Dear Friends,
May is the month traditionally dedicated to Mary in our Church.
We know her and we don’t know her. Many of us whose roots are in ethnic groups have identified with Mary our patron. Brazil, the United States, Mexico, Poland…the list goes on. Mary belongs to us. But before that, she is the Mother of God, Jesus the Word Incarnate. Let’s pause today to look at who she was really. What do we know about her? What has history told us about who she was in her being, in the eyes of Jesus, in the eyes of others? Here are some nuggets.
Mary’s birth to Joachim and Anna is recorded only in the apocrypha. In all images of Mary with her mother, Mary is always pictured standing next to Anna, who holds an open book on her lap for Mary to read. Mary knew the prophecies of the Messiah who was to come. One way we know she knew the scriptures is that her Magnificat, spoken while with Elizabeth, is based on the Song of Hannah when she, barren woman that she was, knew she would bear a son (I Samuel 2: 1–10).
In the presence of the angel Gabriel, Mary did not hesitate. She turned to no consultant for advice before she said her yes. Not her father or mother, not Joseph.
Mary was the first of the disciples of Jesus. She believed in Him. “Do whatever He tells you,” she said to the steward at the wedding feast at Cana (John 2:5). When the woman in the crowd blessed her for bearing Jesus, He replied by honoring her discipleship (Mark 5.35). She heard His word and kept it in her heart.
Mary is the only person to be present at His birth and His death on the cross. Her arms embraced Him from lowly beginning to apparent end.
In the Orthodox tradition and the Eastern Catholic churches, the liturgical year begins with the celebration of Mary’s birth (traditionally Sept. 8) and ends with the Assumption of Mary (August 15). She is the one from whom salvation flows from beginning to end of the liturgical year.
In the early centuries of the Church, it was debated: Was Mary to be called the Mother of Christ (christotokos) or the Mother of God (theotokos)? The decision was made at the Council or Ephesus in 431 and has stood ever since. Mary is theotokos, the first lady of all creation.
Praying with touching religious imagination over the real woman that Mary was, the Episcopal priest Alla Renee Bozarth wrote in 1994:
Before Jesus was his mother.
Before supper in the upper room, breakfast in the barn.
Before the Passover feasts, a feeding in the trough.
And here, the altar of Earth, fair linens of hay and seed.
Before his cry, her cry.
Before his sweat of blood, her bleeding and tears.
Before his offering, hers.
Before the breaking of his body and death, the breaking of her body in birth.
Before the offering of the cup, the offering of her breast.
Before his blood, her blood.
And by her body and blood alone, his body and blood and whole human being.
The wise ones knelt to hear the woman’s words in wonder.
Holding up the sacred child, her God in the form of a babe, she said
“Receive and let your hearts be healed and your lives be filled with Love,
For
This is my body.
This is my blood.
Happy month when we honor you, Mary, theotokos, our mother, our sister, our friend.
~Sister Joan Sobala
