Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 1

Our Lady of the Desert

Our Lady of the Desert

‘How lucky you are!’ they often say. ‘A convert comes so freshly to the things we have become too much used to.’

There is a grain of truth in the comment; yet I feel that the real target is somewhere else, that freshness or lack of freshness have little to do with the Faith. I remember the vivid honeymoon with gratitude. Our Lord enclosed me in an envelope of love. Our Lady gave me such joy that I walked down from St Gerard’s one blazing day calling out – ‘Ave! Ave! Ave Maria!’ – for the seagulls and the old age pensioners to hear and wonder at. But then there were other days – the times of violent grief and bewildered contrition. How could a man already half in Heaven fall back into serious sin? I was like a ball bouncing first this way, then that way, and sooner or later it had to come to rest.

Today a good friend, a priest who had been studying in England, gave me a head-and-shoulders statuette of Our Lady which he brought back with him from Rome. How could a Marian, bound to Our Lady by chains of love that go much deeper than the grave – and moreover, a writer, a poet, pledged to give her public praise and honour – look at that image without an impulsepage 737 of reverent love and delight? Yet that is the case. I take a quiet pleasure in possessing the lovely image; I am grateful to the friend who gave it to me – but the honeymoon is over now, I have work to do, and doing that work is the way I honour God and His Mother.

It seems necessary that feelings of devotion should wither back into the soil they sprang from. One could not carry weights, think clearly, make correct judgments, control one’s irritability, be of use, if the vivid life of the feelings were present to distract the soul. Yet I doubt if anyone experiences the loss of such feelings without regret. It is not easy to pray regularly to a God no more present to one’s feelings or imagination than He might be to a negative agnostic. There is a sense of non-reply. And the equal absence of Our Lady (who has very suitably departed along with her Son) brings a particularly piercing sense of having been left to oneself – for she appeals to and replies to the child still present in the man, and so it is the child who wishes to weep. I could imagine a not-too-wise Marian sliding half- consciously into some obvious fault simply in order to be able to ask her to dress his wounds. Children often behave like this. They grow naughty in order to gain attention. But the whole point of the experience is that one is being asked to be docile and God-reliant without feelings – to change, that is, from a child in the Faith to a man.

At this point the convert comes of age. He begins to share the experience of the vast majority of his brothers and sisters in the Faith, who work quietly, efficiently, sometimes heroically, with no special consolations. I think such people commonly misjudge themselves; they mistake aridity for lethargy and develop a sense of vague guilt which God does not in fact require of them. They feel mistakenly that fresh converts are nearer to God than they are. At such times one needs perhaps a good spiritual adviser.

Our Lady then is nearer than ever, though she is no longer known to the soul in person. She is showing the dark side of the Faith, the void in the heart where God prepares a temple for Himself. Our Lady of silence, Our Lady of darkness, Our Lady of the desert – show us the immeasurable depth of the God whom no images can truly represent – lead us deeper into the night where no roads exist – pray for us now and at the hour of our death!

1965 (359)