Patronal Festival cathedral September 6th 2015
A young man had just joined the army and had spent months learning how to march. His mother went to watch him on his first occasion and when she went home, her friend asked her how it had gone.’ Well’ she said, ‘It was very good but do you know everyone was marching out of step except my son’.
Mothers are often simply blinkered with love – one of my sons says that I’m one of his greatest fans!Today is the patronal festival of the cathedral – the full title is, ‘The Cathedral Church of Christ and the blessed Virgin Mary’. I have given you pictures of some of the places you will find Christ and Mary represented together in this sacred cathedral. In every depiction Mary is part o the formation but it is Christ who is central. I realise that the colours are not quite true to life but I hope you can identify the places from your knowledge of the cathedral.
Mary and Christ, bound together in the love of God – Mary, often known as the ‘God – bearer’ and Jesus her son - the son of God.
Mary along with any mother, or indeed any father, firstly understands what it is to love and be amazed at the birth of a baby, secondly they give love as they nurturethe childand thirdly they know that they must let their child go, must release them,in love,so that they can fulfilled adults and become the person God wants them to be.
Firstly, Mary is amazed as she loves. Both the annunciation and birth of Christ are sources of amazement for Mary. At the annunciation, depicted in one of the Russian icons by Mother Julia in the Lady Chapel, given in 2009(but not on the sheet), Mary accepted the role of mother. Thedelightful post communion carol says, ‘Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head, To me be as it pleaseth God,’ she said’. Mary’s humility, grace and love of God have been acknowledged throughout the ages and become part of our daily evensong worship in the words of the magnificat. The two pictures of the nativity of Jesus – from the window in St Werbergh’s Chapelfrom 1857 and the icon from the lady chapel shown on the sheet at the bottom left and top right respectively, both depict a serene Mary and her son. In the icon, as is often the case, Jesus is depicted as a small adult whilst in the nativity window, he is a plump happy baby holding his arms open expectantly in love to the world.Most mothers experience the moment of birth as exhilarating, full of joy and excitement, but Mary’s delight is soon to be dampened.When she presents the young Jesus at the Temple,eight days later, Simeon speaks of a ‘sword piercing her heart’, foreshadowing the future pain that she will bear at Jesus’ death.
Secondly Mary, like most parents, would have nurtured Jesus in love during his childhood.Theelegant copper sculpturedonated by Dean Smalley and the Friends,at the entrance to the Lady Chapel shows Mary holding the hands of the toddler Jesus, as he learns to walk. As a parent and more recently as a grandparent, I have walked up and down holding the hands of a wobbly 1 year old as a child learns to becomesteadier and stronger on their legs. The patience of the adult is usually rewarded when the child takes their first steps and the child often smiles in delight at their own achievement. The sculpture by Harold Gosney in 1999 is of a common everyday scene where the son of God depends upon an adult, his mother, to nurture him into childhood. We know little of Jesus’ childhood – the infancy gospel of Thomas which never became part of the canon, tells of Jesus changing clay doves into real ones as he played. That is apocryphal, but we have every reason to suppose that Jesus grew up in a devout Jewish family and community – a community that nurtured him both physically and spiritually.
Thirdly Mary had to release Jesus in love, to stand back and allow him to become separate from her a fully grown man in his own right. In adulthood, in Mark’s gospel, Jesus tells the disciples quite clearly that he has no mother or brothers but everyone around him is his family. His love extends outside the nuclear family to all who are around him physically and then later it will widen to the world so that it reaches even us today.It is usual for parents to send their children out into the world but the final central picture that you have, the picture of the screen behind me, shows the way people received Jesus.There carved from wood, central to the nave of this cathedral, stand Mary and John, the beloved disciple from the gospel of John They standon either side of Jesuslooking on helplessly as he dies on the cross. The screen representing the centrality of the cross to our faith was carved by Anton Stufflesser, an Austrian woodcarver in 1913.
Mary has been amazed in love at the birth of her son, she has nurtured her child in love, she has released him into adulthood and now she experiences the worst pain of any parent - that of watching the torture and death of her child.At the foot of the cross, a sword does indeed pierce her heart – it will be three days before it begins to turn to joy.
The life and love of Mary for Jesusmay possibly offer us a partial image of the relationship of our creator God with us.
Is it possible that God loves us so much that God was also amazed and excited whenour own mothers helped us to struggle into this world at our birth?
Is it possible that God held our hands as we tottered learning to walk, as we tried to speak our first wordsto others and to God, as we learnt to smile and laugh.Then when we were ready, was it possible that God released us into adulthood freeto make our own mistakes to love others and to be God’s ambassadors.
Then is it possible that we will know God’s presence at our deathbed – that we will sense God gently holding us in loving arms just as Mary maybelovingly held the broken body of Jesus as we see in representations of the pieta.
Finally, as Mary rejoiced at the resurrection of Jesus, will we toosee God after death lovingly welcoming us home with arms as open as the arms of the baby in the nativity window.
We are all privileged members of the Cathedral Church of Christ and the blessed Virgin Mary. As members of God’s family, we aim to love each other with the love of the blinkered mother watching her son marching out of step, we are always ready to be amazed at God’s love, we nurture each other and the wider world in love and then when we are ready, we release those we have loved so that they with us, may ‘go in peace to love and serve the Lord.’
1