Dr Sarah Jane Boss established the Centre for Marian Studies more than a decade ago, to provide for ‘a particular way of looking at theology’ and this book is one interesting product of that ‘particular way’. It preaches an urgent and timely message: Pope John Paul II ‘challenged us to find a new ecological awareness based on a loving appreciation of God's creation. … It is time to consider more prayerfully the connections between everything in creation’(CAFOD, Side by Side, summer 2004). Back in 1996 the Bishops of England and Wales asserted that ‘those who feel moved to a loving care for the internal balances of nature are responding to a deep religious instinct planted in them by God’(THE COMMON GOOD).
Sarah Boss propounds the thesis that the whole cosmos is infused with the presence of God and so is, like Mary, God‐bearing; it should therefore be regarded as essentially sacred in a manner analogous to our perception of Christ's mother. In consequence of this she explores various aspects of doctrine concerning the Blessed Virgin and the forms of devotion to which it has given rise, with the presumption that these can enlighten and instruct us on the most fundamental reason for what is commonly called nature conservation, and indicate the method and manner in which the rape not just of planet earth but of our cosmos should be halted and reversed.
The selection of topics for her nine chapters is to some extent predictable: Mother of God, All‐holy One, Virginity, Wisdom and Immaculate Conception, but their treatment is not. They are moreover interspersed with more unexpected themes – the Lily Crucifix, Heaven on earth, the Sacred Vessel and Darkness before the Dawn; and in all cases the approach is unexpected and arresting, if not always convincing.
The lily crucifix serves to remind us that the lily is the symbol of both purity AND fertility, and it is noted that 25th March is not only the feast of the Annunciation but also the – legendary – date of both the crucifixion and the creation of the world: ‘Mary stands at the Annunciation in the same relation to God as do the waters of creation at the beginning of the world’(p. 4). A major theme of the thesis is the unboundedness of God himself, expressed most strikingly in the Trinity of three persons, and so the absence or removal, or at least the permeableness in redeemed creation, of boundaries we now take for granted: between human nature and other created forms; between life and death, time and eternity; most of all between heaven and earth, God and humanity. This theme is most fully explored in the context of a somewhat convoluted discussion of the relation between a pregnant woman and her unborn child, which would seem to conclude that the significance of Mary's relation to the God she bore in her womb is, for us, prior to that of the hypostatic union of two natures in the one person of Jesus Christ.
Much of the author's argumentation comes from extensive knowledge of the scriptures meditatively studied for their deeper implications. These are found especially in the relevance of Old Testament types, notably with regard to the Visitation foreshadowed by David's reception of the ark into Jerusalem, and the personification of the figure of Wisdom. That section is incidentally helpful in its explanatory justification of the application of this typos to Mary as well as to Christ, originated it seems by John Scotus Eriugena and Alcuin of York in the Eighth Century.
Two further fascinating sources quarried are the recoverable history of the many shrines of the Virgin in Europe and elsewhere, and various early and mediaeval myths and legends about her patronage, including that concerning Richard II and the Wilton Diptych. Multiple references indicate the breadth of reading and research – illustrated by attractive etchings – which have gone into a work which must surely contribute to the cause of nature conservation and a more just and humble approach to the earth's resources.
The distribution of material in the book is curiously uneven: chapters vary in length from three to thirty‐seven pages, and some deductions from acknowledged theological or historical truths severely strain credulity – for instance the implications of associating Mary with the month of May, or the assertion that creation is a reflection of Mary and NOT vice versa! Conversely some seemingly relevant topics like virginity or immaculate conception are relatively undeveloped and dismissed in two or three pages. Discussion of ‘the sacred’ in chapter 3, though lengthy, is somewhat obscure and ambiguous though it is taken up again, perhaps more satisfactorily, in chapter 4.
While the book does not explicitly tackle the question of how a sense of the sacred can be revived in the context of irreversible cultural evolution through the industrial and technological revolutions with their concomitant utilitarian and materialistic mindset, it should be an inspiring and powerful stimulus to that revival. Perhaps its most telling insight is that, since it is by wisdom that God orders creation, wisdom is already an attribute of the natural order before it is a human, moral quality.
