This is part of a read-along hosted by myself and MrsDarwin of DarwinCatholic.
The main page is here.
MrsDarwin's biographical sketch of the author, Robert Hugh Benson, is here.
My introductory post is here.
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This is the third section of Chapter 12, the chapter with the most detailed subdivisions. Cat has already written about the first section and the second section; but I hope you'll forgive me for, given the chance to begin here, taking a moment to reflect on the structure of Chapter 12 and its placement within the book first. For one of my ways into this devotional is through the framework on which Benson has decided to hang it.
Writers and readers who like a logical structure (ahem) also tend to like symmetry and parallelism. We like the Rule of Three. We like a book to be divided up into chapters that are approximately of equal length. We like the outline of the main points and supporting points to be regular:
I.
A.
-
- ..
- ..
- ..
B.
-
- ..
- ..
- ..
...and so on, with the narrator descending stepwise in each section and subsection to approximately the same depth before rising up again, clearing their authoritative throat, and beginning again with a new part.
Benson mostly does this; the other chapters in the book are all similarly long and similarly detailed; but he has not done this with Chapter 12. This chapter is ruled not by Three, but by Seven: the centuries-old devotion of the Seven Last Words (though it is also called the devotion of the Three Hours). And so Chapter 12 is considerably longer, Benson having delved into each Word via a handful of reflections as if it were a chapter of its own, but having organized them all into one stretch of time on Calvary.
This is a remarkable renovation of the devotion, to consider it anew in its specific sense as an expression of Christ's friendship with us. And in another sense it is unremarkable, because that is what we do (or at least what we can do) every time we sincerely pick up the smooth-worn popular devotions of our Faith: find something new and specific in them that opens something inside us, whether it's a piercing for a tiny beam of light or a door to a whole new realm.
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Of course, the decision to make the Crucifixion chapter stick out more than the others is not unreasonable, given our conviction that the Cross is the pin or axle around which all of history turns; so the irregularity is a bit of a key to understanding where the importance lies. It is unexpected, and so it helps point us to something greater.
There is an unexpected asymmetry within this chapter as well, or perhaps it is a symmetry-that-is-not-quite-a-symmetry.
We often see odd backwards-reflections when we contemplate Mary. She also sticks out of history, or fails to fit into it in the tidy way that we orderly people expect; she is also a kind of turning-point, a protrusion from the world. We call her Mary, Undoer of Knots: she possesses a symmetry that does not repeat itself, but the kind that runs the ends of the great human tangle backward through themselves until the knot comes free. We call her the New Eve: not because she is a repetition of Eden's woman created without sin, but because she is a renewal of her. We contemplate the Heart of Mary and the Heart of her Son, caught in the paradox that though the Creator precedes all His Created in the order of eternity, the Immaculate Heart has preceded the Sacred Heart in the order of time and creation where they both came into being.
Jesus speaks, apparently symmetrically, to Mary and John at the foot of the cross. "Woman: behold your son. Behold your mother." He gives them to each other. This event is rich in meaning for us, and I cannot possibly scratch the surface of it here, except to say that it would be a mistake to seize on just one of the possible ways of seeing it, whatever appeals to us most, or whatever we most recently heard with the ring of conviction.
Benson, I am sure, is not giving us a sole way to interpret this word when he structures his chapter to highlight its meaning as part of our Friendship with Christ. This word from our Friend functions as a command to draw nearer to each other, to give an attribute to our common bond with our neighbors, our fellow Christians, our fellow human beings. That bond is a bond of adoption and a bond of blood both, the blood being Christ's.
The symmetry-asymmetry comes from the fact that we might be tempted to see the proto-bond between us and our fellows as represented by the gift-of-each-other that Christ commands from the Cross to Mary and to the beloved disciple. As Mary is united to John, we might think, so we are united to one another in Christ. But a careful examining of the chapter shows that it is not so (or at least, not only so). The symmetry is really a complementarity.
Scripture itself notes: After Mary and John receive the words, the disciple takes her into his home; she becomes his Mother and he his Son; and this is not and has never been a symmetrical relationship, not in the patriarchal society of the Middle East under the Roman Empire, not today. If our bond is a bond of adoption and blood, then we here together are siblings in Christ, united with him not just by a simple Friendship, but by a shared bond with his very own Mother. Let us take her each one into our home, cherish her, listen to her, love her and live with her together.
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