We have just celebrated two Marian feasts as a Church. Three weeks ago, we celebrated the Solemnity of the Assumption of Our Lady. It was a day of obligation, at least in the Archdiocese of Singapore. Two Saturdays ago, we celebrated the Feast of the Queenship of Mary. This week, we will be celebrating the Nativity of Our Lady.
It’s no secret that the topic of our Blessed Mother is one that potentially can spark off a lot of debate with our Protestant brothers and sisters. And while this musing is not meant to spark off any form of debate or argument, I think it’s good for us to know about why the Church gives so much reverence to Mary. Our Protestant brothers and sisters may tell us that that we Catholics worship Mary. And even if we tell them we don’t worship her, but we honor her, they’d probably tell us that the honoring of Mary is not in the Bible, when actually it is, with all due respect to those who do not share the same faith as us.
A topic that is contested in the Church is the subject of whether or not Mary suffered bodily death.
Let’s put this into perspective. Death entered the world because of sin and disobedience, as we can see in the story of Adam and Eve. But when we look at Mary, we see absolute obedience. At the age of 15 or 16, when the Angel appeared to her and told her she was going to be pregnant with God’s son, she simply said, “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let what you have said be done to me.”
We see throughout Mary’s life that she was absolutely obedient to the will of God, and therefore, the death sentence is not for Mary. The Church documents do not specify whether or not she actually died, and the point of my musing today is not to spark off any form of debate as to whether she died or not. The point that I am trying to make is that the death sentence was not for Mary. She may or may not have followed the way of her Son, who died for the sins of humanity, as some theologians suggest. But she was definitely not subject to the punishment of death, that we sinners are subject to.
And that’s why we revere Mary. In Genesis, when Adam and Eve sinned, God said to the Serpent:
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
Mary was also part of the prophecy of the Messiah by Isaiah. In Isaiah chapter 7 it is written:
“Therefore, the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.”
And even without those two prophecies, when she visits Elizabeth in the story of the Visitation, she says, “All generations shall call me blessed.”
Mary is the fulfillment of the prophecy. She is the new Eve for Jesus, the new Adam. She is the woman prophesied about in Genesis. In fact, that’s why Jesus calls her “Woman” in many accounts in the Gospel. I used to think that Jesus was being rather disrespectful, but He acknowledges Mary to be the Woman! Jesus is the offspring who crushed the head of the serpent. Mary is the virgin, whose Child was Immanuel, God with us. And therefore, God wanted all generations to call Mary blessed. We don’t worship her because she’s not God. But we honor her. We call her blessed. And we ask her to pray for us.
And that’s why Jesus gave us His mother to be our mother. As He dies on the cross, He says, “Woman, behold your son.” He gives her to the Church, to be our mother as well.
Mary is amazing as a mother to all of us. There is no sorrow that we feel that she does not know. She looked after her Son. She walked with Him down the Via Dolorosa, on the way of the Cross. She watched Him be pierced and she watched Him die, even though it was beyond human for any mother to do that for her son. She loved her Son right to the very end, just like she loves us, her children, right to the very end.
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Originally published at The Barefoot Journey Home.
Photo: Grant Whitty, Unsplash / PD-US
