The Black Madonna of Boston

 

In the Cathedral Church of Saint Paul in downtown Boston there is a beautiful and inviting little chapel. In the chapel, resides this Black Madonna. Black Madonna statues and paintings are found throughout Europe. They are Mary as manifestation of the feminine Divine. 

As much as we Christians love stories of individuals defying Roman emperors and choosing Christianity even when it meant death, we need to remember that the majority of people living under the Roman empire did not choose Christianity. They had their temples destroyed, their sacred rituals outlawed, and they were told that they were now Christians, worshippers of one decidedly masculine God. (The English, French, and Spanish would replicate this process when they invaded what are now known as the Americas.)  I truly believe that many of these people knew in their hearts that the Divine was both masculine and feminine, and they looked for the feminine Divine within this new religion that was forced upon them. And for her part, the feminine Divine responded to and reached out to them. They met in the story of Mary.

This is not the sentimentalized, obedient Mary that the patriarchal hierarchy of the Catholic Church would produce and preach - the girl-child Mary who responds meekly to the Angel Gabriel with downcast eyes. This is not the Mary of progressive Protestantism who gives birth to the baby Jesus and then politely exits stage left. This is Mary as Lady to monotheism’s Lord, and Mary as Our Mother to Christianity’s Our Father. Boston’s Black Madonna, in particular, is both Queen of Heaven and Mother Earth, re-tying together (the origin of the word religion) the heavenly and the earthly, just as Jesus re-ties together divinity and humanity.

I had been to pray before this statue a number of times before really considering the apple in her hand. I’ve read descriptions of Mary as the new Eve, obedient where Eve had been disobedient. And this is how images of Mary holding an apple are often interpreted. This has always seemed a bit simplistic to me though. This Mary is gazing right at me. Her gaze is intense and she is offering me the apple (a golden apple at that for those of you who read Greek and Roman mythology). What if the problem was never that Adam and Eve disobeyed God by taking something that was forbidden? What if everything went awry because Adam and Eve took what could only be rightfully received? In meditation I’ve learned that certain kinds of knowing cannot be grasped at or reached for with my ego and intellect. I have to be open to receiving them. Here Mary offers me the apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. All I have to do (this is one of those simple yet terrifying things, so I take a deep breath here), all I have to do is let go of all that I am grasping at and clinging to and hold out my open hands, ready to receive Her gifts.

(The lighting in the niche where this Black Madonna resides is not ideal for photography. If you want to see a better image, click through to the Cathedral's website here: https://www.stpaulboston.org/exploring-st-pauls)

Saint George and the Dragon

Around the year 270, a baby boy was born in Cappadocia. His parents named him George. Cappadocia was in the middle of what is now Turkey. When George was born, the people of Cappadocia were Greek and the region was part of the Roman Empire. George’s parents were Christians. George’s father taught him to fight with a sword. His mother taught him all about God and God’s mighty archangels - Raphael the healer, Uriel the artist, Gabriel the messenger, and Michael the protector. At 17, George joined the Roman army. He was a brave soldier and eventually became an officer. He respected the men under him. He was fair and just with them and as a result they respected him, too. 

One fall he was traveling home alone to visit his family. He came upon a beautiful young woman. She was dressed like a bride and walking all alone. This seemed strange to George. So he stopped and asked her if she was in danger, if she needed help. She said that she was in danger, but that she didn’t need help. This seemed a strange answer to George, and so he asked her to tell him her story. 

She told him that she came from a nearby city. Many years ago a dragon had come to the city and attacked it. The people had given it a sheep and it had gone off to a cave in the forest near the city. But every year it had come back. And every year it had demanded more sheep before it would go away, until finally the people had run out of sheep. That is when the dragon had started demanding children be given to him to eat.  The people’s king had made the people draw lots to decide whose children should be sent. And for a few years this had been enough to keep the dragon from destroying the city. Then one year, the lot had fallen to the king’s own daughter, Sabra. The girl’s voice shook when she told this part of the story, but she took a deep breath and continued. The king had offered the people all the gold and wealth he had, if they would just draw lots again and let him keep his daughter, but the people had refused saying he let them send their children to their deaths, so why shouldn’t he have to send his. The girl had told her father that this was only fair and that if it would save the people, she would go willingly. So the father had had her dressed as a bride and had sent her off to walk down to the cave alone to face the dragon. 

George did not ask if she was the girl in the story, he didn’t need to. He admired Sabra’s bravery and wanted to help her. He told her that he wanted to see the dragon for himself. That maybe he could help. Sabra agreed.

So they walked down to the cave together. As they got closer they could smell the dragon’s rancid breath long before they saw it. And when they did finally see it, what a terrible sight it was. The dragon emerged from the cave and it’s head towered above them. Smoke came out of its nostrils, and its teeth, each as long as a man’s forearm and as sharp as George’s sword, jutted out over its lower lip. Fear rose up from deep in George’s stomach into his throat. He had been a solider for many years, but never had he known fear like this. He remembered a prayer his mother had taught him as a child: “Saint Michael, archangel, defend us in battle and give us strength.” As he said it he realized that it wasn’t strength to face the dragon that he was asking for. It was strength to face his own fear. He drew his sword and approached the dragon from one side. The dragon lunged it’s head at George, but George stood his ground. He struck at the dragon with his sword, but it glanced off the dragon’s scales and he was forced ro retreat a few paces. Once again George whispered the prayer to Saint Michael and once again he approached the dragon from one side. George realized that as he was fighting the dragon, always approaching it from the right side, Sabra had been approaching the dragon from its other side. She was singing her own prayers, prayers to the goddess Hygieia, goddess of healing. Sabra held her long, woven belt in her hand. The next time the dragon lowered its head to lunge at George he struck at it with his sword, and Sabra slipped her belt around its neck, like a harness. Harnessed like this, the dragon bowed its head to them, still a dragon, but subdued now, all its hate and its hunger for the fear and blood of the innocent drained out of it. George raised his sword intending to thrust it into the dragon’s eye, but he caught himself. There was nothing left for him to fear. The dragon was subdued. Was that not enough?

Walking side by side, each with a hand on the belt, George and Sabra led the dragon back to the city. Sabra led them all to a temple in the city’s center, where there stood a statue of Hygieia, a serpent draped across her, the goddess and the serpent staring out at them. Sabra vowed in the temple of Hygieia to build a statue of the Archangel Michael to stand next to that of the goddess. She could not have subdued the dragon without George. George vowed to honor the goddess Hygieia and her worshippers. He could not have subdued the dragon without Sabra. The vows spoken, the mighty dragon shrank down to a serpent and slid across the floor disappearing into a crack at the base of the goddess’s statue.