Where is it in the Bible that Mary was
dedicated in the Temple? Oh, that’s right, it isn’t there.
Breakfast, with some of our Presbyterian
friends on the eve of the Feast of the Presentation of Mary. I wonder whether
Protestants know how wearying that question is? And how chilling of real conversation? It's not unlike the atheists who demand evidence of Christ's existence and then refuse to look at anything proffered.
At least I refrained from making my usual retort: Where is it in the Bible where it says everything that is important to faith and everything true about the people in it is in the Bible? Oh, that’s right, it isn’t there.
At least I refrained from making my usual retort: Where is it in the Bible where it says everything that is important to faith and everything true about the people in it is in the Bible? Oh, that’s right, it isn’t there.
I should have been glad that this pastor among
them said he was planning a sermon on “Mary the amazing mother of Jesus.”
After all, too often Mary is relegated in Protestant life completely to the
sidelines, trotted out only at Christmas, considered a woman with a convenient
womb, a little pushy and none too bright in the bargain, regularly upbraided by
her Divine Son in public. For far too many of my Protestant friends, Mary
was an entirely pedestrian woman who was an unfortunate necessity of the
Incarnation, not much, if any, different from any of the rest of mankind but for the happy accident of the Incarnation to which she was merely bystander. Theotokos
it is not, but the fact that my friend was calling her the “amazing mother of
Jesus” is at least progress.
Instead I was annoyed at his knee-jerk reaction
to my attempt to share the mysterious depths of the Blessed Mother’s
life. I took that one to the box this afternoon, but only after hearing
two homilies on the Feast of the Presentation of Mary that reminded me why I am
so saddened at the reluctance—or inability—of our separated brethren to come to
grips with Our Lady-and theirs; and remembering how Mary underscores in so many
ways the deep, fundamental, determinative, and significant differences in
the ways Catholics and Protestants view and live out faith.
The liturgical year was the first Catechism, an inheritance from
the Jews who told their story over and over through the year of feasts, fasts
and festivals. It was--still is-- the best catechism
possible, especially for a largely illiterate people, as people were until the
time of the Protestant schism. It is the
way in which the Church teaches us how to live immersed in—rather than just
think about—our faith. The current
calendar lists 31 major and minor feast days for the Blessed Virgin; and
traditionally, Saturdays, Mays and Octobers are also given over to focusing on
her role in salvation. Just reading those numbers gives Protestants the
willies and seems to affirm their deeply held prejudice that Mary is more
important than Jesus to us Catholics. Aside from the fact that every
mass, regardless of why it is offered, celebrates the Passion and Our Lord, what
they seem to overlook is just how important Mary is to God who delights in
doing His work through His people. And what a work Mary was involved in:
the very work of bringing salvation into the fallen world.
God chose Mary to be the mother of His Son—in
Protestant parlance, predestined her from the dawn of time. God chooses for
reasons and whether we realize it or not, He prepares those He chooses.
And God did not choose a “Just me and Jesus” mode of salvation—He chose to save
us in community, through our own free cooperation and using the free
cooperation of other people to draw us to Him—and the first to give her active, loving,
joyful, unrestricted Yes! to God in that plan was Mary. It’s amazing to me that Protestants who talk
so openly about leading others to the Lord, and freely talk about Jesus to any
and all simply refuse to consider talking about Him with the one person who knows
Him best and is the one who brought Him to the world—His mother.
God chose to be born into a family, because it
is in family that we learn about the family that is God Himself. Our God
is an indivisible communion of persons and it is in communion of persons here
in our physical life we learn what it means to approach God. Somehow it
seems to escape my separated brethren who object to my entrusting my cares and
spiritual development in this process of learning to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin that the first
to entrust everything—quite literally—to Mary was God, in the Incarnation. He put the Light of the World in to a family because that's where He belongs if He wishes to meet us where we are--in family. No one is born into this world apart from a family. No one. Not even God.
God in His wisdom and love decided to become
man. Sometimes we forget how very difficult that concept was for Jews,
still is. One of the major objections—then and now—of the Jewish people
to the very idea of Jesus is that man cannot be God—the result of that critical, essential,
earth-shattering Hebrew realization of the complete and utter Otherness of God
that separated Jewish thought from the pantheism and paganism that surrounded
it. And so it is true—man cannot be God, but God can—and did—become
man. Though Mary.
Mary is the intersection at which that
remarkable, unthinkable, perfect, apocalyptic event happened. And when God became
man, he entered the world an infant under the care of a mother and foster
father who would teach Him what it means to be not just human but a good and
observant Jew. It was Mary who gave Him His human nature, without which our salvation would look very different indeed. It was she and Joseph who taught Him about His people in a way that only other people could.
Is it so amazing, then that the Church would
ascribe great honor to the woman who bore and raised Jesus? Mary is the
portal who reminds us: God chose to be—really be, not just go through the
motions of being—one of us. It is that great gift of Incarnation that to
Catholics is not just a once-and-over event but the underlying and unifying
principle of our faith and worship. I don’t think anyone can presume to
begin to understand all the Incarnation means; it demands our
constant attention, for it is central to our salvation. But one thing is certain given the way things turned out: as the old bumper
sticker says: No Mary, No Jesus….
And is it so amazing that the Church would
teach that Mary—who would be so very instrumental in teaching her Creator what
it means to be First Century Jew, what it means to live in a human
family—would have been so grounded in the life and thought and piety of her
people? And she would be so grounded not just in her own family but the
whole household of God in which she lived, the Jewish people and Temple life
which was, after all, the center, source, and summit of life for Jews. That’s what the Feast of Presentation points to,
teaches us—that God chooses carefully and prepares those He chooses and He does
so in the family He has established for us. Is it really surprising that that might be...true?
I suppose it might be fair game to ask my friend what makes him think it isn't, given that the Presentation of Mary showed up in writings from the Third Century (not the earliest works but around the time the Church at last had time to take a breath and think about something other than pure survival and began to ponder just what the incredible wealth the deposit of faith really implied and carried with it) and has been a feast, East and West, since the mid 500's . But I already know his answer--Those are interesting books...but where is it in the Bible?
I suppose it might be fair game to ask my friend what makes him think it isn't, given that the Presentation of Mary showed up in writings from the Third Century (not the earliest works but around the time the Church at last had time to take a breath and think about something other than pure survival and began to ponder just what the incredible wealth the deposit of faith really implied and carried with it) and has been a feast, East and West, since the mid 500's . But I already know his answer--Those are interesting books...but where is it in the Bible?
God came to us in a family. After the Ascenscion, Jesus
would leave us, not a book to be read in me-and-the Holy Spirit isolation, but a Church—a family—a Church who is
his own Bride, with Mary as her mother, and Joseph as her guardian-- to guide us and teach us, for us to listen
to, to be taught and formed by-- and in which we are to live and work out our salvation,
not individually, but together, coming to know Him as we learn to know each
other. Protestants, it seems, are saved to come into an ecclesial
body. Catholics, I think, come into the Church in order to be saved, for
belonging is as essential to salvation now as it was to the Jewish people of
old. You have to be a member of the family.
And so, if truly we are all brothers and
sisters of Christ, then Mary is truly our Mother, with all that means.
Just as she taught Jesus, so she teaches us, if we listen to her. And she
teaches in the context of the family who knows and loves and honors her for who
she is and what God chose her to do, as a family honors any mother. And in honoring God's work, we honor God and we remember, too, that God chooses us and prepares us for some mission in the
world. We ask Mary's aid in knowing it and carrying it out, because she did it
first. We are all of us, in one way or
another, expected to a different version of Mary, with her heart, her joy, her
sorrow, her complete and utter fiat.
In families, you have to be willing to listen
to stories to learn everything a family has to offer, to really come to find
your place within the family and know your sense of belonging and
purpose. Family tradition doesn’t contradict that which ends up being written
elsewhere—but it expands, compliments, explains and gives life to it. It
explains what it means to live the life at which words alone only
imperfectly hint.
If that is true of families, how much more so of the
Church, who received in full the deposit of the Faith—all those things Paul
hints at when he talks about traditions (things
I have taught you whether oral or written), all that John remarks on
at the end of the Gospel—the things Jesus did and said being so many that all the
books in the world —let alone a mere million words, give or take—could not contain. It is the Household of God, the Church, the
Pillar and Bulwark of the Faith who carefully, under the protection of the Holy Spirit,
preserves and passes along the treasure
of this deposit whole and entire to us. And part of that treasure is Mary.
One thing living in this family teaches us
is that Mary has one job and one job only—to bring Jesus to the world.
Not a once and done event, but an ongoing purpose, for the world needs to know
Him now as much as ever. And the reality is, even those who claim they
have no need of her intercession, do.
No Mary, No Jesus. No doubt.
Instead of adopting as one's mantra the rigid, show-me, flint-hard skepticism of the Enlightenment and the schisms it engendered, how much richer, how much more humble it is to approach with love the Mother of God as one of her family and
ask for her assistance in knowing her Son as well as she does. To ask for
a heart like hers that can give a full and joyful yes to all God asks, even
when we do not understand and cannot imagine the pains it will involve—even as
we accept them in advance. To ask her—the first and most perfect disciple
to intercede for us that we may be formed in the image of her Son even as we learn to be a disciple like her. After
all, when we are adopted into the household of God, we have at our disposal all
that household embraces—including the woman God chose to bring His Divine Life into the world, the Spouse of the Holy Spirit.
Mary, the one who gave birth to Jesus, who in turn gave her to John—and to
us—at the foot of the cross, that other meeting place of Heaven and Earth.
To know what a close relationship with Mary can bring, one need look no farther than that same John, whose soaring gospel takes us to
theological heights not reached by the three synoptics alone. John, the one who
reminds us that the Word of God is not a book but a Man and God Himself. John,
who explores the Passion and the Eucharist with such depth and tenderness that
he breaks open the reality of Christ’s
presence in them to us even now at every mass.
Perhaps John’s great insight was nurtured by
the many nights spent with Mary; it is not too much of a reach to imagine they
spent much time talking intimately about her Son….
Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were
his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary
Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing
beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold your son.” Then he said to
the disciple, “Behold your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her
into his own home. (John 19:25-27)
And from that hour, the disciple took her into
his home. We should do no less.
No Mary, No Jesus. Know Mary, Know
Jesus. Trust me, it’s in the Bible….you just have to know how to
look.
And, Barb, I am so glad you know how to look. It is so good to read the words of someone else who understands, and to whom it matters. Sometimes it is soooo much easier to just keep quiet to the remarks of those who don't and WON'T know. And to the "wisdom" of those who are open to understanding, if you can explain it to them in their attention span of 140 characters or less.
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