The Virgin Mary and a Love Story
Hi Everybody, this is Leo Volont with Part One of my three
part Series “The Virgin Mary and a Love Story”.
This is from a Blog I wrote back in 2008. The “Love Story” content I found in the
journals of a canonized Saint, Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774 to 1824). Some
interesting stuff in there.
So Let’s get started.
(1)First things first!
No, don't worry about this being some kind of a sloppy personal
devotional. Yes, there's the word
"Love" but I assure you that everything will be contained within Historical context and
there will be no personal feelings on display
to make anybody feel squirmy or uncomfortable. However, if my subscriber
demographic has any overlap with the population that goes for Romantic
Narrative Fiction, well, they would not find this Series entirely disappointing,
though that particular content must wait for the Third Part. Until then we need to work on context and
backstory.
But even before we can begin with that we should find out
why I started researching all this to begin with. As with many things, it started with the Angels.
(2)One sometimes needs to wonder what exactly is
the purview of a Guardian Angel. Most
practically they should keep us from danger, right, but if our lives are already sufficiently
sheltered, then do they extend their mandate toward guiding us morally or
intellectually? If we are prone to
foolishness then do our Angels try raising the Alarm before the Event, and if
we persist and find ourselves with a problem, then do they help with the Damage
Control? But if we’re relatively of sound
judgement, then is the Angelic Task more along the positive lines of opening up
new venues for Understanding? I think that is what I’ve experienced here with
this.
(3) I’ve noticed that the Angels like to work in
riddles. Yeah, there are instances
where an Angel will simply come and directly flat-out tell me something,
but then it’s so hard to grasp the implications that it might as
well have been a riddle. So the
impression I get is they don’t just give out the answers. And that is why they like to work in
riddles, that is, asking those puzzling questions, giving nothing
directly, but only planting seeds, not giving Knowledge but arranging so that
it should grow.
(4)Not more than just a few years ago, an Angel came to
me with one of those riddles – “Why is it that the only religious garb Our
Lady has ever worn is that of a Carmelite Nun?” He was referring to Our Lady of Mount Carmel
who has made repeated Apparitions throughout Her History wearing that
particular habit. Ordinarily Our Lady
appears in fashionable clothes, of Her own style, but suitable for each
particular occasion – She obviously treats elegance as an important factor in
Her considerations, and the Queen of Heaven doesn’t need to keep any
vows of poverty. So it is a bit curious
that She should ever choose to dress in the plain clothes of a Nun. And, then, when she does, it is only as a
Carmelite. And it became my task to
figure out why.
(5)First, I did some research. I had been brought into the Catholic Church
by the Carmelite Order. The clerics of
my first parish Church were all Carmelites and my God Mother was a Tertiary
Order Carmelite, you know, 3rd Order, a kind of Secular Nun. So I already knew something about the
Carmelites as though by osmosis. One
particular Tradition of theirs is uniquely intriguing – that of the Brown
Scapular. It presents a kind of loophole
in the ordinary Christian Procedures of Salvation. I myself acquired a Brown Scapular
before I was even officially all the way a Catholic. There are no restrictions
and anybody can pick one up, but, well, the commercial ones you
find are mostly cheap and flimsy, and so I bought a few of the best I could
find and got some brown wool yarn and with a sewing kit, the only thing I
have left from my mother… besides her good looks, and I sewed together the couple
of scapulars over a hand braided cord to make a single Brown Scapular sturdy
enough that you could use it to strangle a horse if you wanted to. Priests gasp in wonder when they see this
thing… they’ve never seen one so heavy duty before. Oh, look!
I got it right here. See!
(6)Oh, Perhaps we could use a bit more detail about the
Brown Scapular, which really brings up the story of the Carmelites themselves
since the two stories can hardly be disentangled. It seems that a thousand years ago, when
Christendom rallied its Knights to protect the Holy Land from the first
waves of the Barbarian Invasions coming from off the Eurasian Eastern Steppes,
as much protecting Islamic Civilization as Christendom itself, well, many good Frankish
men found themselves far away from home.
A certain few Crusaders, being from a Land where every Church was called
an “Our Lady”, you know, a “Notre Dame” of this or a “Notre Dame” of that, well,
they had been surprised to find a Marian Devotion already in place when they
arrived at the Holy Land. It was under
the charge of a local Religious Order of Monks that called themselves the
Carmelites, named after their main Monastery situated on the slopes of old
Mount Carmel. The Crusaders had been shown
a Shrine in the Mount Carmel complex, which even back then had been more
than a thousand years old. That Shrine
had once been Our Lady’s cottage when She had come to Mount Carmel
seeking refuge during one of the earliest Persecutions.
(7)Some of the Crusaders were so impressed by this
Marian Devotion, that they joined the Order and became Carmelites themselves. But later, when they returned to Europe, they
ran into the problem of their local Bishops questioning their
affiliation in what was not then a recognized Catholic Religious Order. So petitions were forwarded to the Pope
asking for approval of the ‘new’ Brotherhood, but the paperwork dragged
on slowly. The Leader of the Carmelite’s
Petition Movement, Simon Stock, was imprisoned for safe-keeping, probably so he
could not drum up any new support for the Carmelites before anybody could be
certain whether or not the Order would be ratified. Apparently being incarcerated, probably in
some dark damp dungeon, a was very demoralizing for him and so, in order to
console him, Our Lady came to Him as an Apparition. Strikingly, she was wearing Carmelite garb. As
a special token of Her regard She presented him with the first Brown Scapular
saying “Those who die wearing the Brown Scapular will never know the Fires of
Hell”, and went on to say that on the First Saturday of each month she would
personally fetch from out of Purgatory all those found wearing a Brown Scapular.
(8)I can only guess that Our Lady has always been a bit
uncomfortable with the General Doctrines of Christian Salvation. These Doctrines posit the necessity for
Murdering Her Son and then of having everyone agree, as a matter of Faith, that
it was a good and necessary thing that He had to be murdered. Then how disturbing it must be for Her
that they positively celebrate Her Son's murder on Easter, when you
think they should be able to find some fitter theme for a Spring Festival. But, yes, Our Lady presented a Brown Scapular
that could save without being rooted in murder, blood and misery. And the
Devotion of the Brown Scapular was both sentimentally idealistic
and practical at the same time. You
know, the brown doesn’t show dirt… or, well, almost doesn’t.
(9)Well, right after creating this first Brown Scapular,
Our Lady transported Herself hundreds of miles away, appearing on the same
evening to the Pope in Rome, telling him “If you will not be the Pope
who gives approval to the Carmelite Order then the next Pope SOON
shall be”. Well, as we all know, Popes,
after their appointments, serve
for life and are only replaced by new popes for being dead, and
so the subtext of what Mary Mother of God was saying was probably not
lost on him. So of course, the Pope
immediately did the right thing and granted official recognition to the
Carmelites. That is how the Order was
accepted into the Catholic Church. But,
really, our understanding of the History of the Carmelite Order should
go back to its true beginnings – back to the times of the Prophet
Elijah. And on to Part Two!
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(10)Hi Everybody.
This is Leo Volont with Part Two of my three part Series “The Virgin
Mary and a Love Story”. In the First
Part we discussed the beginnings of the Carmelite Order in the Catholic Church,
but in this Part we discuss how the Carmelite Order began for the Jews.
(11)Now it’s a fact of History that the Messianic Mission
of Jesus almost exactly some 2000 years ago had failed. Of course we can impute this failure
to widespread moral decadence, but isn’t that always very much the case? If we should wish to be charitable, then we
might notice that perhaps the historical timing had been all wrong. Jesus, if he had lived to face them, would have been confronted by strong Empires
on every point of the compass. But
looking back to less than a thousand years before Jesus, well, then we
notice a period when Civilizations all about were in decline and no new
Empires had yet risen up to take their place, and this is when perhaps a
serious Messianic Mission might have been mounted. This was the time of King David. And, yes, we can see, when we look at the
History, that without any competing Empires to intimidate them, that first
King David and then, afterwards, King
Solomon seemed to flourish, and this despite themselves. David would dance drunk and naked in
the streets, killing men to steal their wives. Do you think that the People
must have been somewhat leery of that?
Solomon, next in the Line after David, was also a playboy, and he bankrupted
his Kingdom to build a Temple for a Religion that the People knew
wasn’t his only interest. It was as
though it were Solomon’s plan to make his People either resentful of a
Religion that would bleed them dry,
building a Temple that could only appeal either to God’s Vanity or his own, or to
make them resentful of himself for being too morally unfit to even go near such
a Temple.
(12) This Davidic dynasty, soft with decadence and
corruption, did not continue long past Solomon, as first a Tax Revolt disintegrated
into Civil War, and then the nation was finally dismembered by the rising
Assyrian and Babylonian Empires. It had
been like a wasted Life. The brief
window of Messianic Opportunity had already closed. But why had there not been a Messiah when a
Messiah might have been successful? Good
question. I suppose it was a matter of
being ill-prepared – there had not been any preparation in Righteousness, Piety
or Purity. For instance, the Prophet
back then, just before David, he was a lecher named Samuel. What Samuel had done was that he had demanded
Saul be appointing as King, but this was when Saul had been a young good
looking boy, but then 20 years later found a new Pretty Boy in David whom he now
pressed to be King. But it could only happen through a Civil War! Saul wasn’t going to go anywhere just because
an Old Pervert got tired of him, right?
So yes, if the Prophet Samuel was any kind of a fair
representation then it seems that a disgusting moral decadence was a
characteristic of the time. And that
seems to have been the opinion of Elijah, a Prophet who came about a Century
after Solomon, who seemed to have been aware of the Lost Messianic Opportunity
and who made it his Mission to see that if there ever should be a
Next Time, that the proper preparations in Righteousness
should be taken.
(13)Even the Bible gives us some hint of
Elijah’s Mission. We are told of a
drought, and that day after day for seven days Elijah had asked a servant to climb
Mount Carmel and look for any cloud.
None was seen until when, on the seventh day, there was a small
cloud. Elijah had taken that to mean that
there would pass Seven Dynasties or Ages until the Next Opportunity. So Elijah went to work to put together an
Organization, a Brotherhood, that could stand up to Seven Ages of Work, which
would turn out to be the better part of a Thousand Years, building a Social
and Religious Purity from which it could be possible to raise up a
plausible Messiah.
(14)Well, most importantly, the Family of the Messiah
would have to be especially monitored and protected. It seems that Elijah, and then his successors
were as able to resort to magic. They
had the Rod of Aaron from the Arc of the Covenant. The Rod was kept in his old Cave at Mount
Carmel ( Oh, by the way, for those of you who Dream, well, that Cave is the
same Cave as the "Dark Cave of Prayer", you know, the one you might
encounter in your Dreams, and the Old Man you find there, you know, the guy that
always gives you some kind of good advice, well, that's Elijah). Okay, the Rod’s magic was such that every
time a new Female Baby was born in the line of the Messiah it would temporarily
come to life blooming forth in leaf and flower. The Monks of the Order would then scurry
forth and find among the new babies in the land
one with a special birthmark. One
big hint was that they expected the Messiah to come out of the House of
David. And then, of course, after the
first Generation, the Monks knew exactly where to look for the new babies… the
baby of a previous “baby”. Kept with Aaron’s
Rod was what appeared like a small artificial “Tree”, to which branches and
segments were added to record the births and the Genealogy that would
lead to the Messiah.
(15)And, yes, it was always the girls. The Rod would not bloom for boys. Maybe this was at first surprising, as the
Hebrews were a Patriarchal Society. But
this was not a matter of inheriting power or passing down property. Besides, mothers have babies and fathers only
have maybes.
(16)Anne, who would be Mary’s mother, appeared by all
signs as being near that prophesized 7th Age and the
formation of the branches and segments of the Record Tree were approaching
their Culmination Point. So when she
reached maturity, got married and became
pregnant, the Brotherhood seemed to hold its breath and wait for the Seventh
Sign and the Birth of the Seventh and Final Generation of Purity. But it didn’t happen. Anne had a baby, and it was a daughter, but
the Rod stayed lifeless. Of course Anne
loved her baby, but, still, she knew it was not all that special. And then afterwards Anne remained barren for
the next 19 years. It must have seemed very puzzling.
(17)But the Angels intervened. Now, this is where our History becomes a bit even
MORE peculiar. No materialist will
like what comes next. I refer to the
published notebooks kept on the accounts given by the Blessed Anne Catherine
Emmerich (1774 – 1824), Catholicism’s foremost seer and visionary, who looked
back on Biblical Times and saw what had really happened and wasn’t
afraid to tell about it in extensive detail. I decided to trust her insofar as her views
were almost always at variance to the traditions she could have been
supposed to uphold had she simply been a mouthpiece for Church Propaganda. Anyway, the way she tells it, there had been
"The Holy Thing" from the Old Arc of the Covenant, now lost, but
before it had been lost, by being too
well hid, the Holy Thing, along with Aaron’s Rod, had been removed for safe keeping… the wisdom
of that decision being obviously well vindicated. This Holy Thing is reported to source all the
way back to Adam and then having been passed to Abraham by an Angel and then
passed down, from father to son, until it finally rested with Joseph in Egypt. But then, however much longer afterwards, we
have Moses raiding Joseph’s Crypt and taking possession of it and then bringing
it along on his 40 Years Exodus, placing it among the other Sacred Objects in
the Arc. This Holy Thing was said
to be the Spiritual Core of Purity from Adam himself, snatched out of
him by an Angel just a moment before his First Sin and subsequent Fall from the
heights of Spirituality to the depths of just being but a mere man. Just think about it: one moment he had been
on a par with the Angels and the next not much more than a monkey. I suppose we can all commiserate at least a
little bit with that, huh?
(18)An Angel, coming to address the problem with Anne, asked
that this Holy Thing be passed into her by her husband, who just so happened to
be a Priest in the Temple and could therefore be expected to understand the
situation. Yeah, one wonders about the
details regarding how such holy things
can be passed back and forth into people, but as it worked out, the Holy Thing
from Adam became Mary inside of Anne.
Whatever the biological details were, as far as the Holy Thing was
involved, Mary comes to us as effectively the Pure daughter of the still
Spiritual Adam from Paradise – the Girl Child Eve would have had, had they
not fallen from Grace. Yeah, we can see
how Anne Catherine Emmerich fills in a lot that the Bible leaves out, can’t
we?
(19)So, of course, nine months later, on the
occasion of Mary’s Advent, Aaron’s Rod in the Cave of Elijah burst forth in its
greatest floral profusions yet………
And in the next, 3rd, and Final Part of our Series we will
finally get to those Episode’s in Mary’s earthly career that we’ve been so
curious about. Thanks everybody… see you
soon.
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(20)Hi Everybody.
This is Leo Volont with the Third and Final Part in this Series “The
Virgin Mary and a Love Story”. This is
the Part you’ve all be waiting for. So let’s
get started.
So Mary was the Culmination. She was the Cloud of Elijah’s Prophecy come
to end the Drought. And the Messiah
would not come completely unbeknownst or entirely in secret. The Gospels do us a bit of a disservice here,
presenting the view that Jesus had to convince everybody of His Messianic
Pretensions. But a great many people
knew exactly who Jesus was and exactly what the design was for him. And they all knew who Little Mary was and
she was treated accordingly. While other
little girls played with dolls she was taught
Hebrew and was expected to study.
The Temple library was thrown open to her and Little Mary learned of all
Jewish Law and Lore. Concerning Little
Mary nothing was left to chance and the Messianic Plans could at times become
quite elaborate. Which leads us finally
to the little love story I had promised you.
(21)Little Mary was to be mother to the Messiah, and so
She needed a husband, if for no other reason than to preserve appearances. Although She Herself was of the House of
David, it was thought that Her husband should also be of the House of David,
though from a more remote branch of the Family.
The Priests, in league with the Brotherhood, arranged to find an
acceptable husband.
(22)In selecting a husband for little Mary they would
again rely upon magic, but a somewhat more plausible magic than Aaron’s dead
Rod blooming in flower. What would happen
this time was that all of the eligible bachelors of the House of David
were assembled and given fresh cuttings from some tree or bush. The one who would be destined to wed Mary – well,
his cutting would vivify and bloom while all the other cuttings remained
dormant. Well, expectations were frustrated when all the cuttings remained dormant.
The Priest in charge of the ceremony was
perplexed and inquired if every bachelor on the list was present. Well, an old bachelor, Joseph David, who did
not wish to be married anyway, thought that those who preferred to remain
single should be exempted, and so he just didn’t show up. So, he was immediately summoned and was
compelled to come quickly – free or in chains would be his only choice in the
matter. And no sooner then when he arrived
and they pressed a cutting into his hands, well, it shot forth blooms like White
Lilies, which then as now symbolize Purity. So, voila!
We had a winner! It was said that
Our Lady, then a 14 year old girl, asked for one of those Lilies, had it
pressed and saved it as a souvenir that She kept close by for the remainder Her
life. Yeah, you know it is quite
possible that She really had loved that Old Guy, no, not so much for his
Passion but maybe especially for his Purity.
Remember, Jesus was to be Spirit’s Child, not Joseph’s.
(23)Now in regards to the real beau of our story, well,
most of the bachelors were there only because they had been asked to be,
and few had entertained any great expectations for themselves, suspecting of
their own unworthiness. But there were a
few who considered themselves in serious contention, and they to various
degrees emotionally invested themselves in the process, not the least reason
for which may have been that Little Mary, well, we should start calling her “Miss
Mary” now, because she was then renown to be quite a beauty. One young man in particular thought he stood
a particularly good chance. He felt he
had all the best qualifications: – noble breeding, wealth, capacity, and he
lived as uprightly as can be expected of any young man with red blood flowing
through his veins. So yeah, what
wasn’t to like about this exemplary young man?
So he was at first stunned and then heartbroken when Mary went to a reluctant
old man who didn’t seem very eager to have Her anyway. This young man became so disconsolate that he
ended up by selling off his properties and becoming a Member of that
Brotherhood. Disgusted with Life, he
would go into Religious Retirement and leave the world and all of his
disappointments behind. He would have
been happy enough to grow old and die without another word ever being spoken of
or to him, but such would not be the case as we shall now see.
(24)It was correct that our Young Man had plenty of
capacity, and with the World shut out to him he had nothing left but
virtue. At the Monastery on the
Mountain he proved himself to be a skilled and dedicated worker and then an
inspiring leader, and after 30 some years found himself the Superior of that
Order. Well, by this time Jesus had been
born, had grown up, had His Ministry and had finally been Murdered. The once solid Following of Jesus split into
violent factions even while they were attacked from the outside by persecutors
such as Paul. It was feared that Mary
Herself could be a target in the midst of all the trouble. So, to preserve Mary’s safety our ‘young
man’, now an old man, in charge at Mount Carmel, with many men at his beck and
call, well he sent a covert delegation to quickly rescue Her from the intrigues
and conspiracies of Jerusalem and its environs. Our history doesn’t go into much detail on
this, so we can only guess what transpired.
Did they offer Her a polite invitation which She graciously accepted, or
did they crash Her doors and ride away with Her folded over their saddlebags? Don’t know. We only know that when She arrived at Mount
Carmel She was ready to appreciate Her stay.
(25)But what a life-punctuating moment it must have been
for our young man, now an old man, after so many years with a broken heart
he was finally face to face with that Girl, now a well advanced Lady, whom he
had fallen so much in love with decades before … really, a Lifetime before. A lot of water had passed under that bridge.
Who knows what thoughts played in his
mind. It’s said She recognized him instantly and
asked him whether it didn’t seem just like ‘yesterday’ when they had met for
the first time. Well, apparently it was
exactly the best thing She could have said.
It made him entirely forget for the moment all those years of
disconsolation, loneliness, and heartbreak, and he became his “young” self again
for just an instant. She made him smile and their eyes sparkled.
Well, that’s Love enough for us. Isn’t it?
(26)Which brings us back to the question the Angel had
asked me, why Our Lady chooses to dress as a Carmelite. I thought maybe the answer was that She was
showing Her appreciation for the Protection which that Order had given Her
during Her lifetime, as well as in gratitude for the Care the Order had taken
of Her Family for those Seven Ages since the time of Elijah. That all seemed like a reasonable
enough answer, but it was far too 'surface', to obvious ...it lacked
elegance. I felt no validation from my
Angels, and my dreams were still being stirred up with hints and doubts which I
knew would have stopped if I had gotten the 'right' Answer, right? So I kept The Riddle on my mind and continued
to think it over. And then after I don’t
know how long the answer came so instantly that I am not at all sure whether I thought
of it, or my Angel finally just gave up and simply put the answer in my
head – THAT Our Lady wears the Habit of the Carmelites
because the Carmelites pre-date and transcend the Catholic Church. Then I could say it is a Jewish Order, but
that too is limiting after we consider that Elijah himself was not exactly
Jewish. Elijah had simply wandered in
one day from the hills, with bears trailing behind him. He came to live with the Hebrews who didn’t
have either the strength or courage to make him go away. He wasn’t a member of any one of their 12
tribes. Anyway, so Our Lady’s wearing
that Carmelite Habit is expressive of Her first loyalties
which go beyond any particular Religion or Ethnicity while
recognizing the confluence of all those other Religious Traditions. We are reminded that the Blessed Virgin is a
Jewish Girl and a Catholic Girl, both at once, as well as carrying
forward whatever Religion it was that Old Elijah had brought down with
him from out of those Hills and the Caves of Bears.
(27)Well, the Answer is one thing, but after the Answer, well,
what was the Lesson that I was supposed to have learned? What was the Angel’s Guiding Purpose? How had I been changed by it all? Well, certainly, so much thoughtfulness
can never go entirely to waste. And
what I came to feel might have been something akin to what the first Crusading
Carmelites had felt, that Religion is supposed to contain elements more
Universal, and more Ancient than just their own particular Religious Traditions. But then there was also the Lesson
from that little Romantic Story I just told you about, you know, that perhaps any True Religion needs to have
some little bit of a Love Story behind it.
Just think about it: there She is
– Queen of Heaven and Matron over Millions Angels and Thousands of Saints and
She still wears the dress given to her by a rejected suitor who had
still cared enough for Her to ride off to Her rescue. And maybe that too is Religion.
Thanks everybody.
