a symbol such as the triquetra operates to deepen understanding through a visual and metaphorical representation. The concept is grasped intuitively as well as intellectually. 

The shape of the intersecting areas resembles a flower or a bird, such as a dove, both feminine symbols, and I saw clearly a trinity within a trinity, where the inner region is part and parcel of the surrounding circles. My working theory is that this hidden, inner region represents the feminine aspect of God, which I believe is most accurately named Holy Wisdom (Sophia in Greek).  Just who is Wisdom? I certainly do not claim to have a perfect vision of what I wish to convey, but I have delved deeper into this mystery of the sacred feminine, and these are some of my findings.

"Sophia can be described as the wisdom of God, and, at times, as a pure virgin spirit which emanates from God. The Sophia is seen as being expressed in all creation and the natural world as well as, for some of the Christian mystics..., integral to the spiritual well-being of humankind, the church, and the cosmos. The Virgin is seen as outside creation but compassionately interceding on behalf of humanity to alleviate its suffering by illuminating true spiritual seekers with wisdom and the love of God" (Wikipedia).

 Sophia by Mary B. Kelly

There are too many biblical references to transfer here, but these are some key passages on the nature of Wisdom:

"For in her there is a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, unpolluted, distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen, irresistible, beneficent, humane, steadfast, sure, free from anxiety, overseeing all, and penetrating through all spirits that are intelligent and pure and subtlest. For Wisdom is more mobile than any motion; because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things. For she is a breath of the power of God and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness. Though she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself, she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God and prophets; for God loves nothing so much as the man who lives with Wisdom. For she is more beautiful than the sun and excels every constellation of the stars. Compared with the light, she is found to be superior, for it is succeeded by the night, but against Wisdom evil does not prevail. She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she orders all things well" (Wisdom 7-8:1).

Here Wisdom is portrayed as an emanation, rather than a creation, as she seems to be elsewhere. Perhaps in the case of Wisdom, the word creation has the connotation of giving birth, as in the creation of a poem or song that is not only crafted, but is brought forth by the artist from a divine source. Proverbs 8: 22-31 describes Wisdom as being "brought forth", which is a definition of giving birth or being fathered:

 "The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. Where there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth, before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man."

 Sophia by Hildegard of Bingen

Sophia, in Catholic theology, is the Wisdom of God and is thus eternal. In my vision, Sophia is co-existent with the Trinity, part and parcel of it, operating as the feminine, motherly aspect of God in concert with the three masculine principles of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As I've before stated in regard to the Catechism, God is pure spirit and is not separated into the masculine and feminine as human beings are. Mine is a human attempt to illustrate a divine concept. It seems to me that Sophia, while contained by the whole Trinity, specifically flows out from the Holy Spirit. Rather than being a fourth member of the Trinity, she is a divine spirit who is of the Trinity, the feminine principle brought forth to reflect the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. She is hidden within the Trinity, mirroring God's glory, grace, power, and love, like the moon reflects the sun.

Holy Wisdom emanates from God and is particularly associated with the bridal-maternal function of the Holy Spirit which I have previously described, borrowing from Scott Hahn's terminology in First Comes Love. Continuing on my reflections of his themes, I perceive a tri-fold parallel between three persons comprising the Sophia and the three familiar persons of the Trinity. Holy Wisdom corresponds to the Father (see Luke 7: 33-35, Wisdom as Mother); Ecclesia (the Church, the Bride of Christ) to the Son; and Shekinah (the presence of God strongly associated with the Ark of the Covenant) to the Holy Spirit. In this way both the masculine and the feminine are represented within the three circles of the Trinity. I see no way in which this idea contradicts the teaching of the Church, but rather provides a mystical interpretation of the nature of God as both paternal and maternal, as the Catechism states.

 

Coronation of Mary

 

As my concept of Sophia relates to the Virgin Mary, I see that the Immaculate Heart of Mary mystically represents Sophia at the heart of the Trinity. Mary can be understood as the mystical sanctuary of the Holy Spirit by virtue of the Incarnation of Jesus through her. Mary's Assumption and Crowning in heaven portray the divinization that she received by virtue of God's grace and Jesus' redemptive act on the cross, and His resurrection, which is the hope of all Christians. Mary also reveals the indwelling Sophia, or feminine aspect of God, in the ancient archetype of Mother, Maiden/Bride, and Wise Crone, corresponding with Holy Wisdom, Ecclesia, and Shekinah. Mary was not divine; she was completely human, but she partakes in the divinity of her Son, as we find explained in 2 Peter 1: 3-4:   

"His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire." The faithful are all destined to become kings and queens, sons and daughters of God.  The divine feminine is also glimpsed through Ecclesia and her relationship to the Holy Spirit, which is analogous in a certain way to the Incarnation:

"In the Divine Mind, in God's Archetypal Idea of creation, the Holy Trinity eternally sees Ecclesia as intimately united to Christ and 'ensouled' by the Holy Spirit. She so partakes in the divine life that she is, with Jesus Her Divine Spouse, the end of creation, which God made with her in mind and for her sake. The Church of the Living God is no mere human institution; she is Ecclesia Mater, 'spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners'. Our minds cannot comprehend the length, width, height and depth of our loving, all-embracing, cosmic Mother. Ecclesia (pronounces eh-klay'see-uh), the Latin word for 'Church', is sometimes used as a proper name when one wishes to emphasize the fact that Holy Mother Church is a mystical Person, not a mere society or organization, as the word 'Church' might imply to some" (from the Mystical Rose Catholic Page). 

Finally, Mary is associated with the Shekinah by virtue of her identification as the "Ark of the New Covenant" portrayed in Revelation 12, as the woman clothed with the sun, with the moon beneath her feet and a crown of 12 stars on her head. This woman is woman, Mary, the new Eve, daughter Zion, Ecclesia. Mary is the holy face through which we recognize the sacred feminine, or Holy Wisdom, who we also experience as "Mother Nature", Mother Church, Bride of Christ; and Shekinah, the presence of God.

Mother Mary

September 21, 2011

Last night I was having trouble sleeping, vaguely worrying about the plight of women, thinking about breastfeeding and the struggle many women have with not being supported by society, or even by family members and friends. The most natural, beautiful thing in the world, and people are uncomfortable seeing it. Nursing mothers are kicked off airplanes or asked to feed their babies in a restroom. It is a reflection of the debasing and degradation of women, of nature, of all of God's creation. Jesus was breastfed, without doubt. Inexplicably, for the first time in my life, I prayed to Mary. I prayed for peace in my heart, and I slept.

Today I was coming undone, and I ran out of the house to walk the dog. A perfect Indian Summer day. Warm and breezy, sunny, full of the promise of rest. I headed west on Jefferson Street, and before long I knew exactly where I was going--to the Sacred Heart Catholic Church on S. East Avenue. I am not Catholic. I went looking for Mary. I remembered a white statue outside the church. Was it of her? No, it was Jesus. But she was there, I knew it.

I tried the front door. Locked. I peered in the windows, saw the stained glass in the sanctuary. A sense memory. Yes, I had been here before. I don't know exactly how old I was, probably a preteen or very young teenager, when I went to mass with my best friend and her family. I had never been inside a Catholic church.  My family belonged to a conservative Protestant denomination. Mary was a part of the Nativity scene, the virgin mother of Jesus. And that was about it. We didn't pray to Mary.

I started calling for her, a little desperate. Where was she? Maybe on the other side of the church? I walked around, looked through the windows again into the social hall. And then I turned around and saw a garden, and for a moment I wondered where I was. I had never noticed it before. A painted sign said Rosary Garden, and it felt so welcoming. The garden was surrounded by a fence. I saw a white statue, and I knew instinctively it was Her. I went to the gate, and it was unlocked. Was it okay to go inside? I wanted to so badly. Then I saw a friend of mine working right next door in his backyard, and I asked him if the garden was public. Yes, it was okay to go in. I let my dog explore while I tentatively walked around, pretending to be nonchalant, and approached the statue timidly and with reverence. I knew she knew I was there. I sat at the base of an old oak tree with branches sprawling to Heaven and leaned against its trunk, right in front of Mary.

I talked to her, I prayed, I wept. I smiled. I listened, and she answered me. She was calling me all along. I understood, finally. Queen of Heaven, Mother of God. She conceived of the Christ child when the Holy Spirit descended upon her. In the Old Testament, written in Aramaic and Hebrew, the Spirit of God is named Ruah, a distinctly feminine word. Shekinah, the presence of God, is also feminine. I need to know the feminine aspect of divinity. Women, as well as men, are created in the image of God. God is neither male nor female, and God is both. God is spirit. Ruah. Sophia, the name of the Wisdom of God, who was with Him at creation. I ache for Her. The world aches for her. Mary, the embodiment of the sacred feminine.


Let It Be
 by The Beatles

WHEN I FIND MYSELF IN TIMES OF TROUBLE
MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME
SPEAKING WORDS OF WISDOM LET IT BE

AND IN MY HOUR OF DARKNESS
SHE IS STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME
SPEAKING WORDS OF WISDOM LET IT BE

LET IT BE LET IT BE LET IT BE LET IT BE
WHISPER WORDS OF WISDOM LET IT BE

AND WHEN THE BROKEN HEARTED PEOPLE
LIVING IN THE WORLD AGREE
THERE WILL BE AN ANSWER LET IT BE

FOR THOUGH THEY MAY BE PARTED
THERE IS STILL A CHANCE THAT THEY WILL SEE
THERE WILL BE AN ANSWER LET IT BE

LET IT BE LET IT BE LET IT BE LET IT BE
THERE WILL BE AN ANSWER LET IT BE

AND WHEN THE NIGHT IS CLOUDY
THERE IS STILL A LIGHT THAT SHINES ON ME
SHINE UNTIL TOMORROW LET IT BE

I WAKE UP TO THE SOUND OF MUSIC
MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME
SPEAKING WORDS OF WISDOM LET IT BE

LET IT BE LET IT BE LET IT BE LET IT BE
WHISPER WORDS OF WISDOM LET IT BE