Mother of God

He was there, sobbing. The moonlight was his only company, casting the eerie midnight glow of silver and darkness through the stained glass window. Before him was the Mother of God, her infant son swaddled in her arms in a light blue cloth, hidden- no, protected from the world. His nature was not one that was to be shown to the world until the time was right. From the beginning, he faced persecution, indignation, and prejudice, until his bittersweet end, an end that entreated all to the same. To paradise. To heaven, to be spent with him in eternal triumph. To be with their creator. To be by his side. To mirror him, as above so below, for they were made in his image, and thus were to be called back to him when all was said and done.

These stray beams, despite their ordered entry through the precision-built breaks in the ordained stonework, a process of a dozen years through the handiwork of twelve-dozen men, seemed to land in one of two places- the doors, and the statue. As he sobbed, he looked back at the doors, before glancing down at his hands, shaking, accidentally catching the teardrops that he now allowed to run down his face and collect in his palms. He could never collect a tithe like this, he thought, and for a moment he found almost solace in the placating amusement the thought brought. He had collected any other kind of tithe before. Tithes born of flesh, of blood, of fire and metal and sin; such were tithes resulting of God, he told his constituents. Such were tithes borne through our disconnect from God, the result of our time away from him, our spiritual separation, each a showing of our own mark of the original sin on our conscience. So, he had always taken these tithes. He could feel the heat from each and every bill and coin that he collected, that he stowed away after every session. Some of them were warm despite the clumps of cold metal. Others, commonly paper, were warm, hot to the touch, they burned, marked his hands with ash and sulfur as he smiled and nodded and accepted the bills and thanked the kind patrons for their money soaked in the sweat and blood of their kinfolk.

Those were the offerings that truly allowed things to take place. Such were the offerings that really allowed for the church to thrive. Such were the tithes that funded the charity drive that ensured every child in attendance would be properly equipped to start and maintain their education. Such were the tithes that brought food to their pantry, so that the hungry, the thirsty, those physically and spiritually starved could sate themselves through a sermon. Such were the tithes that enabled him to drive here every day. Such were the tithes that made sure his clothes were clean behind that pulpit, such were the tithes that funded lunches and breakfasts with donors and constituents, with other pastors in other churches. Such funds were needed, and so they were taken for the act of moving the congregation closer to God. So such funds were to be taken whether they were soaked in holy water, blood, or bile, or oil. We were all only human, after all, and as such, we were all only giving within the means we could access.

But he stared at his tears in his palms. He watched the tears pool, slowly flowing down the creases and folds in his hands, running down his wrists, drying on his forearm, their tracks shining on his skin.

Would he still take money soaked in tears?

He had refused such tithes before outright. Money given in sadness, in desperation, in the wholly human desire that getting right with God would remedy some issue encroaching upon their lives or their livelihood, were turned down or returned with a smile and a prayer in times long since passed. These were not dollars that could rightfully be used for the Lord. Could a shepherd take the wool, the flesh of a lamb, soaked in the tears of its parents, so that it may enter the flock? No, he had thought, the lamb should be allowed entry in the fact that it was willing to offer. Every child was Abraham, every parent was Isaac, because both were merely human. Both were simply God’s chosen people, looking to him to seek entry to the gates beyond mortality.

But his eyes went back up towards the doors.

Once, he recalled, once, once only, had he taken a tithe enshrined in tears and offered in desperate pleas of absolution. A small family, three, forty-seven, twenty-four. He was one of the greatest donors the church had to offer. There was no clue where his money came from, only that it had helped the parish in ways untold since he had started donating. But the looks on their faces were desolate. Ragged, creased faces, with bags worth centuries of sleepless nights under their eyes, wrinkles on his face, splotches of purple and black on the mother’s with the same dried tracts of tears working their way towards her chin. And the child, held by the mother at her bosom, swaddled in a cloth of golden silk.

They had come, offering sacrament for me, for themselves, in an exchange that would be under the light of God, thusly under His grace, his approval. The father used to be clergy, he knew, of a different country, retired and moved here as a final grace by whatever congregation he had worked for. This church was non-denominational, simply attempting to allow all who basked in the grace and light of God to be enveloped by His presence.

He stared at the door, where they once stood, in the dark of night, alone, the four of them, doors spread open as if to announce their presence to the world, the dismal lighting a reminder that their presence meant nothing to anyone else around. The light of this night that now shone upon the doors taunted him, haunted him, was a stark and bleak reminder of the fact that those doors now sat closed.

There were candles lit throughout the hall. Some had already died, gone out, others still fighting with over half their lifespan left, full of vigor, full of will and hope to continue on until dawn struck again. Their amber halos provided some sort of contrast and color to the cool, sterile light that bathed the two ends of the hall.

The end opposite of the doors was the statue of Mary, Mother of God, holding her nearly newborn son.

He looked at the baby, precious, pure, safe in the hands of his mother. There they were, the holy dichotomy. Man and Woman. Mother and Son. Adult and Infant. Mortal, and God and Mortal again. But in each other’s grasp was the other. For Jesus, son of Joseph, son of Mary, Son of God, was mortality. And there, swaddled in Mary’s own arms, birthed from her own womb, was the divine. When the man Jesus, son of David, son of Joseph and Mary, Son of God, was baptized in the Jordan, by John the Baptist, the water parted and lit anew, and Heaven itself bestowed upon Jesus its blessing, the blessing of His Father, Our Father. A true baptism, a holy one, to lead to one in fire and the Holy Spirit.

He had gone through trial by fire as well, he had seen. He stared up at the Blessed Mother holding the fruit of her womb, the seed of God.

That night, the older man had the woman and their offspring in tow, refugees, vagrants, in robes and gold, in chains and loincloths, in leaves and naked and in simple dress all the same, just people, Pharisees and missionaries and lovers and wedded and children of God all the same. After a moment inside, away from the blustering winds and pounding rain that they had sought shelter from, the father shooed the mother away, waving her off with a flick of his hand. She stood, illuminated despite it all in a sliver of moonbeam leaking in from a window in the rock roof, and stared at the Virgin Mary and the Son of God. Then, after a moment, she withdrew before he need repeat his behest, handing him the baby, her face cloaked in shadow and retreating into the night. He had never seen the mother, and had never seen her again since.

Before him stood the father, and the daughter, and he looked at him for but a moment.

“Father?”

The reverend spread his arms, smiling.

“Here am I.”

“I come with offering beyond any tithe, Father. I come with offering sacred as any covenant, more valuable than even what was granted to our Son of our Father, Lord of Lords, on the day of his birth.”

The baby began to slowly stir in his arms, as he rocked her back to sleep, staring at the father the whole time.

“I come for you to baptize my daughter, father. I come to seek your holy guiding hand.”

His eyebrows raised, but he accepted the request, and the two of them moved to prepare. Much of the preparation was rushed, at the behest of the child’s father, under the assurance that in the homestead many prayers had been answered, and rites prepared and done. The rush was strange, he thought, the strength of insistence almost worrying- but here was a man who had proven his faith longer than he had even been tested as a child of God. So what questions could he muster?

There, the baby was stripped bare, under the light of candle and what little argent peered through the throttling greys and blacks of the stormy night, held by the priest and the father alike, and the water was brought out, and the sacraments started.

“What name do you give this child?”

“Mariah.”

“And what do you wish of the Church for your child?”

“I want her to be saved, Father. I want us all to be saved.”

They were quiet, for a moment.

Their eyes locked.

“I wish her to be baptized.”

“...Well then. Do you accept bearing the burden of educating your child in the ways of Christ, of the ways of God, through the Church? Your child’s relationship with God will be defined from their first sacrament to their reunification with the Lord, not by me, or the Church, or even the Spirit within them, but through you.”

He merely nodded.

Clearly, there would be no Godparents.

He reached over, signing the cross on the child’s forehead. The father followed.

“God our Father, you give us grace through sacramental signs which tell us of the wonders of your unseen power.”

He sprinkled a bit more water, from his hands, into the basin. The ripples bounced off its golden edges, disseminating amongst each other.

“In Baptism we use your gift of water, which you have made a rich symbol of the grace you give us in this sacrament.”

He watched the father’s grip on the baby’s ankle strengthen. The baby began to stir for a moment, before her face went blank. She was upside-down above the water, and the priest had removed his hand to engage in the sacraments.

“At the very dawn of creation your Spirit breathed on the waters, making them the wellspring of all holiness.”

The father nodded along.

“The waters of the great flood you made a sign of the waters of baptism, that make an end of sin and a new beginning of goodness.”

“Mhm.”

“You freed the children of Abraham from the slavery of the Pharaoh, bringing them dry-shod through the waters of the Red Sea, to be an image of the people set free in Baptism.”

He turned to the baby.

“See where you are baptized, see where Baptism comes from- if not from the cross of Christ, from his death.”

The father’s hand shuddered slightly, but he could not tell from a glance up how his grip had changed, if at all.

“There is the whole mystery: he died for you. In him you are redeemed, in him you are saved.”

The father slowly started lowering the baby.

A frown furrowed on his brow, but he quickly rectified himself, and rushed to finish.

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into-”

The baby’s face breached the surface of the water, and her eyes shot wide, looking up at him through the shimmering surface.

“-into, uh, into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

He stared at the father, at Mariah in front of him, still under the water.

“Father, God called to me in a dream the night before last. And he told me, ‘hark, Abram!’ As I responded, he told me, told me to take my daughter, my only daughter, who I love, and I cherish, and stand in the lineage of my forefathers before. Even now, I hear him calling my name as I hold Mariah.”

His face twisted in horror. The moonlight in the room slowly faded away, only scorching, dying flames providing sight to the three blind in the room.

“He told me, Father. He told me that he swore that if I would not withhold my daughter, my only… my only daughter, as he did not withhold his one true Son, that he will surely bless me! That he will bless you, and the congregation, such that our faith will proliferate to match the stars in the sky and the sands on the seashore, Father.”

He could not move. He was nearly rooted in place. The baby had not thrashed, had not moved, the entire time. Just a singular breath when its mouth went under the water, and a blank stare. It had been hardly a minute, if even. Perhaps if he reached out, and grabbed the father’s wrist, and pulled the baby away from the water to breach the surface and pull in the air that she needed, perhaps the baby would be fine. She could grow up in the warm embrace of the congregation, feel the soft elation of the light of the Holy Spirit that resided within her, the community, the peace of mind after a piece of scripture encapsulates exactly the worries in one’s mortal mind, the relief of a sinner who was acknowledged and still bathed in the glory of God. She could assist around the parish, there was room- she could dust, she could light candles, she could live a sound, fulfilling life, and die in the arms of Christ and surrounded by people who cared for her fully and truly.

She did not have to die like this, some virgin sacrifice to what was assuredly not God. These practices were not just pagan, they were barbaric- the throwing of babes to the fires of Ba’al, to the mouths and rot of Beelzebul in the pits of Sheol. This was no better to do not only to their own but to anyone else’s, than to throw them into the molten bronze shaped as a bull, to hear their screams and their frying skin reverberate out into the world around them as they suffered like so many. He had placed the cross on her forehead, and her own father had carved it out of her skin as a metaphor and placed her on it, dangling upside-down into the water that should have, had he done things correctly, asserted himself, allowed the sacraments to go as they should have, if he had not allowed his faith to be overwhelmed by fear and obedience… this here was an extension of the blood of Christ, as the sacrament joined one with him in the Holy Spirit as surely as dying in his own arms and becoming one with him.

As he stood there, frozen in fear, he saw the light leave her eyes from beneath the murky water, a few bubbles working their way to the nearly still surface before popping into the air around them. He realized that no, she could not.

His eyes tore away from the doors.

There, he was. Kneeling in front of the statue of Mary, Mother of God, holding her nearly newborn son.

There were tears in his eyes, dropping to the ground below. Whatever light had been shining in through the windows recoiled away from him, as though God’s own hands were retracting from allowing him their grace. He didn’t want it anymore, didn’t think he deserved it- but even if he did, that would not have mattered.

He kneeled in front of that statue, and cried, his tears falling away from him, as though he could not baptize himself even in his own sorrow. There was no saving, no reconciliation to find in himself. There was no comfort from God in this hollow, empty hall, the candles long since dead as he sat there in the suffocating, oppressive silence. The only thing God allowed him was the cage of his own mind, the horror of his own thoughts. He was not allowed the grace of even a fleeting distraction.

He stared up at the Mother of God, her infant son swaddled in her arms in a light blue cloth, hidden- no, protected from the world. From a world that allowed sinners like him to act in God’s image, that allowed frauds like him to proclaim a faith they would not follow. He reached out to the infant in the darkness.

“I’m so sorry. I’m… I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry.”

He had stopped crying as he leaned his head back. He could not be baptized even in his own tears.