Annunciation Enneagram

Mary for all the numbers

Detail of Fra Angelico’s Prado Annunciation (1425), or as Edith Stein once put it, “as woman was the first to be tempted, so did God’s message of grace come first to a woman.”

No, this is not a post about Mary’s Enneagram number (I couldn’t say), just a creative way of getting you to choose from nine (actually, I squeezed in twelve) different articles about her.

1. The Perfectionist: You might appreciate an emphasis on Mary and the doctrine of grace, how she models Gelassenheit.

2. The Helper: You might enjoy how Mary intervened to keep me from a dangerous path.

3. The Performer: You might admire the glorious staging for the re-emergence of Marian piety at Walsingham under Anglican auspices.

4. The Romantic: You might need to be rescued like Merton (also a 4) had to be from your worst impulses.

5. The Investigator: Your might appreciate the unexpected depths of Marian grottoes worldwide.

6. The Loyalist: You might admire both Catholic and Protesant Marian fidelity in the city of London, or if you’re from Chicago like me, you might prefer to keep it local, or at least French.

7. The Enthusiast: You might need to be calmed down through contemplative prayer in Mexico City.

8. The Challenger: You might be amused by a Protestant playfully trying to out-Mary Notre Dame, or evangelicals making their own Madonna of Mercy.

9. The Peacemaker: You might value how one Marian icon of sorts offers a belated answers to global tensions from more than two decades ago… and surely there will be as yet unimaginable forms of healing to present conflicts as well.

As Bernard of Clairvaux put it, de Maria numquam satis, one can never say enough about the Virgin Mary, so please expect much more to come. Also, to spare any questions as to how one does all this without being Catholic or Orthodox, the quick answer (in addition to reading the great Protestant Marians like Jacob Boehme) is that we just get it all from Calvin, who wrote,

[W]e honour Mary because Mary is honoured by God. [We] esteem her because of the blessing God has conferred on her… The greatest praise we can render Mary is to take her as our teacher: she must instruct us, and we will be her pupils. (14, 30).

So, with nine months until Christmas, happy Feast of the Annunciation Eve to all, and to all a good night!