FR Ken Barker launched his latest book only last month and already he has his next one with the publishers.
In Brisbane for the recent launch, the founder of the Missionaries of God’s Love said he’d lost count of how many books he’d written.
“I think there’s a dozen at least … I think this one might actually be 13, but it’s somewhere around there,” he said.
“I always keep saying, ‘I’m not going to write another one …’, and then I end up writing one.”
This latest offering in Fr Barker’s series of spiritual writings is called Mary, Disciple and Mother and it’s been a long time coming.
He said he had been wanting to write a book on Mary but had to wait until the time was right.
Fr Barker said he realised “people are keen to have something that’s easy to read on the Blessed Virgin Mary, and something that relates to their lives”, and that was what he was aiming for in writing Mary, Disciple and Mother.
It’s a book written in three parts.
“The first is on Mary as the perfect disciple, being truly obedient to the will of God and deepening her ‘yes’ and surrender to God as she goes on the journey of discipleship that actually can be a very tough journey, and certainly was for her with all the various vicissitudes she has to go through until she finally stands at the foot of the cross, yielding and giving herself to God,” Fr Barker said.
“So it’s that whole thing of Mary as disciple who’s really listening to the word of God, responding to the word of God, trusting in God’s love for her and having a radical faith, courageously moving into the circumstances of life … her surrender to the Lord as a disciple.
“The second part is really more about her as mother, so Mary as our mother.
“She’s given to us from the Cross by Jesus when he says to her, ‘Woman …,’ and then referring to the beloved disciple, ‘this is your son …’
“And then to John, he says, ‘This is your mother …’
“And in saying that, of course, he’s really asking all of us, who are disciples at the foot of the Cross, to really take her into our home, so to allow her to be truly personally our mother in a very personal way and to experience her that way.
“I share how I used to have all the dogmas of Mary clear in my mind but not so much a relationship with her in my heart, and so I actually had to ask Jesus …
“I did at a certain point in time when I said to the Lord, ‘Look, show me your mother …’”
Fr Barker said that happened over a period of time.
“I had what was a sense of really experiencing more deeply her personal presence with me, so taking her into my home in that sort of way and welcoming her to teach me the ways of the Lord …, and to be with me in my struggles and trials etc, as the one who intercedes on my behalf …,” he said.
“(I came to experience) that she’s a mother of tenderness, that she’s always there, as it were, in our weakness, being there with us, especially in those times when we feel a bit lost in life – that she’s there when we’re feeling lonely or feeling empty, heart growing cold etc, she brings that warmth and tenderness of a mother.”
He said the Blessed Virgin Mary was “not really drawing attention to herself but always, as at (the wedding feast in) Cana in Galilee, pointing us towards Jesus and (saying), ‘Do whatever He tells you …’
“She’s there as the support, especially in times when we feel very empty and without sufficient courage or strength to go forward, that she can come as a comforter to just remind us to turn to Jesus and draw our strength from Him,” he said.
“That’s the whole experience of her as our personal mother, but (she’s) also mother of the Church, so there’s a section (in the book) on her being Mother of the Church, of course, which was a title that came to the fore in the Second Vatican Council.
“… So it talks a bit about that and how to experience her in that way, and how she intercedes for us.
“The third section is really about Mary and the Holy Spirit, which in some ways has drawn most attention … (I think) because it tries to, as Archbishop Christopher Prowse (of Canberra and Goulburn) says in the foreword, put together the traditional appreciation of Mary as disciple and mother, with the whole experience of the New Pentecost that’s come, especially through the Charismatic Renewal.
“So I present her as really the first Charismatic, after Jesus of course, and I talk about her role …
“She was there at the Annunciation of course when the Holy Spirit overshadowed her as the angel promised and the Christ Child was conceived within her, so she brings Christ to the world through the overshadowing of the Spirit.
“But then also of course at Pentecost she was present praying with the Apostles in the Upper Room, and the other people that gathered there, praying faithfully and the Holy Spirit came down with fire upon them all, and they’re all filled with the Holy Spirit.
“In a sense, she’s there being filled with the Holy Spirit again, and it’s one of the points I make in the book too, … that we need to be again and again filled with the Holy Spirit, just as the Blessed Virgin Mary was.”
Reflecting on his own experience of deep involvement in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal “when people first experience Baptism in the Spirit”, Fr Barker said “I was only a young priest when I really had a new infilling of the Spirit in the way that changed my own personal life”.
“In a way, when that happened, the previous attention to Marian devotions tended to sort of subside a bit in me,” he said.
“I think that happened to a number of people at that time because we were just so overwhelmed by the might and the splendour and the beauty of the Risen Lord, and that seemed to be enough and it didn’t seem to be necessary to spend much time praying the Rosary and things like that.
“But then as it went on I realised that there was something missing – that Mary was very much part of the Gospel message …
“Personal encounter with the Lord, of course, is wonderful but then I realised that Mary is really at the heart of it all, because she brings Jesus to us initially with her Annunciation experience and then at Pentecost.
“So I went to a Marian shrine and said to Jesus, ‘Show me your mother …’, and that’s when it progressively began to happen, when I began to become much more aware of her presence in my own personal life and become more aware of the Marian apparitions and more aware of her as the model of true discipleship as revealed to us in Sacred Scripture, and also of course, her as Mother of the Church as well.”
That relationship with Mary extended into the Missionaries of God’s Love.
“Over a period of time I asked the Blessed Virgin Mary and allowed the Lord to give me a prayer of entrustment to the Blessed Virgin Mary so now we (the Missionaries of God’s Love) pray that Prayer of Entrustment every day …,” Fr Barker said.
He said the life of the missionaries was “very much centred in Jesus, of course, but (the Blessed Virgin Mary) takes us more deeply into the mystery of the Cross and the flame”.
“That’s our symbol – it’s the Cross and the flame – the Cross being God’s immense love for us and the flame, of course, being the fire of the Spirit, and so we seek to live under the mystery of the Cross and flame,” he said.
“And she was there at the Cross, standing at the foot of the Cross, and she was also there at Pentecost when the flame of the Spirit came down so she takes us more deeply into the mystery of the Cross and the flame.”
