As the latest Pew Research census has shown that the Catholic Church is haemorrhaging people to Pentecostalism in South America, it has to provoke us to think more about the Church and the Holy Spirit. I found myself reflecting on an unusual and personal apparition that became known, in the charismatic circles of a group of astonished Protestants, as “Our Lady of East Mosely”. It seemed to me it might be more theologically important than I had thought it to be at the time.
Canon Tom Smail was once the star research student of the 20th century’s most famous Protestant theologian, Karl Barth. Smail founded the renewal organisation called the “Fountain Trust” as the charismatic movement erupted. He was that very rare thing: a man of high intelligence who was vulnerable enough to Christ to be graced by the Holy Spirit. He received an apparition of Our Lady, early one morning when he was living in East Mosely, Surrey, and leading this Pentecostal renewal organisation.
The Orthodox theologian Dr Andrew Walker described the astonishment when Smail, then still formally a Presbyterian minister with parish connections in Northern Ireland, told audiences what had happened to him: “He had received a visitation from Mary who told him, ‘You are not paying enough attention to my Son.’” It was not an experience that was welcomed by Smail’s Calvinist colleagues in Northern Ireland; few, if any of his Protestant circle knew how to manage the information.
Tom and I were colleagues for a few years, and I remember vividly his dry re-telling of the encounter. Tom was a sceptical Scottish theologian of international repute. He was clever, witty and affectionately just a little pugnacious. These were all the more extraordinary characteristics for an international leader of the charismatic movement; it’s also worth remembering that most Presbyterians are less than sympathetic to the honour given by Catholics to Mary’s place in the Church.
A few months before Tom died, I visited him and asked him if I could record his re-telling of the event. I listened to the recording again recently. “One night after beginning to wake from sleep I came awake with a sense of presence. There followed a real dialogue. I said to the presence: ‘Who is that?’ She replied, ‘It’s the Virgin Mary.’ ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘I’m helping you to praise my Son.’”
“That’s all right, then”, Tom replied tersely. “You can stay.” Later on he was to talk about his next unspoken reaction: “Well, that’s a rather better answer than you gave to St Bernadette at Lourdes.” Tom was as deeply moved as he was surprised by the experience of his encounter with Our Lady, but I had forgotten as I listened to the recording of our conversation about how much difficulty he had with the concept of our Lady as the Immaculate Conception.
Tom talked about his encounter with her, but got uncharacteristically theologically stuck on developing a deeper understanding of why she had come to him. Obviously, to help him praise her Son. But what are the implications of Our Lady involving herself with the impetus and birth of this charismatic renewal of the Church in the Holy Spirit?
We know of St Maximillian Kolbe from his heroic sacrifice in Auschwitz, but it is less well known that he spent much of his life developing a Marian theology which revealed “the hidden relationship between the Spirit of God and the Virgin of Nazareth”. It is a rich and unique theology that contributes to “a more vital piety” for the members of Christ’s Mystical Body. Kolbe teaches that it is Mary’s Immaculate Conception that accounts for her special relationship with the Holy Spirit, as it was accomplished through its direct work.
God the Father and the Son willed that Mary be united to their common Spirit of Love in such a close and intimate manner that would allow the Holy Spirit to bring about the Incarnation of the Word within her womb, making Mary the Mother of God; further, that this union would enable Mary to be the instrument or vessel through which the Holy Spirit would distribute all the graces merited by Christ. Kolbe emphasises that the precise meaning of “Immaculate Conception” is a great mystery, too deep and mysterious to be fully understood.
As the Church has fragmented into different theological and spiritual factions, Catholics are privileged to see that a ministry of Mary herself, who is both the Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church, is to act as a bridge of reconciliation between both the fractured Churches of the Reformation and the fractured Churches of Pentecostal renewal to bring them back to the body of Christ: the family from which they were divided.
As we hunger and thirst for the Holy Spirit to renew the Church and to unite the fractured body of her Son, it is Our Lady to whom we must go to ask for her prayers. As Tom Smail experienced, when the Holy Spirit is invoked, she is close by to provide the graces we need.
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