On the cover of The Secret Life of Bees, a recent bestselling novel by Sue Monk Kidd, stands a honey jar emblazoned with an image of the Black Madonna. This brilliant work of fiction, already on its way towards status as a 'classic," depicts a white teenage girl in South Carolina during he civil unrest of the 1960s. She is searching for an authentic mother figure in her life, never having healed from the early childhood trauma of her mother's tragic death. Having fled her abusive father, she is welcomed by an intriguing black family of women beekeepers. These three siblings and their neighbors in the bee country maintain a quirky non-traditional devotion to a black image of the Virgin Mary. Removed from simple Catholic piety into the realm of the symbolic and archetypal, their Black Madonna is the "Queen Bee" in whose "hive" the adolescent runaway will learn how to love, forgive, heal, and uncover the basic meaning of life.  "Black Mary" symbolically points the way towards the teenager's vocation in life.

The association of the Virgin Mary with a honey bee is nothing new. In the 13th century, the Franciscan St. Anthony of Lisbon and Padua likened the Virgin Mary to a bee. In his Sermon for the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, Anthony wrote: "Our Lady, the Blessed Mary, resembles a bee in many ways... Mary, like a good bee, was small by her humility and round by her contemplation of heavenly glory, which like a circle, is without beginning and end. She was compact by her charity; she carried love incarnate in her womb... The bee is small among flying things. Although many virtues shine forth in the Blessed Mary, her humility outshines all the others... On this day, Mary, our humble little bee, offered a honeycomb in the temple, that is, her Son ... God and Man, Jesus Christ."  The key to a Catholic and Franciscan understanding of the Blessed Virgin Mary is that the purpose of her existence is Jesus Christ, the "honeycomb" of her life and ours. We get her "buzz" when we realize that this Mother has only one goal: to point us to Jesus. Nothing could please the Heavenly "Queen Bee" more than our praying to her Son in the words of St. Anthony: "O Sweet Jesus! Who is sweeter than You? Your memory is sweeter than honey, a name of sweetness, a name of salvation."

The spiritual view of Mary as the Virgin who points the way has long been associated with the various "Black Madonna" icons venerated in Catholic and Orthodox tradition. Perhaps the most renowned of all the "Black Madonna" images is Our Lady of Czestochowa in Poland. This genre of marian icon is called hodegetria - Mary who "points the way."  Holding the Christchild upright with her supportive left arm, she points to Him with her right arm. Her right hand at one and the same time beckons us to join her in focusing on the Christ to whom she points us. This hodegetria pose that derives from Byzantine iconography offers a theology lesson. Theologians and art historians alike regard the early marian icons as commentaries on her figure in the Scriptures and the early Church. Jesus from the Cross commissioned her with the job of maternal discipleship: "Woman, behold your son"(Jn. 19:26). She herself had already at Cana indicated how she would carry on her discipleship, by teaching everyone: "Do whatever he tells you"(Jn. 2: S). Ever the one who points the way to Christ, Mary models discipleship at the same time as she teaches it.

The quality of "blackness" in many of the marian icons and later statuary can be explained by natural causes: the aging of wood and paint; the charring effect of desecrations; and the soot of votive candle flames. The symbolic value of this ebony effect, however, has attached to the Virgin a universal and archetypal appeal, traversing cultures and tastes. "Black Mary" is a woman of this earth, whom God chose to represent all humanity, trailblazing the path to God that each of us is called to walk. She is, in the words of St. Francis of Assisi, the "Virgo facta ecclesia" (Virgin made Church). From her humble beginnings as Jesus's first disciple, she became the first member of his "Church." Hence, at Vatican II, Pope Paul VI would call her "Mother of the Church." The spiritual journey of discerning one's vocation in the Church finds clarity by contemplating Mary, hearing her "buzz," deepening a relationship with her, and following the way she points.

Fr. James McCurry, OFM Conv.