To read Part 1 “OK… Can we talk about the communion of the Saints?” Click here. For these posts it would be important to read the preceding parts.
A quick repeat disclaimer and confession as I go into this post (as I did for Part 1). I have not done much formal research surrounding Mary, the rosary, or any other adjacent topic. This post is purely a reflection of the experiences that I’ve had firsthand.
So, without sugarcoating anything or trying to elude the differences, please allow me to process what I have learned and experienced in the Catholic Church as a relates to Mary. I’m going to go through this inductively not to avoid the hardest parts, but simply to show how I processed it and experienced it myself.
Why all this foundation about the Saints and their prayer? Because, even though Mary is held in very high regard (more on that in a second) she is only one of countless who are remembered in the church. One thing the Catholic Church is definitely pretty good at is making lists. And often any list with Mary and it has many others as well. But she is often at the top of that list. Why?
This next part is probably the insight that flipped the script for me. It goes something like this: anything believed about Mary first has to start with what we believe about Jesus. Mary is a human being just like us. Jesus is her savior just like us. Here are some quotes from The Catechism of the Catholic Church just to make sure that we’re on the same page.
At the time appointed by God, the only Son of the Father, the eternal Word, that is, the Word and substantial Image of the Father, became incarnate; without losing his divine nature he has assumed human nature. Jesus Christ is true God and true man, in the unity of his divine person; for this reason he is the one and only mediator between God and men. Jesus Christ possesses two natures, one divine and the other human, not confused, but united in the one person of God’s Son. Christ, being true God and true man, has a human intellect and will, perfectly attuned and subject to his divine intellect and divine will, which he has in common with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Incarnation is therefore the mystery of the wonderful union of the divine and human natures in the one person of the Word.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 479-483
Justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ who offered himself on the cross as a living victim, holy and pleasing to God, and whose blood has become the instrument of atonement for the sins of all men. Justification is conferred in Baptism, the sacrament of faith. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the power of his mercy. Its purpose is the glory of God and of Christ, and the gift of eternal life
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1992
It’s easy to take for granted now that the early church struggled with the identity of Christ, and especially his incarnation. I’m not an expert on the early heresies. But I know enough to know that the incarnation was a difficult one for people to grasp. “Fully God, and fully man” is hard to wrap our brains around. So early heresies would often dilute or downgrade, one side or the other. (Ex Jesus is fully God, but maybe not fully man? Jesus is a holy man, but maybe not fully God?) And this mysterious and miraculous incarnation is caught up in one simple title that Mary is given by the Holy Spirit in the Bible: the Mother of God. If she’s not his mother, he’s not a human. If she’s not the mother of God, he’s not divine.
How could God have a mother? That is the mystery of the incarnation. Any honor, any respect, any mention of Mary can only stem from the divinity, glory, and the majesty of Jesus. This is going to sound kind of strange, but I’m not sure I ever really processed the essence of the incarnation in my earlier years as a Christian. I have five children so I know what the process of childbirth looks like. From conception to birth there is a lot going on there biologically, chemically at the deepest levels. I never really thought of Mary as Jesus’ actual mother. I thought of her as His surrogate carrier. I just assumed that God plopped Jesus inside Mary‘s womb, rather than conceiving him in the womb right from a microscopic embryo. I was staring at manger scenes for Christmas. I never thought about an umbilical cord, a placenta, exchanging nutrients with Mary’s physical body?!?! So the biblical account of the incarnation and everything the Bible says about Jesus is a great place to start for us to know how to view Mary, His mother.
The next place to go would be eye witness accounts and testimonies of others in the Bible. Right off the bat, we have three voices in the Bible who spoke to Mary directly. I have a great deal of respect for all three: the angel Gabriel, Saint Elizabeth, and the Holy Spirit. They have a lot of amazing things to say about Mary. The Angel said said she is “full of Grace.” Saint Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit says…
“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
Luke 1:42-45 ESV
I guess we could throw John the Baptist in there as well. Even have it as an infant in the womb he leapt at the sound of Mary’s voice. And all of this points to Jesus. Mary has no role, no identity, so special place apart from Jesus.
487 What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ.
Mary’s predestination
“God sent forth his Son”, but to prepare a body for him, he wanted the free co-operation of a creature. For this, from all eternity God chose for the mother of his Son a daughter of Israel, a young Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee, “a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary”:The Father of mercies willed that the Incarnation should be preceded by assent on the part of the predestined mother, so that just as a woman had a share in the coming of death, so also should a woman contribute to the coming of life.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 488
In the 5th century, Augustine said, “He knew His mother in predestination, even before He was born of her; even before, as God, He created her of whom, as man, He was to be created, He knew her as His mother” (Trac. In Iohanem 8,9). “He chose the Mother he had created; he created the Mother he had chosen” (Serm. 69,3).
https://t.ly/WrHE
Thinking about Mary in light of God’s eternal plan is mind blowing. It’s a bit easier for me just to think of it in terms of the written account in the gospels. Mary was at the beginning at His birth and at the end at the foot of the cross. And in between she was there with the disciples at the wedding of Cana. As the TV show the chosen depicts, she was likely one of the women who followed along at many times, and served The needs of the ministry. Then after the resurrection she is there in the upper room at the coming of the Holy Spirit. And she was there for Peter’s first sermon and the birth of the church, the body of her Son.
I started to process my relationship with Mary this way. “Would it be fair to say that my relationship to Mary should follow the relationship that the disciples have with her?” I went to the scene at the cross to investigate this thought. At that excruciatingly poetic moment, Jesus spoke to Mary and the disciple “whom he loved” which we assume from church tradition was John, the son of Zebedee.
…but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son! Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.
John 19:25-27 ESV
In the past I interpreted this practically as simply a retirement plan for Mary. Since Joseph had likely already died, I thought Jesus was simply passing on that responsibility to another disciple? Now I think this interpretation seems unlikely given the context and everything surrounding it. It seems unlikely that Jesus was taking care of practical matters while hanging on the cross. It says in Scripture, that we are all children of Eve as she is the “mother of all the living.” It is also said that Jesus is the “last Adam.” How ironic and beautiful for Jesus to pass this relationship a disciple saying of her, “Behold, your mother” at the foot of the cross! We all have mothers. What was it like for John the day Mary became a mother to him?
I’ve also learned more and more to put Scripture in its cultural context. In the Jewish context, the King’s mother was the queen. When Bathsheba approached King David she fell on her face in honor to appeal for her son. But, after David died, and when Solomon was King, she was actually given a royal throne next to her son as Queen. None of these examples dictate to me how we I should treat Mary. But they do provide a very helpful biblical backdrop for what the disciples might likely have experienced.
What surprised me was to find out that Catholics are not the only ones who honor Mary in very high regard. Church fathers like Augustine also regularly acknowledged Mary and asked for her prayers? My Anglican Church in Grapevine, TX has a chapel dedicated to Mary and sounds off the Angelus with bells before every Sunday mass. There are also highly respected intellectuals and scholars that are devout members of the Catholic Church. A great example is Arthur C. Brooks. He’s a Harvard professor and the author of a very popular book I just read called Strength to Strength. He leads prayers on the Hallow app. It’s amazing as he integrates genuine, intellectual honesty with expressions of faith.
I titled this post “OK…can we talk about Mary?” As I reflect on the Apostles relationship to her I could have titled it “Ok…Can we talk to Mary?” My answer for decades: Ambivalence ! My answer today: Yes!
To read Part 3 “OK… Can we talk about the rosary?” Click here.