Some Catholics worry that a devotion to Mary can overshadow and maybe undermine one’s devotion to Christ. They warn against a notion of Mary as rich in mercy and God as lacking in mercy. I’m not one of the worried. I know it is not now, nor has it ever been, a question of mercy, or love. For it is God, scripture tells us, who is rich in mercy. God who is love. It is a question, rather, of how we know or see or experience God.
Remember standing outside hoping to catch a glimpse of a solar eclipse? To view the eclipse human beings need an aid — NASA-approved glasses or a homemade cereal-box pinhole camera — in order to stare directly at the sun. Our fascination is with the sun. Our goal to be standing in the light of the sun and looking upward at its brilliance. But the aides, so small and flimsy in comparison to the sun, are necessary to the celestial encounter. Mary is like that, for she is a way, perhaps the best way, of standing before and looking upward at the Son.
Consider Mary's title: Mother of God. Consider the two nouns: Mother and God. Every one of us has an experience of mother and mothering. We all have mothers. Many of us are mothers. But only one person who was ever born and walked the earth had the experience of doing so as God. Jesus of Nazareth alone has known what it is to be both human and divine.
When God tells Isaiah tells, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,” (Is.55:8a) we understand that in our bones. And in those same bones we know mothers and mothering. We can’t begin to understand what it would mean to turn water into wine, but we know what it is to tell a child, or to be told as a child, to look to the needs of the guests when the wine runs out. We can’t begin to understand what it means to hang on a cross for the sake of the world, but we know what it is to watch a loved one suffer.
When our granddaughter was born early one December morning during a long, difficult labor, I stood by my daughter and prayed as I had prayed through the births of children and grandchildren before. I asked Mary to help my daughter, to be with her, to comfort her. I asked Mary to pray with me and for me that my daughter might soon be delivered and that both she and the baby might be healthy and well. I understood, and understand, that God alone heals. It was Jesus, not Mary, who healed the woman with a hemorrhage. It was Jesus, not Mary, who restored sight to the man born blind. It was Jesus, not Mary, who raised Lazarus from the dead. But it was Mary, not Jesus, who conceived a child. It was Mary, not Jesus, who labored and gave birth far from home. It was Mary, not Jesus, who knew the fears and pains and perils of childbirth. So, like frightened children everywhere, I called out to mother, our mother.
Devotion to Mary is an example of the deep ritual wisdom of the Church. Night prayer is the simplest, quietest of the daily prayer. It depends upon familiarity and repetition, as the deep human wisdom (long before anyone knew there was such a thing as sleep science) has always understood about easing into sleep. The psalm choices are few. The readings are brief. The Gospel Canticle of Simeon is the shortest of the three daily canticles. All of night prayer is aimed at endings, closings, consummations. It speaks to us of the slipping away of both sleep and of death. It concludes with the Salve Regina, a hymn to Mary.
Parents know what children need and want in the night. They want their mothers. Those who care for patients as the darkness of death draws near hear it again and again, the cry for mother. And we who surrender to sleep are invited to think of Mary, to sing of Mary, to ask for Mary. We who are the children of God call out to the Mother of God.
Who made Mary to be the Mother of God? Who invited her into this mystery and this holy work? God, who knows the needs and desires of our hearts. God, who knows the cries of children in the night. God, who knows the single familiarity each person on earth, in every time, every place and every culture, shares: each one of us born of a woman, our mother.
I hear God’s words to Isaiah. I know that God’s thoughts are not my thoughts and God’s ways are not my ways. But I suspect that God, who willed that Christ would come and be born a man, fully human and fully divine, knew that we would need help to stand before and look upward at the Son, the risen and ever-living Christ. So God asked Mary to be the Mother of God, and, just as truly, our own.
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