Light-Bearing Angel

Agatha Christie is best known as a writer of mysteries, particularly those featuring detectives Hercules Poirot and Miss Marple.  She has been called the Queen of Crime, and was even awarded the more official title of Dame of the British Empire for her work.  Her mysteries are so numerous that the internet does not even agree on how many there were!  (There were at least 60, possibly 70 or 80).

Less known is a little story that she wrote about Our Lady, called “Star Over Bethlehem.”  In it, Christie imagines Our Lady alone at the manger while Joseph has gone out, perhaps in search of food.  As she tenderly watches her baby in the hay, a beautiful angel appears before her. But this angel does not bear glad tidings; rather, he reveals to Mary the terrible things that God has in store for her innocent baby.

She is shown his agony alone in the garden, his face wracked with anguish; his friends apart and asleep; God seemingly silent and absent.  She is shown three men on the hill to Calvary, each carrying the cross of a criminal. She is aghast to see her son among them—dying not nobly but in condemnation.  She wonders at how this could be, and then is shown the High Priest tearing his garments and uttering “Blasphemy!” in accusation of her son.

She shrinks back in horror, and wonders how her innocent baby could become guilty of such things.  Surely it would be better for God to take him now, while still innocent! The angel invites her to hand the child over to him, promising that he will prevent such evil things from taking place.

But instead she continues to ponder what she has been shown.

And in so doing a curious thing happened, for she remembered little things that she had not been aware of seeing at the time.  She saw, for instance, the face of the man on the right-hand cross…Not an evil face, only a weak one—and it was turned toward the centre cross and on it was an expression of love and trust and adoration…”It was my son he was looking at like that…”

And suddenly, sharply and clearly, she saw her son’s face as it had been when he looked down at his sleeping friends in the garden.  There was a sadness there, and pity and understanding and a great love… And she thought: “It is the face of a good man…” And she saw again the scene of accusation.  But this time she looked, not at the splendid High Priest, but at the face of the accused man…and in his eyes was no consciousness of guilt…

The angel asks her to make her choice.

“God has given him life; it is not for me to take that life away. For it may be that in my child’s life there are things that I do not properly understand…It may be that I have seen only part of the picture, not the whole.  My baby’s life is his own, not mine, and I have no right to dispose of it.”

The angel leaves in a blaze of light.

Shortly thereafter, Joseph returns, and approves her decision.  “Who knows, this may have been a lying angel.”

“No,” said Mary.  “He did not lie.”

We know of course this temptation, as told here, was a work of fiction, and as Catholics we could question some of the theology. Mary, who was told by Gabriel of her son’s divinity, would never have believed him guilty, even for a moment.  But might she not have been given to imagine what lay in store for her Son?

“He did not lie.”  This also is untrue.  For in changing the focus and emphasis in what Mary was seeing, Lucifer gave to it a false interpretation—one without God.  His hope is that in seeing the pain and suffering of her son, Mary will lose sight of God’s goodness.

In continuing to look, to seek God, Mary begins to see even within the vision different details.  She starts to sense that there is something more, that the picture is incomplete, and perhaps as such inaccurate.

When it comes to suffering, the enemy of souls magnifies the darkness—hoping that we will see only the pain, the shame, the sorrow, the despair.  He seeks to convince us that evil wins; that good is finished, forgotten, and will not return.

But this is not true.

Adam and Eve failed to “keep” and guard the Garden of Eden.  But Our Lady, we are told, “heard the word of the Lord and kept it.”

And perfect love casts out fear.  Mary, who perfectly received the Love of God, Who became incarnate in her womb, returned back that perfect love as she stood beneath the Cross.  And even in the shameful death of a condemned criminal, she saw the Face of God.

When the first Eve heard the words of the serpent, and her vision and focus was changed to conform to his lies—she began to see the forbidden fruit as “pleasing to the eye and good to eat.”  She overlooked the goodness of God and doubted his plan for her…and so gave in to the tempter.

Our Lady is the New Eve.  She is given the grace to see beyond appearances, to see the goodness of God and to see through the temptations of the “Angel of Light.” She hears the word of God, and keeps it.

 

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Notes:

The story “Star Over Bethlehem” can be found in Star Over Bethlehem and Other Stories, by Agatha Christie Mallowan, published in 1965.  It is worth reading in its entirety if you can find it!

Image credit: Madonna and Child, Carlo Dolci, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons