Not your average Marian apparition

The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

A powerful and powerfully condense retelling of one of the oldest stories in the world: the Passion and its aftermath. This time, the dweller of the ruins is none other than the holiest of mothers, Mary. And not the Mary of canon, but one embittered both at the calling which took her son’s life and the disciples quickly working to spin the web of faith which would come to dominate the western world. They know that she could be a powerful tool in the retelling of Jesus’s life for the believers to come, but she does not see Jesus’s ministry in the rose-tinted glasses of the early followers. For her, his mission means little more than that her child was tormentingly executed and his life taken for liturgical use by his followers. With Jesus out of the picture, a scramble to “set the record straight” inevitably brings out an urge to control in his disciples—up to and including control over Mary herself. And if she refuses to acquiesce in their project? Fine. She will be written out of the Bible when her usefulness has passed. For Mary, mourning and reclusion are what Christianity has left her.

In almost every sense, this is a subversive novella. Mary as angry mother rejecting the faith inspired by her son would be a marked departure from doctrine on her own. Tóibín goes further still. Jesus makes a brief appearance and leaves an impression of a man made aloof to the people and events around him. He is not cruel, but… what, arrogant, almost? In the short meeting of mother and son at the wedding in Cana we see not a man filled with a kind of sorrow at the burden he must carry, but one self-assured of his power over those around him and events to come. His miracles are stripped of their metaphorical meaning and left as inexplicable actions whose consequences are not long dwelled upon by either the man making them happen or his crowd of followers.

This extends to the resurrection of Lazarus and a questioning of the desirability for Godlike powers in human affairs. Through Lazarus, Jesus displays mastery over Death—an impressive feat—but little care for the husk Lazarus has returned as. Touched by death, Lazarus suffers from constant pain, hidden away in the dark of his sisters’ home. He is mute, shunned, and ignored by the man who brought him back to life—a kind of biblical Frankenstein monster. Yet in the scripture Lazarus, perhaps the greatest feat of Jesus’s earthly ministry, is quickly discarded after his return. In centering and expanding on his story, Tóibín asks the obvious question: why? Reticence at having to prove the historicity of the miracle or uncomfortable questions about the consequences of overcoming death jump to mind. They clearly jumped to Tóibín’s.

That all of this is achieved outside the mold of the polemic gives it greater depth and feeling. Matters of faith raise the stakes exponentially by nature. But in looking ever further upward they also tend to lose grips with the human condition once the abstractions of heaven, hell, and any void between become the focus. Jesus was sent to redeem humanity; a task of that size inevitably moves beyond our humdrum affairs with rapidity. Beneath that great burden, though, is there room for a Christianity which could carry Mary’s biting pain? A Lazarus condemned to a different kind of shadow after his use as a stage prop? Of a Jesus who is far more complicated man than literal embodiment of the all-powerful? Perhaps not. That it can’t may belie the subterranean fissures which will perpetually rupture this particular faith.

For its brevity, for its willingness to extend humanity and sympathy to those so often regarded as almost otherworldly, and its courage in injecting our complexity right into the heart of one of our greatest stories, I commend The Testament of Mary with all my heart.