Julian of Norwich and Other Tibetan Lamas

And I said: ‘Benedicite dominus!” This I said for reverence in my mening, with a  mighty voice. And full greatly was I astonned, for wonder and marvalye that I had, that he that is so reverent and so dreadful will be so homely with a sinful creature liveing in this wretched flesh. ₁

In a poem entitled, “The Blessed Virgin Compared to a Window,” Thomas Merton gives voice to the kenotic self-emptying of the Mother of Jesus:

Because my will is simple as a window / And knows no pride of original birth, / It is my life to die, like glass, by light … / I longed all night … for dawn my death: / When I would marry day, my Holy Spirit: And die by transubstantiation into light. / I vanish into day, and leave no shadow / But the geometry of my cross … ₂

And in his essay, “The Woman Clothed with the Sun,” TM intimately links the self-emptying of the Son with that of the Mother:

Mary, who was empty of all egotism, free from all sin, was as pure as the glass of a very clean window that has no other function than to admit the light of the sun. If we rejoice in that light, we implicitly praise the cleanness of the window. And of course it might be argued that in such a case we might well forget the window altogether. This is true. And yet the Son of God, in emptying Himself of His majestic power, having become a child, abandoning Himself in complete dependence to the loving care of a human Mother, in a certain sense draws our attention once again to her. The Light has wished to remind us of the window, because He is grateful to her and because He has an infinitely tender and personal love for her. ₃

Endnotes

1. Julian of Norwich, The Writings of Julian of Norwich, Eds, Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins. University Park, The Pennsylvania State University Press, Chapter 4, lines 13-17, pages 135 and 137.
2. “The Blessed Virgin Compared to a Window” was retrieved from the webpage, “Marian Poems of Thomas Merton,” offered by the University of Dayton, Ohio:  Poems by Thomas Merton : University of Dayton, Ohio (udayton.edu)
3. Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation. New York: New Directions Books, 1961, page 172. I am grateful to the following article for highlighting this passage: Kenneth M. Voiles, “The Mother of All the Living: The Role of the Virgin Mary in the Spirituality of Thomas Merton.” Merton Annual 5. 297-310.