The Madonna and the Political Prisoner, Chapter 27 (final)

Chapter 27 The Watcher

I’m very patient. I know she’ll come here one day, under the fig tree in her native Nazareth. She’ll remember me. She’s never forgotten that forbidden moment when we met and she dared to take the risk. I warned her then that the path she was accepting was far from easy. She knows the pain now. She thought I was talking about the immediate consequences of her premature pregnancy, but the agony of the last few weeks has surpassed that, yet she has remained faithful and now needs reassurance.

She knows everyone else has been blessed. Even her rebellious son, James, has seen his resurrected brother and is now as much an enthusiastic believer as he was a vehement mocker of his brother’s claims. All the disciples, even that arch doubter Thomas, have seen him several times. Mary of Magdala, Mary, mother of the disciple James, followers in Jerusalem, and all round this Galilean sea have seen him.

But not his mother, Mari. Of all people, why has he not come to his own mother? Was he so sure of her that she was the one person who did not need to see him? The one person who had not seen, but yet believed, extra blessed?

She does believe, of course, despite all opposition, despite all mockery, despite flouting her traditions and daring to challenge, question those in authority. Even when she alone believed, she somehow persevered. During the darkest days when all seemed lost, defeated, when the disciples fled, cowered in a locked room, her belief flickered on. Of course doubts assailed her. She would not be human had she not wondered sometimes whether her calling was not of her own dreaming. But in the end she always held on tightly to her faith. She knew God. She still knows him. I am his messenger and she will know me still.

She has come to celebrate a marriage here in her native village. Anna, daughter of her brother Benjamin. Little Anna who wanted to follow Joshua on his journeys through Galilee, Samaria and Judea, but she was betrothed already and had to stay at home. ‘Wait’ Joshua had advised her kin, and she has waited. She has been avid for news of her uncle’s mission, elated and despondent in turn as news filtered back to Nazareth. Now even she has seen the ‘Master’ as they call him and her young husband to be. They intend to join the ranks of the believers who are following the disciples all over the land.

They are so different now. James, Mari’s son, Joshua’s brother, has stayed in Jerusalem and is a controversial and fearless figure there, both revered as the Master’s brother and held in awe as he is so bold, so headstrong that he causes reactions that some worry that he will stimulate violent opposition. Simon Peter is there too, but others have moved on to other towns and cities and tell of Joshua’s new life and kingdom.

Only John has not left his home. He returned to Capernaum to nurse both his parents, for Dorcas, his mother, had a stroke and was semi-paralysed in the days following Joshua’s appearance to her and the disciples in Joseph’s Jerusalem house, and old Zebedee was struggling to walk far and wanted John to manage his fishing business that was their sole income.

And John, as he promised Joshua in those last hours, took Mari into his own home in Capernaum, where she helps him care for his ailing parents and is a revered mother figure for the wives and children of the disciples who now spend their time in far distant places. John has his own calling. He is a thinker, a writer. He has been writing down stories of the past three years and asks Mari from time to time for her memories. But he is more of a poet. He thinks about the meaning of things. He is not interested in the literal truth, no historian he. Instead he seeks out the reality underlying those remarkable events.

But Mari is here now among her own siblings, children and grandchildren. She visits often, but this is the first time since her return from Jerusalem that they are all together. She will be in the thick of things, all will come to her and want to hear her stories. The children especially will gather round her knee and she will tell them of marvellous happenings. She will not need to invent her stories now for she has such a store of memories that will enthral the children. Stories they will tell to their children and will go down many generations. But she needs some solitude. She needs her private time to talk to God, as she always did, and does. She will need to escape the bustle and the noise and she will come here, to this lone fig tree in the meadow where she used to graze her Uncle Eli’s sheep.

It is early morning. There is a little mist hanging over the valley, although the sky above is clear. I can see the lone figure walking slowly, silently along the track. She walks past this meadow. I know where she is going. She is visiting the little stream, the stream where she’d take the flock to drink, but that stream has other more vital memories. That is where, as a young girl, she lay in the water and allowed it to flow throughout her being, where she obeyed God’s call to her – for which I was the messenger.

She is staring at the ripples in the stream, watching the clear water bubble and gurgle over the rocks and thinking of that time nearly thirty five long years ago when she said ‘yes’ to her God and changed her life irrevocably. Everything that has happened in those years is imprinted on her mind as she watches the living water flow. She is praying now. Is it thanks for her life? Is there any tinge of regret? Would she have accepted the commission that I entrusted to her if she’d known all it would entail? Is she even now sad that her son did not return to see her personally, that she has to rely on the witnesses all around her that he is alive?

At last she rises from the mossy turf and comes in my direction. Yes, she’s coming to sit beneath the tree where she so often communed with God, where she would fling care and all inhibitions aside and come naked before her maker to bare her soul to him. Where he knew that she was the one, the one he’d been waiting for, to intervene in this world of his. She is coming in my direction. Will she notice me? Am I visible to her, or is it one-sided and I’m only the one allowed to see?

Out here, all alone, she’s taken off her shawl and loosed her hair. No-one will see her here, she thinks. The rituals of village life can be cast aside. She is changed of course. No longer the twelve year old virgin with those huge brown eyes and that chortling smile that she could hardly suppress. But those eyes are still fresh despite all they’ve seen. A few wrinkles at the edges, but the smile hovers on her lips as she recognises the old tree. Her long dark hair is tinged with grey now but for a few minutes the lines on her face are smoothed in relaxed contemplation of the place where she learned to meet her God. Her body is older now, for it has born seven children, but it is the same soul that lies within. Any moment now she will see me. I’m sure she will. Her discernment of the spirit life is still as sharp as ever and she will see me and remember. Will she be frightened? I think not.

She has seen me. She starts a little at first, then she smiles. She has recognised me, I know she has. She does not speak but waits for me to utter the first words. She has learned patience now, the foolhardy eagerness is held in check. What shall I say? What can I say?

“Mari!”

Her eyes brim over. She is transformed into a young maiden once more.

“It is you! I should have known. Did you know I would come here?”

“I knew you would return.”

She is silent a long time. She is not embarrassed now.

“Do you have regrets? Would you change your mind?”

She thinks. She does not rush to answer. She picks a fig from the branches and offers it to me.

“You kept your promise. You told me that I would face pain and hardship. I did. But I would not go back. God has been very close to me.”

“Perhaps, Mari, you do not realise how close. I watched and wanted sometimes to be by your side and tell you that he cared, but he said you knew. Your son is with you now. He is with us here in this meadow. He knows your fig tree as well as you yourself.”

“Can I see him? Everyone else has seen him. Will he appear to me now, alongside you?”

“Do you need to see him, Mari? He came to so many others because they needed to believe. You’re not like the others. That’s why he chose you.”

“So I shall not see him?”

“He’s with you all the time. He was with you more than four and thirty years. He knows you. You know him. What more do you need?”

“Is this the end? Have I done everything that God planned for me?”

“Who knows, Mari? You might yet be surprised. Perhaps it’s the end, perhaps it’s just the beginning.”

She is silent.

“Are you tired? Do you want it to be over?”

“If God wants more of me, then so be it. He will give me the strength.”

“More than that, Mari. He loves you. God loves you. He always did. He always will.”

“Then whatever the future holds, I accept it.”

“I know you will, just as that time I challenged you in this very spot, I knew you’d accept.”

I have said enough. It is time for me to go now. I do not know the future but I have carried out my God-given mission. My task is completed. I have to say ‘farewell’.

Then she looks me straight in the eyes, hers mirroring my own.

“You always said you were nothing but a messenger. But who are you? Who are you really?”

It is time to go.

“Your name is Mari. All will know your name. And my name is Gabriel, it is for you alone to know.”