Of the numbers 20 and 16
The 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence is an annual international campaign. This issue while uncomfortable is something that we cannot shun or pretend that it somehow doesn’t happen. This year 20 Victorian women have died at the hands of others, so clearly it goes on with brutal regularity. I also rush to point out that sometimes men are also the victims of gender-based violence. This is in a minimum of cases but it does occur.
Each of us should be concerned about this issue and our own Mothers Union holds this as a very pertinent issue. The Mothers Union's 3rd objective speaks very clearly.
“To promote conditions in society favourable to stable family life and the protection of children”.
So what to say?
Today I have no hesitation in proclaiming that violence against another is a sin.
And it's not just the victim that is affected but when violence occurs against another, we are all diminished. We are all connected and when one of our sisters or brothers is hurt, then we are also wounded. As one church leader succinctly put it. “Enough,” “To hurt a woman is to wound Christ, who from a woman, took on our humanity.”
The family unit is where safety, nurture, and the flourishing of individuals and relationships should be the norm. These relationships should be delighted in and enjoyed, for that is what God hopes for us all. Violence in the context of the family then is particularly destructive, and absolutely contrary to a Christian way of life.
For your reflection, I offer you a surprising place, an unusual time and odd people.
In one month's time, the image that will be front and centre will be Mother Mary as she lays her child, in a feed box in a cave.
And in this one fleeting moment, when Our Lady places her Son in the cradle a couple of significant things happen.
First, Mother Mary makes her Son available. We need to understand the miracle that happens when He is available and the thrilling miracle when we make ourselves available. This availability changes things and it must change us. The world can change, and everyone’s life can improve, if we make ourselves available to others, without expecting them to do it for us. If we become agents of availability, we will be able to begin to mend the threads of a community torn apart by violence.
We can truly build peace only if we have peace in our hearts, only if we receive it from the prince of peace. So being available to others and for others is our commitment: By placing her child in the feed box and making Him available, Mother Mary asks us to make ourselves available for others and to others. By placing Him in a manky feed box Mary asks us to take the first step by being attentive to those who have the least.
The second thing that happens is that God is forever immersed in our muck.
His poverty, our muck, is good news for everyone, especially the marginalised, the rejected and those who do not count in the eyes of the world. Those whose scars are mental and physical and are hidden from us.
For that is how God comes: That is what is beautiful about seeing him there, laid in a manger.”
But for Mary, a mother, it must have been painful to see her son in our muck.
Contrast the amazement and enthusiasm of the shepherds on the one hand, with the quiet, pensive reaction of Mary on the other.
The shepherds tell everyone about what they have seen. They can’t shut up about it. Their exuberance and amazement remind us of the beginnings of faith when everything seems easy and straightforward.”
Mary’s pensiveness, on the other hand, is the expression of a mature, adult faith. Her faith is not a newborn, but rather a faith that now gives birth. For spiritual fruitfulness is born of trials and testing and it takes root in, grows in and flourishes in, the muck of our humanity. The mess of you and I.
Mary gives God to the world in a dark stable in Bethlehem, Others, before the scandal of the manger, might feel deeply troubled. She does not: she keeps these things and ponders them in her heart.
And through faith, in her mother’s heart, Mary comes to realise that the glory of the Most High appears in humility; she welcomes the plan of salvation whereby God must lie in a manger available and mucky. She sees the divine child frail and shivering, and she accepts the wondrous, exquisite, divine interplay between grandeur and littleness…. divinity and humanity.
So on this day when we call to mind the atrocities against women and therefore their children, bring to mind Mary who knew how to hold together the various threads of life, the glorious as well as the worrisome. We need such people, capable of weaving the threads of communion in the midst of the barbed wire of conflict, violence and division.
You and I need to combine dreams and aspirations with concrete reality.
In these 16 days of activism, we place ourselves under the protection of this woman, the mother of God, who is also our mother. May she help us to keep and ponder all things, unafraid of trials and with the joyful certainty that the Lord is faithful and can transform every wound, every tear, and even a violent death into a triumphant resurrection.