John Doubleday's Mary and the Child Christ
/Extracts from a BBC World Service broadcast featuring Revd Melvyn Matthews discussing a postcard the Dean sent him of the statue by John Doubleday in the Cloister Garth.
I wish you could see it now because it's not like the usual statues of the Madonna and Child, where the baby is lying helpless in his mother's arms. Here, Christ is a young child, standing against his mother's knee, ready to walk. Mary is kneeling behind him and obviously they are both looking at something which has caught their attention just behind your left shoulder. The Christ child is drawn to it and is wondering whether to leave the protection of his mother to reach out to this new thing. Mary is a little wistful, half-encouraging, half-protective. She knows he must go, but is somewhat fearful of the consequences.
Photos of the Doubleday Mary and Child statue in the Cloister Garth, photographed in 2022.
One of the reasons I keep this postcard over my desk is because I am a student chaplain (as indeed was the sender of the card). I have to care for young people who are on the brink of life, like the child Christ, about to step out. And, in a way, our Chaplaincy Church is like Mary, a place of fellowship and protection, but also a place which encourages the young and gently but firmly enables them to stand up and walk out to face the pain and fire of life. But it's not just students, is it, who are being gently pushed out into the world by the love of God, it's each one of us.
The child Christ in the statue, my students at University, they are symbols for all of us. All of us are Christ bearers, carrying about in the body the marks of the Lord Jesus, sharing daily in his passion and in his resurrection. And I think that's a very freeing thing Once we know that and accept it, allow its truth to sit deep within us, then we are truly free
So my reflection on this postcard leads me to understand that we carry within us a mystery, the mystery of this child Christ stepping out into the world to face its pain and to redeem it. Perhaps we should let the Christ child step out more often.
Revd Melvyn Matthews
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