Mary

"One day I went to visit Mary as usual. That morning I had attended mass and found myself gazing up at the large, life-size, Spanish crucifix that adorned the wall of the Church I normally attended. The Christ on the cross was bloody and beat-up. It was not one of these sanctimonious, sanitized versions of Christ on the cross, with a serene look gazing placidly out on the world. The Christ on this cross was clearly in great pain. His face was not serene, but rather contorted in a grimace. His body was pitifully bruised and broken. Looking at this man on the cross, I thought of my friend Mary. I could almost hear the words of Jesus from the cross, spoken so many centuries before, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In that moment I had the thought that Mary had indeed received the very same koan from the Father that Jesus himself had received. And I had been given this koan from Mary in a lineage of pain and suffering. In that moment, I knew she was an important teacher for me.

When I got to Mary’s house later that morning, we began our usual liturgy without delay. She was writing out her usual lament against God, like a passage from the book of Job. I was sitting there listening, or rather reading, Mary’s written comments, as I usually did. Suddenly words were coming out of my mouth that I had absolutely not planned on saying at all. Normally I would allow her lament against God to simply play itself out. It seemed to generally go on for about twenty to thirty minutes. Her husband would then come in and give her some medication or other, we would all visit together for a few more minutes and I would leave.  But on this day there was a different energy in the air.   From the time I entered her room that morning, it was as if the image of Jesus on the cross was superimposed upon the person of Mary herself. Whenever I looked at her I saw the same image of the suffering Christ I had seen that morning. The atmosphere in the room seemed charged with a sacred presence that day. About ten minutes into her lament I heard strange words suddenly coming out of my mouth.

I said to her, “Mary, I can hear how painful and difficult your experience is right now. Do you want to be free from all this pain?” She set down the writing tablet and stared at me, her eyes brimming with tears as she shook her head up and down indicating a yes in response to my question. Her eyes were filled also with something else besides tears, something new I had never seen before. There was a tenderness in her expression and perhaps a kind of expectancy of some kind.

I had never asked her a question like this before.  Normally I just listened. I think she was curious about what I was going to say next, but not any more curious than I was myself! My experience after that was that time seemed to proceed in slow motion. Words were coming out of my mouth, but there were no thoughts forming in my head beforehand. The words were simply appearing in the room and I was listening to them arrive as if someone else were speaking them. I realized that I also had tears in my eyes as I spoke these words and there was an overwhelming feeling of love that was saturating the room. I heard the following words being said and the words themselves were arising out of this presence of all-pervading love.

I said, “Mary, the only way I know of to get beyond the kind of pain you are experiencing right now, is the way of absolute surrender.”

Just as soon as I spoke these words, I began to wonder if I had made a grave mistake. By that time Mary and I had established a kind of trust and yet I wondered if she might be offended by these words and ask me to leave her house. Wasn’t I giving her one of those pat, standard answers that my CPE supervisors had warned me about? I didn’t really know for sure.  But one thing I did know. The words had already been spoken. They were still lingering in the room like the tell-tale tone of the little, high-pitched gong my old Zen master would strike at the beginning and end of a meditation session. I couldn’t take these words back.  All I could do was to wait for Mary’s response. Her beautiful eyes filled up more fully with tears and the tears began brimming over and rolled down her cheeks into the sheer silk flowers of her face veil. We just gazed at each other for probably three minutes or so and at the end of three minutes, she wrote something on her writing tablet and held it up for me to see. It said: Thank you Francis!

Mary had surrendered completely and utterly that day. She seemed to be a different person. All the bitterness disappeared and an unconditional joy appeared in its place. Her birthday was about two days after this event and it was the most joyous party I had ever attended. There was a presence of peace and joy that surrounded Mary from that day forward that was palpable. Everyone around her could feel it. When I visited her after that day, I felt absolutely uplifted in her presence. She was transfigured, radiating a living light and peace and serenity.

The next week she wrote on her tablet: I used to ask God and myself every day, Why me? Now I find myself saying, Why not me? This statement, coming from a woman who, just a week before was so bitter and angry at God, seemed truly incredible to me, like a miracle. She had definitely ‘passed’ the koan that the cancer had given her.

Mary only lived about two more weeks after this breakthrough.

Are you going to wait until you are about to die to surrender, or will you do it now?"

-- Francis Bennett