MARYS for May #28 – Mary Ponders

The Virgin Enthroned with a Book

Panel from the Ghent Altarpiece 

Jan van Eyck, Oil and Tempera on Wood, 1426-29

St. Bavo Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium

Could Mary read? Ancient traditions attest that she was sent to the Temple in Jerusalem as a young girl where she learned to read and write. Certainly, she is often depicted with a book, as in this glorious panel from the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, most often referred to as the Ghent Altarpiece. A large and complex composition by the Flemish artist Jan van Eyck and his brother, the altarpiece, commissioned for the Cathedral of St. Bavo, is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of European art.

Why do artists so often paint Mary with a book? She reads at the feet of her mother Anne. She is absorbed in her book as the angel Gabriel alights with his message. She lays her book aside to tend to her playful young son and his cousin John. In van Eyck’s painting, she reads even while enthroned as queen of heaven. (Does anyone else think it’s wonderful to think that there will be reading in heaven?)

I think the book is an emblem for Mary’s prayer and her pondering. When Mary is reading, she is at prayer. She “reads” in the fullest sense: she searches, she understands, she opens her mind and heart completely to whatever message the Word of God wishes to speak to her. As she ponders the word, it penetrates every part of her being. She becomes the word she reads and the Word takes flesh in her flesh. Her attentiveness leads her to “read” the signs of the times. She anticipates her son’s first miracle when she tells the stewards at Cana: “Do whatever he tells you.”

The book is also a symbol for Mary. The Blessed Virgin is the book in which the Church reads what it means to live with faith. She is "the sacred book of the divine precepts, in which what pleases God is made known to us.” (St. Theodore of Studion, d. 826). The Virgin Mary with her book teaches us to pray better and to ponder more attentively. In her we study the most faithful and fruitful illustration of the Word made flesh.