A Christmas card arrived last week. Nothing unusual about that in the month of December. It isn’t often that a mere card digs into my heart and makes tears.
An artist imagines what Mary, the mother of Jesus, might say to Eve, our first mother, when they meet for the first time.
I’ve often wondered; what Eve’s life was like after the horrific events of Genesis 3. How could I live with myself – or live at all if I understood that my failure had plunged all my children, all my grandchildren into darkness and grief?
The drawing is simple in line and color, almost childlike. And yet, something escapes the illustration and flies into my soul. It’s power tightens my throat and clouds my eyes.
Inside the card a poem:
My mother, my daughter, life-giving Eve,
Do not be ashamed, do not grieve.
The former things have passed away.
Our God has brought us to a New Day.
See, I am with Child,
Through whom all will be reconciled.
O Eve! My sister, my friend,
We will rejoice together
Forever
Life without end.
I ponder this. What about this moves me so? I think somehow Mary’s words comfort any of us who have felt deeply ashamed. One who grieves over things that can’t be undone. We, as Eve’s sons and daughters, have contributed to the sadness of the world. Rather than sink into despair, as many of us are prone to do, we are invited to come to the Child and find all things reconciled. Even those things we thought were lost forever, never reconcilable. Here with the Child we find the reassurance and the forgiveness we need to go on living even as we wait for the New Day to arrive.
Source: Artwork and Text by the Sisters of Mississipp Abbey, Available here.
