Courtney McGrailThe scriptures are where we meet the Mother of God, writes Fr Martin Browne OSB
We are coming to the end of the month of May, the month traditionally dedicated to Our Lady. It is a good time to stop and think about who she is and what she means to us. The Church in Ireland doesn’t seem to ‘do’ Marian devotion as much as it did in the past.
Nevertheless, Mary continues to occupy a huge place in the Catholic imagination. Grottoes and wayside shrines are a feature of the landscape throughout the country. And while some of the more exotic devotions may have declined – which is no bad thing – pilgrimages to Marian shrines remain important in Irish Catholic spirituality. The huge sums raised for the restoration of the basilica in Knock over the past few years bear eloquent witness to this.
But who is she?
To quote a line from the Song of Songs often used about Mary, “who is this arising like the dawn, fair as the moon, resplendent as the sun, terrible as an army with banners?” So many different things have been said about Mary down the ages. So many different titles have been given to her. So many different claims have been made regarding her. But what do the Gospels say?
Angel
They tell us that she learned of her vocation through the message of an angel; that she went immediately to visit an elderly relative; that she overflowed with praise of the Almighty for the great things he did for her; that her betrothed stood by her in her embarrassment; that he brought her to his ancestral city and that she gave birth there in poverty and was visited there by shepherds and foreign sages; that she and Joseph did for her son what the law required in the Temple, and were welcomed by elderly prophets, who also foretold sorrow for her; that the family became refugees abroad, displaced by the wrath of a neurotic despot; that she returned to live in Nazareth where her son grew up; that she knew what it was to have a precocious adolescent for a child; that she prevailed upon him to reveal his glory when a wedding party ran dry; that she witnessed her son’s rejection by his townsmen; that she heard him call other people his mother and his brothers and sisters; that she stood by the Cross at his crucifixion; that she was given as mother to the disciple Jesus loved and he to her; that she stayed with the disciples in the upper room after her son’s return to his Father’s house.
Since Jesus was not only the Son of God, but was himself also God, Mary is not only the Mother of Jesus but is also truly the Mother of God. This is perhaps the greatest of all her titles, dating from the earliest days of the Church.
The second Ecumenical Council, the Council of Ephesus, declared in 431: “If anyone does not confess that the Emmanuel is truly God and for this reason the holy Virgin is the Mother of God (since she begot, according to the flesh, the Word of God made flesh), let him be anathema.”
God-bearer
The Greek term used to describe Mary was Theotokos – ‘God-bearer’ or ‘birth-giver of God’. It is interesting that Eastern Christians rarely speak of the Blessed Virgin by name, but use this term, Theotokos, instead. In doing so, they are making a powerful statement not just about who Mary is, but about who Jesus is. It is because of him that she is worthy of our veneration.
I love what Gerard Manley Hopkins says of Mary – that she “gave God’s infinity dwindled to infancy welcome in womb and breast. / Birth, milk, and all the rest”. He presents her ‘yes’ to Gabriel not as passive obedience to the angel’s message, but as an active deed of hospitality towards the Almighty. She answered yes, and both her womb and her breast were hospitable hearths for “God’s infinity/Dwindled to infancy”.
In the same poem, Hopkins says: “Of her flesh he took flesh: / He does take fresh and fresh / Though much the mystery how, / Not flesh but spirit now, / And wakes, O marvellous! / New Nazareths in us, / Where she shall yet conceive / Him, morning, noon and eve: / New Bethlems, and he born / There, evening, noon and morn.”
If ever there were an elegant reflection on the dignity of the Christian who lives, as Mary did, in hospitable obedience to God, there is this: Christ “born so, comes to be New self and nobler me / In each one and each one / More makes, when all is done, / Both God’s and Mary’s Son.” If we live the hospitable obedience of Mary, God the Son will be born in us too, making us a new creation and giving us a noble dignity.