Mary Christmas: The Black Madonna
Jim Burklo, Sausalito Presbyterian Church
12-4-05
Gaze into her face, and listen. The Black Madonna whispers to us from a realm beyond time.
The darker the soil, the more fertile it is. Out of the darkness of the earth, into which the seeds are planted, life springs up. We see it in this season, in this place. Green grass sprouts out of the darkness beneath the hills of gold. In the dark hollows of the redwood forest, lacy ferns explode into life. In the darkness of the womb, new life grows and then emerges.
In the darkness of a church, candles burn. Candles lit by hopeful faithful souls, generations after generations of people making the very signs of love and promise that they seek, by lighting votives in the hush of the sanctuary. The smoke of these numberless candles rises and slowly builds up on the surface of an image of the Virgin Mary in the monastery of Jasna Gora in Poland, darkening her face until she is known as the Black Madonna.
All over Europe, as people convert to Christianity, they find in Mary a figure that bridges the worship of the earth goddess of ancient times and the worship of the God of the church. And in black images of Mary, they are comforted with a spiritual continuity, carrying the black-skinned earth goddesses into a new religious age. They hear whispers of the earth goddess as they gaze into the face of the dark Virgin in her statues and icons. Whispers from the earth itself.
As we celebrate M-a-r-y Christmas this Advent season, we take time today to listen to this dark manifestation of Jesus’ mother. She has a message for us in our time, a message that reaches deep into the dark unknown within us each and all.
Our Lady of Czestochowa, the Black Madonna of Jasna Gora, is the patroness of Poland. She is the manifestation of the Virgin Mary in whom the Polish people find themselves reflected. She’s been through much suffering. At one point in her history, the Tartars invaded from the East through Poland and her face was cut with two slices by a sword. But the icon survived. Later, the Swedes laid siege to Jasna Gora, but the Poles held them off and the icon was saved again. Mary suffered the loss of her son, Jesus, and her pain was reflected in the loss of so many Polish sons through all the wars that this small country, wedged between great powers to the east and west, had to endure. But out of that darkness, the hope of new life was born. Poland has survived, and now thrives in freedom.
In Poland, in Switzerland, in France, in Germany – in the ancient Coptic churches of Ethiopia – in the deep copper skin of Mexico’s Virgin of Guadalupe - the dark virgin’s beatific gaze still haunts us. Her voice emanates from the earth itself, asking us to pay attention to the state of the planet. The dark soil being washed to the sea by overgrazing and over-tilling. The air fouled with pollution, the water squandered and poisoned. The burning of fuels and forests that threatens the climate and the ecosystems upon which it depends. She whispers, reminding us that we are of the earth, we depend on the earth, that it now depends on what we do, the choices we make in what we buy and how we eat and how we travel. She whispers of the pain of the world which she took upon herself when she accepted the glorious doom of divine conception: Love the weak among you. Reach out to the lonely and lost and sick. Protect the most vulnerable among you. Show divinely humane kindness to the very people you are most tempted to hate.
She is with us now, in the gathering darkness of winter. Through her the hope of new life is born again within and among us. The dark Virgin whispers to us of a creative, peace-making, justice-serving Word that is about to emerge. A Word that energizes us to acts of compassion, to be willing to make sacrifices for the common good. A Word that seeks a justice beyond an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and a war for a war. A Word that shows a love beyond the easy warm fuzzy. A love that goes the distance, right into the hearts of our enemies. A love that embraces all of Jesus – his wondrous birth in Bethlehem, his hard teachings, his inspiring actions, his bad days and his good, his outrageous death – more than a mother can bear, yet she bears him, all of him.
In her image, holding the Christ child, the mysterious cycle of birth and death and rebirth is reflected. Her somber expression of fateful knowledge, her loving, caressing hands of hope. Grief and joy mixed, alchemically transformed. In her darkness the mystery of communion is consummated. Spirit and matter are united within her. Creator and creature embrace. She is the marriage-bed in which the eternal and the temporal, the divine and the mundane, wrestle into one. In her, the emergent property we call life arises out of the lifeless elements of the earth. And back into the soil it returns, as she watches her son laid into the tomb.
The dark Virgin whispers: You are my child. My precious child. And all those you know are my children. You are all brothers and sisters, flesh of my flesh, soul of my soul, so cherish each other as you cherish yourselves, and as I cherish you. Your pain is mine, in your victories I share. I am your Mother, and I need your love and your care, and more than all else I need your presence. I need to be with you, and you with me. So linger with me this Advent, let my heart be yours. Your gifts of compassion to each other, your acts of service, will be gifts to me. The respect you show to the earth and its living creatures will be respect you show to me. So may it be. Amen ---