She waited there, by the sandy window ledge, as the clouds beyond the desert mountains caught the last light like white cloth hung behind the oil lamps. The darkness of her unbound hair covered the side of her face as she leaned down on one arm, still attending the glorious colours of evening; she mused that it seemed the world was underwater, and that somehow this glorious sky was the real land, that the heavens that caught light were somehow like the glowing shore surrounding the blackness that was the fallen world.
As she focused on a certain cloud sculpture, her peripheral vision seemed to catch a movement in another part of the sky, like a sudden whirlpool in water. The next instant she felt a presence at her back, and she peeped out from under the strands of hair as slowly as she could. She felt a sudden rush of fear, and love, and glory, as if indeed all the beauty of that sky had pulled itself together into a person, who was now addressing her: “Hail, O Full of Grace, the Lord is with thee”.
Immediately she got herself turned around, still in a half-sitting position. Her face became white, even in that soft pink light of sunset; and any admiration or fascination she might have entertained on this creature’s behalf was immediately stifled by both her awe and outright fear, and also by her habitual practice of looking for the unknowableness of the Lord. She was not distracted by earthly beauty- and even this unearthly beauty could not entice her to want it for herself. She was afraid because she did not know who this was or what this meant for her soul.
Gabriel, or Power of God, knew all this about the young woman humbly looking at the floor, and so he said gently, “Be not afraid, for the Lord has found favor with thee.” She did not speak, but waited. The angel continued, and each word seemed very heavy to the young woman, a heaviness of massive, bright diamonds. She had to take in each syllable, and they almost hurt because of their immensity, as if they were actual physical things. He said, “Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son; and thou shalt call His name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of David His father; and He shall reign in the House of Jacob forever. And of His kingdom there shall be no end.”
The corners of the room were darkened, but between Mary and the Gabriel there was a strong focus of all the light in the heavens. She looked up with a mixture of timidness and holy, solemn joy, her faith in the power of God already evident in her features: “How shall this be done, because I know not man?" The question had come from a heart lost in the mystery of God, a heart lost in the highest love, a love of passionate, loss-of–self humility and sacrifice. A heart like unto God, because He had filled her with His grace and prepared her for this moment and all others after. A helpless creature’s heart, but one He had transformed into a vessel of supernatural beauty, a heart inflamed with all loves coming out of the fiery furnace of charity, like the rays of the sun.
The angel inclined his glowing features a little, and lifted his hands: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”
Mary tried to take in all these words. But she only understood them in the realm of her soul which is beyond words, the part of all of us that simply trusts God. In that realm, she was pondering a real question of love, but from One Whom she could not see or know in the way a maiden expects to know before acceptance. In the place beyond words, however, she’d lived in prayer for most of her young life; she had waited, a servant of the Living God, she had practiced virtue and forgot her self in contemplation of the beauty of the Lord as she understood Him in a myriad of ways. Here was no selfishness, no errant sensuality, no thought of a place in the world at all: only room for a clear, pure stream of servanthood that was fashioned by the Lord Himself, unbeknownst to the object of His grandest plan. In that silence-full place, Mary’s answer had been formed over all the hundreds of days that comprised her life to this point: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy word."
Each day thereafter, her life was that answer, over and over, from the long journey to Bethlehem and the cave, to the Holy City and the Cross, to the Empty Tomb and the Upper Room of Pentecost. She was, and is, a true Echo of True Beauty: and she calls in full tones the rest of us to the cure of narcissism.
Narcissus’ true sin was to miss True Beauty and put something, a reflection of himself, in the place of God. The genius imbedded in the naming of the nymph, “Echo” is multi-layered: Echo not only provides Narcissus with more of his own reflection in a symbiotic relationship, she also, like the echoes, or ripples from a splash of water, spreads the narcissism into a society. Narcissus can be renamed Nemesis, or inverted image, for he is symbolic of the fallen part in all of us that wishes to invert the image of God in ourselves into a self-image. This is idolatry, plain and simple, and wreaks havoc upon the world, because it destroys and absorbs others into itself like Echo. It is like a virus, numberless absorbent selves trying to remake creation in their own creature image.
True Beauty once walked in Palestine, and His Echo was Mary. He is the only one with the right to love His own image in others, for He created them all, and Him loving Himself is, by its essence of Charity, loving the other and transforming them into true beauty. He is the Source of Love. Real love begets love and builds up on a strong foundation; and selfishness begets selfishness and destruction.
The cure for narcissism, both on a personal and cultural level, is not a thing like a pill or a method or a social program- it is a Person, the Person of Christ. This sounds like an unattainable answer until we understand the true role of religion (Latin, to tie). Like the weaving of a net which pulls men to safety, religion slowly and surely ties us to the Person of Christ: and if it is true religion, it does not bind into selfishness, but into the freedom of a disciple and a slave of Love. This slavery is joy, this discipline is gratitude and celebration, and ultimately freedom from the pit of living for self.
The daily practices, the examples of those who have gone before heroically (the saints), the architecture, the liturgy, the prayer books, the hierarchical nature of the Church, the different members of the body both clerical and lay, the chant, the spiritual direction, the holy education: all these little pieces work together to form a religion that ties one to the Person of Christ- or, if it is a man-made religion and thus false, again to self. These pieces must all work together, they must be informed by the Person of Christ in order to lead back to Him. That is why these seemingly small things, like prayer books and liturgical norms, are so very important. They become like the individual ropes of the net; if one of them is weak, many fish will fall back to the sea of destruction.
It is, of course, not left to chance that Our Lord used the parables pertaining to the fishing barques, the nets, and the fish. In His choice of First Apostle, He chose a master fisherman. It is also no accident that in mystical writing, the Church is called 'Peter's Barque'. The sea is murky and a dangerous place for fish, but they cannot see this at all, being unable to survive anywhere else: they are helpless as prey. The fisherman lowers his net, and is careful to lower a mended one, lest his work be in vain; and he pulls in a catch ordained by forces greater than himself. In pulling the fish out of the water, he is putting them in a position to die- they will no longer be fish, but in order to be born to a new life, they must come into the fisherman’s boat and die to self. The more resistant may jump out, but those that die will be changed in the confines of the boat, they will begin to become new creatures in Christ, creatures meant for heaven.
Narcissism, which is really just a precursor to hell, is cured by a death to self and an infusion of supernatural charity. This is brought about not usually by a single act of extraordinary grace from God, although this does and can happen. The most usual way, nonetheless miraculous, is through accepting the net of true religion, in order to be brought into Peter’s Barque, in which the Lord is waiting to transform us into fires of charity(Religion is like a slow-motion miracle). When we finally become Echoes of Truth, rather than of self, we can begin to transform the narcissistic culture we live in.
