For many years, we read Auden’s “For the Time Being” at or near the date of Epiphany. Then that practice fell, as did many others, into the COVID 19 hole. This year, Bette and I climbed out of that hole and invited a bunch of friends to join us in reading it again.

I have read this poem many times, but there is always something that captures my attention in a different way. This year, it was Mary’s response to Gabriel.

Gabriel casts the event of which Mary is to be a part in the broadest possible way. Mary is to be the new Eve. [1]

Here is what Gabriel says:

When Eve, in love with her own will,
Denied the will of Love and fell,
She turned the flesh Love knew so well
To knowledge of her love until
Both love and knowledge were of sin:
What her negation wounded, may
Your affirmation heal today;

“Eve, in love with her own will… turned the flesh Love knew so well…until both love and knowledge were of sin.” This is fundamental. Eve denied the will of God [Love] the effect of which was the both how we know and how we love are saturated with sin. That is Gabriel’s view of Eve.

This is Gabriel’s view of Mary. What her negation wounded, may your affirmation—just say Yes—heal today.

And Eve says Yes is some of the most glorious language I know. I am going to give you the whole response, then I will try to say what I saw in it this year.

My flesh in terror and fire
Rejoices that the Word
Who utters the world out of nothing,
As a pledge of His word to love her
Against her will, and to turn
Her desperate longing to love,
Should ask to wear me,
From now to their wedding day,
For an engagement ring.

If that language is new to you, you might want to just sit with it a little.

Here is what I saw this year. I am going to change “Word” to “God,” John’s text in the Prologue notwithstanding. God has pledged to love the world—that is us, all humankind. Moving directly to God’s pledge skips over creation, but some skipping is going to be necessary to see what the bones of this response look like.

What is the pledge? It is to love us (line 3) and to turn that inarticulate longing we have (line 5) into real love of God in return.

The God who is doing this understands that there must be a symbol of this great Intention and God has chosen Mary as the symbol. The great consummation of the love we have for God (now felt only as a longing for something) is still in the future, but the engagement ring is right now. It is what Incarnation is all about. [2]

And God asks to wear Mary as “an engagement ring,” as the symbol of the consummation to come, when love will be known and mutual and restored to its original wholeness.

That is hard for me to grasp as an onlooker. I am reading a poem full of religious imagery. But Mary, in this poem, is talking about herself. The Word asks to wear ME–that is what the picture captures–as the symbol of their wedding, the great consummation to come. And I say Yes. I say “My soul in terror and in fire rejoices.”

Every year there is something. This was this year’s take. I have begun looking forward to Epiphany in 2025.

[1] Paul casts Jesus as the new Adam, but Auden takes a few new steps in casting Mary as a new Eve.

[2] There is no reason why Mary ought to be pictured as beautiful, let alone as light skinned and European-looking, but I think the look really captures what Gabriel was after.