When I was a grade-school student, all the girls looked forward to May. It was the month of “The May Crowning”. We loved getting all tricked out in our white fluffy dresses and our communion veils (carefully preserved from second grade) and proudly walking two-by-two in a long, long line down Center Street from Holy Trinity School to Holy Trinity Church a mile away. Oh, there was the joy of being released from classes on a Friday afternoon; there was the spectacle of that white line of devoted children wending its way to church, but mostly there was the wonder of that hushed church as we processed so carefully and solemnly up and down the aisles to approach the statue of the Blessed Mother, the smell of the spring bouquets we all carried, the little voices accompanying the organ as we sang: “Oh Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today, Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May.” The culmination of the ritual was every little girl’s dream: one lucky eighth grade girl, chosen for her piety and her comportment (not necessarily in that order) mounted the decorated steps and reverently placed a crown of roses on that venerable statue. In her statues she was always depicted as perfectly groomed, slender, beautiful, no gray hairs or wrinkles. As someone put it: “she seemed like some fairy-tale princess, shimmering and awesome-not like a mother....” She was magical.
While some Catholic grade schools still carry on the tradition of crowning, we cannot deny that devotion to Mary has declined over the last half-century or so, partly because our approach to Mary reflected the idea womanhood so popularized in the Middle Ages and in the Counter Reformation: timid, submissive, obedient, passive, gentle, pure (a perpetual virgin, in fact). In his 1974 encyclical Marialis Cultus Paul VI said:
The picture of the Blessed Virgin presented in a certain type of devotional literature cannot easily be reconciled with today’s life-style, especially the way women live today. [As a] consequence of these phenomena some people are becoming disenchanted with devotion to the Blessed Virgin and finding it difficult to take as an example Mary of Nazareth because the horizons of her life, so they say, seem rather restricted in comparison with the vast spheres of activity open to mankind today...We would like to point out that the difficulties alluded to above are closely related to certain aspects of the image of Mary found in popular writings. They are not connected with the Gospel image of Mary nor with the doctrinal data which have been made explicit through a slow and conscientious process of drawing from Revelation.So my friends, our task is to look again at scriptures and at the teaching of the church and re-discover the picture of Mary which is already there. Without artificially transforming her into something she was not, we can nevertheless uncover in her both a model of church participation and leadership, and a model of motherhood.
Since it is Mothers’ Day, let us look at the ways in which the gospels shed light on the strength she needed to have just to be a mother. DON’T THINK IT WAS EASY TO BE THE MOTHER OF JESUS-- NOT FOR A MINUTE!
I can only imagine the difficulty of Mary’s first conversation with her parents about her pregnancy. My guess is that the conversation with Joseph went no more smoothly. This certainly was not a conventional pregnancy, in some ways. But I suggest it was very conventional in other ways; I’ll just bet her back ached and her feet got swollen as she reached the point where she could no longer see her toes. I suspect that her delivery was as painful as any mother’s would be without anesthesia. If, as Luke’s narrative describes it, Mary had this child outside in a poor stable and laid this baby on straw, it must have been cold, uncomfortable, and frightening. (Lk 2:7) Mary had plenty to think about and she dealt with the difficult circumstances by reflecting and praying: “She pondered all these things in her heart” (Lk 2:19). If the Holy Family had to flee to Egypt in the middle of the night as Matthew’s story tells it, (Mt 2:13-14) then what was that journey like with a brand new infant? Did he have colic? Was he fussy?
Like a lot of us, I suspect Mary was often confused by her child’s behavior but not afraid to take him on: one gospel has her and Joseph both frantic as they tried to locate Jesus among the caravan returning from Jerusalem. Imagine their anxiety and desperation as they left the safety of that caravan and trudged all the way back over that dangerous territory only to locate Jesus calmly discussing theology in the temple. (Lk 2:41-50) They were none too pleased and said so. Jesus didn’t understand why she and Joseph were so worried. What parent hasn’t had a conversation with a kid about the issue of keeping them informed about their whereabouts? By the way, I didn’t read about an apology anywhere in that account. The Gospel of Mark starts at the point of Jesus’ public life. Lack of mention of Joseph would suggest that he was dead by now and that Jesus had been working at their home to help support the family. I wonder how Mary felt when Jesus decided to abandon his home and family and take up a life as an itinerant preacher. It wasn’t exactly a stable or particularly well-regarded career. On one of his trips back home, (Mk 3:20-21, 31-34) Jesus’ relatives tried to seize him because they feared that he was crazy. Mary and Jesus’ brothers, standing outside where Jesus was preaching, begged him to come out and talk to them. What shame and what fear Mary must have experienced as she approached the place where Jesus was, and what disappointment and hurt as he refused to come out and mollify her fears. John’s gospel story of Jesus’ first miracle at Cana (Jn 2:1-10) illustrates the quiet confidence that Mary had in her own abilities to convince Jesus to do something he was quite reluctant to do. When she remarked that they were out of wine, Jesus gave her a little bark about his hour not yet coming. Nonetheless, Mary calmly turned to the servers, ordering them to do whatever Jesus said; she just KNEW that her confidence in Jesus was not misplaced. That is faith!
We all know of Mary’s courage at the foot of the cross with some other female disciples, the 12 having fled in fear. We remember from John (Jn 19:26-27) that Jesus entrusted his mother to the care of the disciple whom he loved, ensuring that she would not be alone. . How uncertain the rest of her life must have seemed, with Jesus’ mission apparently in ruins and the disciples scattered. No mother wants to outlive her child, so how heartbreaking it must have been for her to hear Jesus’ worrying about her welfare as he breathed his last painful breaths. It took incredible strength to stand there in the face of her own grief and endure the agony of her child. Her courage and tenacity sustained her, for we learn from the Acts of the Apostles that Mary, present in the room with the other disciples at Pentecost, was empowered like them to go forth and to spread the good news of the Kingdom of God.
The love, strength and faith that it took for Mary to be a mother must also be present in every mother as she rejoices in, worries about, nurtures and educates those entrusted to her care. There are few things harder or more rewarding than motherhood. So on this Mother’s Day 2008, we share the joy of these new parents as they see their babies welcomed into our community of faith at the 4:30 mass, we thank all of our mothers who have given us so much of themselves, and we thank especially Our Blessed Mother, an example of courage and grace under pressure.
Nancy Greenfield
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