Mary Consoles Eve
My Commentary on the amazing painting
What I love about this painting is that I see that I am both Eve and Mary all at once. Like Eve, there are times when I am stooped and shoulders low. Feeling ashamed and guilty, I am unable to look up. I am still clinging on to that apple. I am unable to let go of that addiction, that hurtful experience, that failure. And I am telling myself even to the point of screaming, “Come on, for goodness sake will you just let go of that apple?”
What I love about this painting is the tenderest of gazes that Mary shows towards Eve. Mary is not preaching to Eve why she has to give up the apple. She is not even pointing out that a serpent has wholly trapped her. She just lovingly comforts Eve with her right hand. See how gently Mary invites her to touch the beating heart of love.
What I love about the painting is the garden setting — the Genesis garden where Yahweh walks with us, the garden in the Song of songs where we are consumed in intimacy with God, the garden of Gethsemane reminding of us of the vulnerability of Jesus and his flimsy disciples. The arches in the painting signify that this place is a doorway, a threshold to a new beginning.
What I love about the painting is that it inspires me to carry God’s love like Mary. It calls me to be gentle with myself and my sisters and brothers. It invites me to see the abundance around me like the plentiful fruits teeming in the archway. This is the only way the serpent of scarcity thinking can be crushed in us and in our world.
What I love about the painting is that depicts our journey of transformation at the level of the heart using feminine archetypes.
What I love about the painting is that at its centre is Jesus.
My soul magnifies my God!
Questions to go deeper
Together with Eve, I contemplate,
What self-blaming thoughts, addictive patterns, failures am I clutching on to?
How do I free myself from the distorted thinking that controls me?
Together with Mary, I contemplate
How am I called to be gentle with those around me?
How am I to carry God to those trapped by the economic and social structures of our world, including the planet itself?
