Mary: Woman of the Apocalypse
NB this is an adapted extract from a longer talk given to the ‘Mirfield Gathering’ of younger Anglo-Catholic clergy, organised by Mthr Frankie Ward in May 2023.
‘A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.’ Revelation 12.1
The opening line of Revelation chapter 12 is an awesome picture of a woman clothed with the powers of heaven itself. The woman is pregnant and gives birth to a male child, who is born to rule the nations. She is pursued by a many-headed dragon, but she grows eagle wings, flees into the wilderness and finds protection. At one point, the dragon pours a river of water from its mouth, but we’re told ‘the earth came to the help of the woman’. The ground opens its mouth and swallows the river.
It is a strange, deeply powerful passage, like many in Revelation. And it is one that has often been applied to Mary. There’s no telling if the author had that association in mind when they wrote it. And there are other interpretations: that the woman represents the church, for example, with the child symbolising the people of God. But certainly from the 4thcentury onwards the Marian reading was gaining ground. And, of course, there is no necessary contradiction between the two interpretations: from early times, the church could be seen as a virgin mother, giving birth to new children of God through the womb of the baptismal font.
However, there’s no doubt that the last century or so has seen a tension between ‘Christotypical’ and ‘Ecclesiotypical’ understandings of Mary. The ‘Christotypical’ emphasises her unique role in the incarnation as Mother of God, in which she co-operates in Christ’s work of redemption. The ‘Ecclesiotypical’ foregrounds her status as the first believer, the model of faith and the Mother of the Church.
Shifting depictions of Mary and controversies about how to understand her came to a head at the Second Vatican council, where it was perhaps the most contentious issue. The debate was ostensibly whether to issue a separate council document about Mary or to include material about her in the document about the church, Lumen Gentium. There was huge pressure: the dogma of the Assumption of Mary had been defined in 1950; many were pressing the Vatican for further definitions, for example of Mary as the ‘Co-redemptrix’ or ‘Mediatrix’ of all graces.
These debates became caught up in wider ones: about the Church’s reaction to modernity, ecumenism and religious pluralism. The vote on Mary’s place in the council documents acted as a lightning rod for all of this. It was unusually close, quite unlike most of the other votes where a broad consensus was reached among the bishops. The eventual decision was 1114 votes for including Mary in the church document, 1074 for a separate document. Some bishops left the session in tears, devastated by what they saw as the reduction of Mary’s role.
The theological differences were interesting. Those who wanted to see new dogmas defined about Mary, understood her primarily in terms of her unique relation to Christ as Mother of God, and co-operator in the work of grace. On the other side were those who felt that an overemphasis of Mary’s role detracted from the uniqueness of Christ. They argued that Mary should primarily be seen in relation to the church, as its type and Mother.
The church-focused understanding of Mary has a lot to commend it. It recognises Christ’s mediation as decisive, it does not risk deifying Mary. Positively, it links her organically to the church, and enabled her to be understood as a woman of faith who lives and prays in solidarity with us. Seeing Mary as one of the poor and marginalised gave impetus to liberation theology readings of Mary. Major works such as Elizabeth Johnson’s Truly our Sister develop this view of Mary’s solidarity with us in creative ways. An additional concern of the council was not to put additional obstacles in the way of ecumenical dialogue, already strained by the definition of the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. And we have seen, in the wake of this, some cautious welcoming of the idea of Mary as sister in faith to us among Anglican and Protestant theologians.
For the church-centred view, Mary should no longer be deprived of her real humanity, no longer portrayed as an exalted heavenly being with no connection to our struggles in faith or the realities of poverty and persecution. The Christ-centred view of Mary also tended to be associated with more reactionary, anti-modern and anti-ecumenical strands of Catholicism.
However, I’d argue that there’s a real loss in setting the church-centred and Christ-centred views in opposition, or thinking that we do justice to Mary or Christ by sidelining her unique and cosmic dimensions.
If Mary is first believer, she is so by embodying and giving birth to the Word: by a holistic co-operation with the mystery of God’s self-expression. If Mary is a type of the church, she is so as the living symbol of our calling to become divine, to find ourselves in union with God, body and spirit. Her sisterhood and solidarity with us, and especially with the marginalised should not obscure her glorification: it is as the marginal first century woman of colour that she is also the Queen of the Heaven into which she is assumed.
She is not just a vehicle for God, a conduit to get God into the world, after which she leaves the stage. God honours her and so honours all creation, calling it to its fullest joy and flourishing. This is a deeply liberating, even ecological vision: as all things are held in being by the Word, so they find in the Word the seed of their fulfilment. And it is Mary who expresses that Word in every aspect of her being – to the extent that God allows the Word to be utterly dependent on her in his humanity. This is indeed the wonderful exchange, the mysterious paradox and subversive power of the gospel.
And so back to the astounding image we began with: the Woman of the Apocalypse. She is clothed with sun, moon and stars – the very founding lights of creation itself. At the same time, she suffers the pains of pregnancy, and the traumas of persecution and flight. But she is saved by eagle’s wings, by God’s protection and by the protection of the earth itself. This is a woman who is utterly mortal and vulnerable, but also a woman of power and union with God and creation – a woman feared by dragons and empires. It may not be a historical depiction of Mary but that it not the point: in apocalypse, the hidden depths of the world are revealed so that we can understand that what looks like power is actually a desperate, violent weakness; and what looks like weakness is the face of divine transforming grace.
Apocalypse calls for the end of the world: the end of the systems of domination which seek to deify themselves and define reality. It calls for the end of empires. Perhaps as the Woman of the Apocalypse, we can rediscover a cosmic Mary who is the antithesis of submissiveness or reactionary hierarchies: a Queen who gives flesh to the Word itself, a woman who defies the powers.