Fruit of the Mystic Rose

Mary, the Mystical Rose Concert Performers

It was early in June, in the sacristy after midweek Mass here in Banff, that Fr. Dan Stévènot informed me that he had asked St. Mary’s parishioner Nan Hughes Poole to organize a concert for the Marian pilgrimage week here in the Rockies. Later that week, I sent a text message to Nan to ask if she still “needed any people” for this concert. In my mind, I was thinking I could volunteer as an usher at the front door of the church. However, my text messages often will not express everything that I intend to say, so as things progressed, I was invited to play the oboe in this concert in honour of Mary, the Mystical Rose.

Now, I have played the oboe for about 17 years, since grade seven band class; however, it has been years and years since I have played regularly, and I have barely played any public concerts since I graduated from university in 2019. The psychological games and social pressures from music school had wreaked their havoc, and I developed a tremor in my hands and arms whenever I played solo or chamber music; ultimately, it is why my degree is a BA in music history, rather than a more performance-based B.Mus. However, the die had been cast, and I figured that I might as well accept the invitation and see what the Lord had in store, and see what fruit would be revealed. Now, writing a few days later, I can say with clarity that this was one of the most spiritually enriching musical experiences that I have participated in.
             
Nan invited two of her closest friends, Kathy McMillan Wilhelm and Amy Anderson de Jong to star in the concert as vocalists, as well as pianist Jack Olszewski and violinist Lev Nesterov to round out the panel. The three vocalists have sung together for decades, and it was an honour to witness how their friendship is heard throughout the music. Singer-songwriter Irene Poole opened the second act as a special guest.
           
The music was not strictly what some in the Church would consider “sacred music”, a definition which currently seems to centre upon Renaissance polyphony, written for use in liturgy. However, the works chosen by the vocalists formed a dramatic arc than ran parallel to the life of Mary — from settings of the Magnificat to frame the Annunciation and the Visitation, to African-American spirituals and German lieder to highlight the Nativity of Christ, followed by both Baroque and Modern works on the sorrows of Mary, and settings of the Ave Maria which marked Mary’s Assumption and Coronation.  Poetry selections rounded out the program, which helped to draw out the main theme of the programme — that of Mary’s humanity.
           
If there is one particular gripe that I have with contemporary popular Mariology, it is that we tend to make Mary inaccessible, placing her high and away from the rest of us sinners on a pedestal. Yes, she is the Immaculate Conception, having no stain of original sin, and never entering into it in her lifetime. However, we often forget that Mary is fully human (the most fully human of us all!), and that she has experienced everything that we experience. The work on the program that exemplifies this best is Henry Purcell’s “The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation” from 1693. Purcell was the first to write opera in English, and so the work is a dramatic scene, depicting the anxieties, doubts and social pressures that Mary faces as she and St. Joseph search frantically for the child Jesus throughout Jerusalem. Throughout, Mary maintains her trust in God and in the divinity of her son, and yet is contending with human emotions that pull her in all directions, including intense worry for the very human Jesus.
           
​Well, I received no miraculous grace of the healing of my tremor this weekend.  What I received instead is a far greater grace of knowing that my blessed Mother has also faced societal pressure and grave anxiety. It is a realization that Mary’s presence in our lives is not chiefly as an image of Christian perfection, although this is certainly a factor. Rather, she is crowned as heaven’s queen in service of humanity precisely because she has undergone all the trials of life, and is most intimately acquainted with its problems and foibles, and therefore is best suited to empathize with us and intercede for us because of the fullness of her humanity. She is near because she is one of us, one with us, and one for us. May we know her closeness in our daily lives, in whatever it is that we face.

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Written by Solomon Ip for Faithfully. Photos courtesy of Peter Poole and Jan Myhre.