Written in the Margins of Our Ancestral Stories

[Editors’ note: Claire Hitchins is a 2020 awardee of the Lucile Murray Durkin Scholarship. This is the first of three in a series of reflections from our 2020 awardees on how the scholarship impacted their journey over the academic year.] 

“My soul magnifies the Lord!” So begins Mary of Nazareth’s revolutionary song of praise, prompted by her cousin Elizabeth’s blessing, “blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord!”

This conversation, between two poor, marginalized, brown women, living under the shadow of empire two thousand years ago, bent the arc of history and transformed the world. In their deep recognition and naming of the divine dwelling within themselves, they unleashed God’s healing and liberating power into a place of suffering and oppression. Their words reshaped the world. But they didn’t come out of thin air.

Mary and Elizabeth lived in a world suffused with their ancestral sacred stories, even while they were governed by the Roman Empire. In this holy encounter related by the Gospel of Luke, these marginalized women spoke their ancestral truth over and against the dominating narrative of empire. Like in Mary and Elizabeth’s time, our world is governed by imperial powers. The loudest narratives are those dictated by and for the benefit of the most powerful. Still, the dominant narratives are not the only ones. Written into the margins are the stories that make cracks in the hegemonic walls of domination, allowing sacred memories and holy visions for a different kind of future to flow into the present moment. 

As a Catholic woman called to priestly ministry, I have a complicated and often contradictory understanding of the priesthood. Given the extraordinarily harmful effects of clericalism and the dominating power structure of the Catholic hierarchy, I often wonder if we should have priests at all. While I continue to ask that question, I am certain that we need spiritual community to sustain us with sacred stories, practices, and rituals for the work of love and liberation in our lives and in the world. And I believe it is the particular vocation of some people to help cultivate and care for those communities. I see that vocation reflected in my visionary, passionate, justice-seeking classmates at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and I find it within my own holy longing.

Reading the familiar story of Mary’s Visitation with Elizabeth in light of my first year of divinity school, I see a powerful image of vocation, embodiment, accompaniment, and transformational faith. Elizabeth recognized the divine in Mary and responded by blessing her. This blessing in turn prompted Mary to more fully express the divine in herself, moving her to articulate her own story as part of the sacred story of her people, reaching deep into the past and extending far into the future. These women incarnated the sacred texts they proclaimed, giving birth to a new hope for their people and for the world. This is a story of women carrying forward the sacred wisdom of their ancestors, trusting their own lived experiences of the holy, and accompanying one another as they co-labor to bring God’s liberating work into the world.

My call to ministry is a call to hear and see and bless the truth written in the margins of my own ancestral stories and incarnated today in the experiences of those who are marginalized by my church and the world. In my year with the Lucile Murray Durkin Scholarship, I have been practicing the disciplines of reading in the margins, attuning my ear to God’s prophetic word in marginalized voices, and attending to the holy presence within myself and those I encounter. I am profoundly grateful for Women’s Ordination Conference and all those who have recognized and blessed my call to ministry.