Mary...A New Interpretation

    Growing up as I did, the son, grandson, and nephew of Protestant ministers, I became inundated with the normative story line of the Hebrew Bible (what Christians recognize as the Old Testament) and the Belated Testament (again, for Christians, the New Testament) and all of the characters therein. Now, don't get me wrong...back then as the aforementioned men stood behind their respective pulpits, I was all in, just as I am now for various personal and political causes. However, as time went on I became, how shall I put this, skeptical/disillusioned with the normative tradition. The stories and characters became literary/secular for me as opposed to religious/theological/literal as they are for the majority of my family, for many dear friends of mine, and for millions around the world. That's the really short version, which brings us to this past Easter Sunday and Mother's Day. 

    For the past few years on these two holidays I have made it a point to read a wonderful, short novel by the great Irish writer Colm Toibin titled, The Testament of Mary. That's right boys and girls, it's book report time!

    "Sleep escapes me. Maybe I am too old to sleep. Or there is nothing further to be gained from sleep." This is a line from the very first paragraph of Toibin's masterpiece. And it gives the reader a hint to the excellent writing that is to come. It is written as a story-telling monologue in the first person by Mary, the mother of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a Mary quite different from what Christians are accustomed to - especially Catholics. This is a Mary who is frighteningly angry, and has more than a little hate pent up inside of her. This Mary finds solace not only in Yahweh, but in the goddess Artemis whom she looks to for wisdom and comfort. Unlike the beatific Mary of normative belief, Toibin's Mary is a real mother. A mother who condemns the world for murdering her son and to those around him, including herself, who allowed it to happen.

    The novel opens with Mary being "cared for" by whom the reader must assume are some of Jesus' disciples. She despises them as they try and get her to remember certain things about her son's life and especially the crucifixion. And while she senses the political and social changes going on around her, she wants no part of it. They keep her secluded providing her with most everything she needs in a house where the Romans, hopefully, will not be able to find them. They bully her, become constantly exasperated with her and at times just walk out leaving her alone with a maid for days at a time.  She knows what they want from her but she will only provide morsels of information. She will not give in to these misfits. "My son gathered misfits, although he himself, despite everything, was not a misfit..." You see, for Mary, her son was not the son of Yahweh, he was just her son. He was bright, loving, and he "used all of it so he could lead a group of men who trusted him from place to place."

    Toibin expertly takes us through some highlights of the Gospels, like the scene where Jesus supposedly turns water into wine, again, through Mary's eyes. He has Mary talking about the increasing estrangement between her and her son, and how she can't seem to get through to him about the increasing danger he is in from the Roman authorities. Her heart breaks at the silence and distance between them even while seated next to each other at a dinner table. "...that mere speech between two people would have been like crumbs on the floor." But he spends most of his time on the story of Lazarus. For Toibin, this is the turning point in the story because even though Toibin's Mary does not believe these miracles happened, once people believe you raised somebody from the dead, all bets are off. And with that, the Romans finally take Jesus away and Toibin pretty much gives us the biblical narrative of his trial with some interesting subplots to awaken the reader's imagination.

    While it does not end the novel, the climax is, of course, the crucifixion. Mary and some friends actually accompany Jesus, albeit in secret, to Golgotha. And it is there that in fear for her own life she abandons her son before he actually dies on the cross. The pathos and high emotion of these pages is more than enough to make anyone immediately call his or her parent, or son or daughter and say "I love you."

    We return to the secluded home where her anger and exasperation with her "hosts" slowly turns to the fatigue of old age. And even though they have her watched, her keepers leave her now for days and weeks at a time, but they always return. During these times she leaves the house to take walks and to visit the statue of Artemis in her town. She reminisces of her son's wonderful and innocent childhood and laments that "...this is over now. The boy became a man and left home and became a dying figure hanging on a cross. I want to be able to imagine that what happened to him will not come, it will see us and decide - not now, not them, and we will be left in peace to grow old."

    In the end, Toibin gives us the eternal debate between believers and non-believers. The irony is, Mary is on the non-believers side. She is mortified and livid at the disciples for trying to rationalize the murder of her son. 

    For me, a non-believer, a novel like this is wonderful not only for its beauty and imagination and the aiding in the expansion of the mind (for that is what great literature does) but also that it is no more or less true than the Gospels themselves. For the only difference between secular literature and religious literature is a political decision. If you're a deep evangelical or just a normative believing Christian who is skeptical of a work such as this, or even afraid of it...know that I, with deep misgivings, gave this book to my mother (a believer if there ever was one) and she thoroughly enjoyed it. 

    I was once asked by an evangelical friend of mine during one of our theological debates, if I was trying to convert him. And while the question caught me off guard, I had to admit that maybe there was some truth to that. Like my forefathers behind the pulpit, I too, probably hope to persuade. That said, even more so, I hope to offer a different take, as it were, and encourage the reader to new and different possibilities. And to offer an exemplary work of literature.

write to: magtour@icloud.com