I have always been drawn to the downcast eyes of Mater. What has she seen in the past and what does she see in the future? What has made her eyes sparkle with joy and what has brought tears to those eyes?
I recently came across a book by Vandana Mataji, RSCJ, entitled And the Mother of Jesus Was There – Mary in the Light of Indian Spirituality. Vandana wrote of Mary’s eyes. “When Jesus grew up he would say:
'Your eyes are like a lamp for the body. When your eyes are sound, your whole body is full of light, but when your eyes are not good, your whole body will be in darkness. Make certain, then, that the light in you is not darkness. If your whole body is full of light, with no part of it in darkness, it will be light all over, as when a lamp shines on you with its brightness.'”
One simple way of making sure that the light in us is not darkness is to let Mary fix her eyes on us. Her very gaze is purifying. It is a ‘tender light.’ Her gaze is fixed on Jesus and on His heart; it is also on us, tenderly. Jesus must have learned from her the tenderness he was later to show the lepers, the prostitutes, the poor, the tax collectors, the Samaritans, the sick, the children.
Let Mary’s tender compassion, sympathy, sensitivity teach us also to be courageous prophets in our own land; the first to see the need of others, as she did in Cana; quick to set off and render service as she did to Elizabeth, her old cousin.
Eyes of Mary, show me your tender light, so that the Luminous One who shone through you, may also shine through my eyes on all who they behold, dissolving in the warmth of that glance whatever is hard, unforgiving, wounded, inhuman. May the whole world sunk in turmoil, turn tender with the tenderness of your heart.” 1
~ Carol Haggarty, RSCJ
1 Vandana Mataji, RSCJ, And the Mother of Jesus Was There – Mary in the Light of Indian Spirituality (The Bombay Saint Paul Society, 2011), 27-28.
