Mary models certainty in uneasy times
- nhaught
- May 16
- 4 min read
May is the month of Mary. For centuries now, Catholics have celebrated her as the mother of Jesus. Devotions, prayers, hymns, rituals, feast days and springtime flowers call to mind the young woman who described herself as “the handmaid of the Lord” and became “the mother of God.” Mary is mentioned only a few times in the Bible, but she has flourished in Catholic tradition, where her likeness is crowned with flowers, carried in processions, receives fervent prayers for intercessions and still inspires poetry, paintings and pilgrimages.
Some non-Catholics may mistake reverence for Mary as worship of her. But she persists in Catholic belief as an essential human link to the sacred, not only as Jesus’ mother and, perhaps, not just because she was the “first disciple,” as many theologians have pointed out. Mary is central to Catholic belief because she proclaimed in advance of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection precisely how God would change the world.
True, it often is the stories of Jesus’ birth, mentioned in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, that come to mind when Mary’s name is mentioned: her engagement to Joseph, the news she receives from an angel, her visit to her cousin Elizabeth (who is pregnant with John the Baptist), the journey to Bethlehem on the back of a donkey, the night spent in a stable, the birth of a child, the angelic rapture of the shepherds, the adoration of the magi, the night-time escape to Egypt and the presentation of the child Jesus to Simeon and Anna in the Temple.
Mary is mentioned a few more times in the Bible as the boy Jesus grows up. Some say she had a role in his public ministry when she asked him to change water into wine at a wedding. She approaches her son a few times, only to be, some say, rebuffed. She is present at his crucifixion and mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles.
So it is not surprising that when Mary is remembered in the church, she almost always is an icon of motherhood – of Jesus, the church and even of salvation. But as important as these interpretations are, it may be that a closer reading of the biblical text reveals or, perhaps, reminds believers of Mary’s certainty about the future of the world. She knows even before Jesus is born, speaks his first word, or performs his first miracle that God will turn the world upside down. The “Magnificat” is “Mary’s first-hand announcement of the Gospel by anticipation,” biblical scholar Gina Hens Piazza has written.
In Luke’s account (chapter 1:39-56), Mary, who was already pregnant, set out in haste to the Judean town where her cousin Elizabeth (who was also pregnant) lived with her husband Zachariah. When the two women met, Elizabeth’s child moved within her. Then Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, exclaimed, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb . . . . Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
Mary’s response is her lengthy poem/prayer we know as the Magnificat. She begins with joy because the Lord has looked with favor on her, the lowest of servants. She alludes to her motherhood only in general terms, by mentioning that all generations will be blessed because of God’s gift to her.
Quickly she turns to her vision of what God already has accomplished: shown mercy to the fearful (in the Bible, “fear” means “awe of the divine”), scattered the proud, brought down the powerful, elevated the lowly, fed the hungry, and sent the rich away empty, according to the promise God made to Israel’s ancestors. Mary describes the world around her, at that moment, before Jesus is able to describe it to his listeners.
Jesus does, of course, elaborate on the words of Mary. As an adult, he preaches to large crowds and at dinner tables. He interweaves parables and works miracles. He redraws the social order and challenges his followers to do the same. Later in Luke (chapter 11:27-28), as Jesus is preaching, a woman in the crowd cries out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you,” a reference it would seem to his mother, Mary.
Jesus' reply is often understood as a dismissal of his mother and an elevation, instead, of those who believe. “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it,” he says. But the case may be made that the woman who raised him was the first believer, the one who can inspire us all in times that are as unequal, unjust and as uncertain as her own.
While it is true that Mary’s vision – or Jesus’ for that matter – have yet to be realized fully. The poor are still with us, as Jesus told us they would be. Daily life overflows with injustice and inequality, so much so that many believers are discouraged, depressed, running out of hope. But May is the month of Mary, and her words, woven into Catholic liturgies throughout the year (and sometimes ignored or taken for granted), must resound now in this difficult time.
The late Pope Francis, who was devoted to Mary, described the Magnificat as “a revolutionary prayer, the song of a faith-filled young woman conscious of her limits, but confident in God’s mercy . . . . Her song helps us to understand the mercy of the Lord as the driving force of history, the history of each of us and of all humanity.”
– Nancy Haught
