Mother's Eyes

by Woods, Karen

  All of them came to her, assembling around the bed.

  “Emma,” Yaacov bar Zebedee said. “We have been brought here from distant lands.”

  “Some of you have been brought here from further away than that,” Miriam said, looking at her stepson Yaacov bar Yosef. “To Elohim be the glory and honor! He has heard my prayer and given me the desire of my heart, that I might see each of you again, to let you know how perfectly I love you, before my Son comes for my soul. I am the most blessed among women, that I should be cared for in this way. Rejoice, my sons! Praise with me Elohei Sara, Elohei Rivka, Elohei Leah ve Elohei Rakhel!” the God of Sarah, the God of Rebecca, the God of Leah, and the God of Rachael. “Praise Elohim, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!”

  Just then, Saul, now Paul, of Tarsus appeared among them, along with Dionysius the Areopagite, Hierotheus the bishop of Athens, Timothy, and several other people, men and women, who had gone from Yerushalayim into foreign lands for the sake of preaching the good news of her Son.

  Sepphora, Abigail, and Yael took it upon themselves to light candles and lamps.

  Miriam called the people in the room to her one by one. She spoke to each of them, telling each how much she appreciated the work he or she had done, speaking to each of his or her faith and the hardships endured in being a missionary. She placed her hand on each of their heads and blessed them, wishing each one eternal happiness. When she had spoken with each person, she led them all in prayer for the peace and welfare of the world.

  Then Miriam began to sing, “Halleyah! My soul, give praise to Adonai. I will praise Adonai all my days, I will make music to my to El Chaiyai,” the God of my life, “ while I live…”

  The rest joined her in singing this psalm.

  At the end of that song, and several other joyful psalms, Miriam prayed aloud, “Father, thank you for all the blessings you have showered on me. Continue to bless richly the people who love me. Let them rejoice in their memories of our times together. Now Father, I remember old Simeon and what he said when he saw Yehoshua at his pidyon ha-ben. He prayed, ‘Now, let your servant depart in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared for all people, a light to enlighten ha Goyim and the glory of your people Yisra’el.’ Father, I have seen the salvation of the world in the life, death, and resurrection of my Son. I have seen ha Goyim being brought into relationship with you. If it is your will to call me home, Father, then I am ready to come to You. But, as always, I am Your handmaiden. And I seek only to serve You.”

  Suddenly, the room was filled with light, bright white light. Miriam looked at the people in the room and saw fear in their eyes. She wasn’t afraid. Her son was coming for her.

  And there He was. He stood just in front of the image Lucas had painted of him. The great servants of God, the Prophets and Patriarchs, stood beside him. In the brightness of the light, she could see the faces of Gavriel, and many others, smiling at her.

  “My Lord and my God!” Yochanan bar Zebedee proclaimed on little more than a whisper as he turned to see what, in this case who, Miriam had been looking at.

  All who had been standing around her bed, turned towards her son, dropped to their knees, then placed their foreheads on the floor in reverence for God the Son, their Master Yehoshua.

  Miriam cried out, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in Elohim, my savior, for He has regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden!”

  She rose from her bed and made her way through the group of kneeling people. She knelt before Him. “My Son! My Savior!”

  “Emma!” He said, extending his hand to her. “Come, enter Life Eternal.”

  Joy filled her soul. “Into your hands I commit my spirit,” she answered Him. Miriam felt herself slide off into sleep. And then those around her saw her crumple to the floor as though she had merely fallen asleep.

  Beautiful music came, from a chorus of angels. The joyous song began, “Hail, Full of Grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women! For behold, the Queen, God’s Maiden, comes. Lift up the gates and with the Ever-Existing One, take up the Mother of Light; for through Her salvation has come to the human race. It is impossible to gaze upon her, and it is impossible to render her due honor.”

  Miriam heard their song, as did all in the house, and those who remained in the street.

  The bright light was gone from the room as suddenly as it had come. And yet, the music of the angels remained.

  Miriam was aware of the people in the room going to her now empty body, picking up the fragile shell that had once held her spirit, and placing that now vacant Temple of the Holy Spirit upon the bed.

  “She wears such a joyous expression,” Yochanan bar Zebedee remarked.

  “She smells so sweet, as though she had already been anointed with spices,” Matthias observed.

  “She is dead?” Sepphora asked.

  Lucas, the physician, felt for breath and pulse, finding neither, he replied, “Yes, she’s gone.”

  Yael said, through tears, “Then you had better step away and let us wash and shroud her body for burial. She didn’t say anything to us, but I know she was worried about not having the money for spices for her burial. But it seems as her Son took care of that for her. She needs no spices from us. She is to be laid in the tomb of her parents in Gethsemane.”

  The men stepped out, leaving Sepphora, Abigail, and Yael to prepare the body for burial.

  Miriam saw the men telling the still assembled crowd in the street outside the house that Yehoshua had come for her. And she saw the tears fall from so many eyes.

  “They shouldn’t weep for me,” she told her Son.

  “They are weeping for themselves because they will miss you,” Yehoshua said to her.

  She nodded. The angelic music continued, the angels singing songs of praise to God. Miriam joined their song.

  “Come, see how much they love you,” her Son told her a little while later. “This is your funeral procession.”

  Miriam watched the large crowd, thousands of people, virtually every Christian in the area of Yerushalayim, follow the bier which was carried on the shoulders of Simon Cephas, Yaacov bar Zebedee, Matthias, Bartholomew, Andreas, and Yaacov bar Halphai. Yochanan bar Zebedee led the procession, carrying that palm Gavriel had given to her when he’d came to her with the news of her impending repose.

  The crowd carried unlit candles and smoking censers, sending up great amounts of sweet smelling incense. A great resplendent cloud circled over them as they walked. And the angels sang songs of praise for Miriam. Those songs were picked up by the crowd.

  The procession drew much attention from those who weren’t part of it. The sound of the singing and scent of the incense filled the air, warning people for some distance that this great event was happening.

  By the time they passed the Temple, the High Priest and many of his people were on the steps, looking to determine what this demonstration was. Miriam saw and heard the vexation of the unbelievers at the honor being heaped on her. She heard the envy and vengencefulness in their voices, all of the hatred they’d once shown to her Son, they now directed at her funeral procession.

  An angry mob, both civilians and soldiers, was quickly organized for the purpose of disrupting the funeral procession and of setting Miriam’s body ablaze.

  The great cloud which had hovered over the procession descended until it surrounded the mourners, forming a wall around them. The members of the mob could no longer see the funeral. They could hear the sound of all those people walking in procession. They could hear the singing of the angels and the people, although they didn’t want to admit they heard angels singing. Yet, they could not see anyone.

  Athonios, one of the Temple priests, one of the parushim, had infiltrated the procession before the cloud came down. Miriam watched all of this. She could see the hatred in his eyes, hatred directed at her, but most of all directed at her Son.

  “That man needs help,” Miriam said as Athonios w
aited until the men bearing the bier took a brief rest.

  The crowd chanted the mizmor, the psalm, that had been chanted at Yosef’s burial, the same one that she, Yochanan, and the women had chanted as Yosef of Arimathea and Nicodemus and the servants had carried Yehoshua to the tomb, the same psalm that Yochanan and she had chanted after Stephanos has been stoned to death.

  At the end of the psalm, the men started to pick back up the bier. Athonios rushed them and tried to topple her body onto the ground. Yet, as soon as he touched the bier, he lost all sensation in, and use of, his hands. It was as if he had no hands at all, for all the good those appendages did him.

  Lucas the physician looked at Athonious. “The Angel of Adonai is a guard for those who fear Him. Angels defend all who love Him. Sometimes that defense is literal. Repent of your evil ways and be healed.”

  “I do repent of this,” Athonios said, his voice very tight. “If Adonai would send his angels to protect even the dead body of the mother of Yehoshua of Natsarat, in how much more esteem must He hold Yehoshua?”

  “Yehoshua is Adonai,” Lucas replied. “He took human form, born from Miriam of Natsarat, who remained a virgin. Naturally, He will protect His mother. One of the first things that Elohim wrote on the tablets at Sinai as to our duties to one another is to honor our father and mother.”

  Athonios looked at the body on the bier. Tears welled up in his eyes. “I now believe Yehoshua is Adonai. I would stop anyone from hurting my mother, if I could.”

  Then brother,” Lucas said, touching Athonios hands, “In the name of Elohim, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, receive the healing of your hands.”

  Athonios flexed his hands.

  “Come, brother, walk with us,” Lucas invited him.

  Miriam smiled as all heaven rejoiced at the repentance and belief of this man.

  When the procession reached the tomb of her parents in Gethesame, they put down the bier. One by one, two by two, people came to say goodbye, to touch her, to kiss her, to see her, one last time.

  The candles that some people had carried came in handy as the crowd did not leave until nearly sunset. Candlelight allowed them to place her body safely in the tomb.

  It took several of the men to roll the stone back over the mouth of the tomb.

  Most of the crowd had gone, but those closest to Yehoshua, those who had been transported in, stayed behind in this garden to pray.

  Yehoshua smiled at her. “Emma, I have a gift for you.”

  “What more do I need than I have, my son?”

  “You gave me a body. I will now return the gift. You will be the first of among those taken soul and body into my presence.”

  “There have been two before me,” she answered. “Enoch and Eliyahu. Both were brought here body and soul, without ever seeing death.”

  “I could have brought you here directly, as I brought them, but it was necessary for the people to know that you actually died.”

  “I understand,” she said. “You need people to know that I was human, in order for them to believe you were human. A child takes his nature from his parents. In your case, that gave you two natures; human and divine.”

  “Precisely. Come, Emma. I will take you to your body.”

  They stood in the tomb in a pool of light. Miriam looked at her body, wrapped in the linen shroud she had woven.

  “Emma, it is your time to rise from the dead, as all the Just will rise, with a glorified body, at the last day,” Yehoshua said.

  “I am ready, my Son.”

  And then, she found herself again back in a physical body, and standing beside him, looking down at the pile of burial clothes where her body had lain.

  She looked at her son and smiled.

  He took her by the hand and then they were back among the angels who were singing their praises, “Holy, holy, holy…”

  Miriam watched as Teom arrived at her parents’ tomb on the evening of the third day following her death.

  “Poor Teom,” she said, “it seems that he misses everything.”

  “Always for a reason. Always to teach a bigger lesson.” Yehoshua replied. “We delayed bringing him here so that he could be the one to discover you have risen.”

  She watched as Teom, heartbroken, lay face down, sobbing before the tomb of her parents. She watched as he begged the rest of them to let him see her, to say goodbye to her one last time. She watched as they rolled the stone away, lit candles and went inside.

  And she watched as they, rejoicing at their discovery of her empty spot in the tomb, empty except for the burial shroud, as they knew this meant she had been resurrected.

  As they rolled the stone back over the mouth of the tomb, Yochanan observed, “Elohim has given her things above nature. He preserved her virginity, even through childbirth. And now, He has preserved her body from decay. Remember the song the angels sang as she died, ‘For behold, the Queen, God’s Maiden, comes.’ She is now Queen of Heaven. She is daughter to the Father, unwedded bride to the Holy Spirit, and Mother to the Son. Halleuya!”

  She watched as they returned to Yochanan’s house, to take food and rest.

  “Go to them,” Yehoshua said.

  Just as Yehoshua had appeared inside the locked doors of the upper room, Miriam appeared to those who had remained at the tomb and now were at Yochanan’s house, eating a simple meal.

  They had been talking among themselves when she appeared there. But the conversation ceased as one by one the men, along with Sepphora, Abigail, and Yael, looked at her.

  “Rejoice!” Miriam told them. “I am with you all the days of your lives.”

  The End

  ###

  Author’s Note

  Mother of God and Virgin, hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, for thou hast given birth to the Savior of our souls.

  Throughout the centuries, there have been very many speculations made about the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, the godbearer, the Mother of God. Some of that conjecture is expressed in books like the Proto-evangelium of James (also known as the Infancy Gospel of James), the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, the Treatise on the Boyhood of Jesus According to Thomas, the History of Joseph the Carpenter, the Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, and many others which were known and widely read in the early Church, but which were excluded, for a variety of good reasons, from the Canon of Scripture when the Church Councils established the list of the books that were to be read in Church.

  St. Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin, also translated many of those other books. Once in a letter to Bishops Cromatius and Heliodorus, St. Jerome said in reference to one of the books he had translated, “But this I say freely, and I think none of the faithful will deny it, that whether these stories be true or inventions…those who believe God performs miracles can read these stories without damaging their faith or imperiling their souls. In short, so far as I can, following the sense rather than the words of the writer, and sometimes walking in the same path, though not in the same footsteps, sometimes digressing a little, but still keeping the same road, I shall in this way keep by the style of the narrative, and shall say nothing that is not either written there, or might, following the same train of thought, have been written.”

  I’ve taken St. Jerome’s advice to heart, attempting to give you, dear reader, this novel of the life of Our Lord and of the early Church, as seen through the eyes of the Theotokos.

  I offer this book to Blessed Mary, the Theotokos, in the same spirit that a young child might offer an image of her mother to her mother. In many ways, the words of this tale are merely shards of colored glass and stone gathered from very many sources and put together in a verbal mosaic icon of Mary, the Theotokos, the Mother of God.

  God grant you many years, dear reader,

  Karen S. Woods

 

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