The Empty Child and his Mummy

This post might require some explaination so please bear with me

. First this is a meditation that draws from the Doctor Who two-parter "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances" from Series (Season) 1 of the reboot. For those not familiar with it I highly encourage you to go watch these episodes before reading further as it is a very good story done very artfully and “Spoilers, Sweetie,” are ahead.

I was going through the first meditations in “Preparation for Total Consecration to Jesus Christ through Mary: According to St Louis de Montfort” when the end of this Doctor Who story came to mind. For those of you not familiar with St Louis de Montfort or the concept of Total Consecration I will discuss the basics of it further on.

Brief synopsis of “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”: The story revolves around a boy who had been killed by a bomb during WWII and was "repaired" by alien nanogenes looking for his mom (or mummy for all you Brits). The nanogenes had healed him imperfectly because they were unfamiliar with human DNA and what a human was supposed to look like. Toward the end of the two-parter, the nanogenes are scanning the boy’s mother as they embrace seeking to carryout their protocol of fixing up humans as they thought a human was supposed to be. However the mother’s parental DNA was recognized as superior information so they learned how the human body was supposed to be formed and healed the boy, formerly the “Empty Child”, and all the others they had “fixed up” back to how humans are designed to be.

As I was meditating, the part where the nanogenes found the boy’s mother and scanned her and then went over to the boy and formed him to a whole and complete human form came to mind. I saw the nanogenes as God’s grace, myself as the boy, and Mary as my spiritual mother. Now to explain what I was meditating on that led me to this connection:

In the Preparation for Total Consecration, St Louis de Montfort hones in on the concept that Christian life is nothing less than a participation in the life of Jesus Christ. Hence why we are all called to be holy as holiness is a participation in the divine life of the Most Holy Trinity.

“Jesus, the Son of God the Father, has shared in our human condition in every way [even death]… so that we may be given a sharing in His Divine life. This sharing of Jesus is not a partial sharing, but a complete sharing… that we may share everything with Him.” (Preparation for Total Consecration)

This sharing includes Jesus’ relationship with Mary because Jesus was truly the Son of the Almighty Father and also the son of Mary. This is shown when Jesus says to Mary and John on Calvary, “ ’Woman behold your son.’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother.’ ” (John 19: 26b-27) Jesus gave His Mother, not just to John, but to all his disciples to be their spiritual mother.

Mary spent all of Jesus’ life with Him. She gave birth to Him, raised Him, was there during His public ministry as part of the group of woman that followed Him. We also see Mary deeply contemplating and mediating on Christ’s life as seen in Luke 2: 18-19 “All who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. However, Mary continued to treasure all these things in her heart and to ponder them.” And again after losing Jesus and finding Him in the temple after three days and Jesus said “Why were you looking for me? Didn’t you know that I had to be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49) “His mother continued to treasure all these things in her heart.” (Luke 2:51) The Catholic Church teaches, as St Louis de Montfort wrote, “The strongest tendency of Mary is to unite us to Jesus Christ, her Son, and the greatest desire of her Son is that we come to Him by means of His most holy Mother.” This is why Christians can totally consecrate themselves through Mary to Jesus: because she already consecrated herself totally to God therefore to Jesus so she can help lead us to do the same.

Mary is the template that we strive to achieve as she was united to Jesus completely, just as the mother in “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances” was the template for the nanogenes transforming the boy from the imperfect form they had first "healed" him as into the correct human form. God’s grace is the transformative power that unites us to Jesus through Mary by conforming our hearts to hers, which is perfectly united to Jesus’ own Sacred Heart because she meditated on all the God was revealing to her through Jesus throughout her whole life, as mentioned in the Gospel of Luke.

Mother Mary wants to unite us to her Son through her Immaculate Heart and God will give us grace for this to happen, but unlike in Doctor Who, this transformation/ uniting ourselves to our spiritual mother requires our cooperation. We have to submit ourselves to God and, in turn, to Mary. Just as the mother in “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances” needed to humble herself to admit that she was the boy’s mother as people could ostracize her for having a child out of wedlock as a teenager, we need to humble ourselves to God to allow transformation in our lives.

If you have not had a relationship with Mary and not asked for her intercession for your struggles and aid in drawing you closer to Jesus, I highly recommend you strongly consider doing so. The meditations in “Preparation or Total Consecration to Jesus Christ through Mary: According to St Louis de Montfort” are very good for anyone seeking to draw closer to God.

-Steven