Mary, Mother of God 2022

 

Mary, Mother of God (2022)

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Who appreciates Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus the Son-of-God-made-flesh, today?  Very few, indeed, because so many in today’s world love, seek, and delight in pleasure, sex, and even promiscuity in so far as it makes absolutely clear their own individuality, their law-less individuality and independence, their freedom to be what they want to be!   And that, of course, implies doing what they want to do in so far as the society they choose to dwell in can stomach it.

But, notice dear People of God for whom and to whom I am now writing, those last few words: ‘to be what they want, and to do what they want’, can be seen as pre-eminently characteristic of Mary, Mother of God and our mother in God!!

And yet, how different the results of those characteristics in the worldlings I first mentioned, who will end up sick in themselves, sick of themselves, and ‘spewed out of the land’ (cf. Leviticus 18:28) and kingdom of God; whereas in Mary, we find a beautifully human luminary, second only to her beloved Son, in God’s heavenly constellation of beauty, goodness, and truth.

How has our world come to so misunderstand the wonder that was and is Mary, the mother of Jesus?

The reason is because Mary is and always has been, regarded in Mother Church’s teaching as the touchstone for our right understanding of Jesus Himself: and so many today do not appreciate Mary aright because they have not understood Mother Church’s teaching about Jesus, our Lord and Saviour, Who is, she tells us, both Perfect God and Perfect Man.

‘Perfect Man’ means that Mary’s Son was an infant, a little boy, before He became a youth and ultimately attained manhood.  Joseph would have guided the youngster into manhood, but the formative years of infancy and childhood were Mary’s domain to whom the Child had been given from conception: Mary taught Jesus the fundamentals of human life and living!  She had been chosen to teach Him as man for His heavenly Father.

Mary was sublimely wise in her understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures, which are now our Old Testament, writings inspired by God to teach the children of Israel how to become children of God.   But Mary was specially endowed by the Spirit of God to become the mother of the Father’s Word and thus give Him flesh and blood to become perfect Man; consequently, Mary understood the Spiritual truths of Israel’s Scriptures as no other before or after her Son Himself, and she gradually taught her Son in His early years precisely what God had wanted Israel to learn … and even more, because words, even the words of Scripture, can never convey the fullness and beauty of God’s intent, and Mary listened for and to God better than any prophet or priest.

Even in full manhood Jesus could still be taught … about the perfection of  human sympathy and understanding befitting God’s perfect Man … by His human mother inspired by the Spirit of His heavenly Father as we learn from the marriage feast at Cana. 

Jesus had just started out on His public mission after having been baptized by John in the Jordan, and then tempted in the Judean desert by Satan.  He had come to the wedding with several chosen disciples when His mother told Him of their hosts’ dilemma … and her words were not just information, they contained a request, however hidden.   But Jesus, thus recently endowed and proclaimed by His Father for His divine vocation, was initially inclined to act instinctively as a young man most zealous to fulfil the mission entrusted to Him by His Father.  He was not going to be told how or when to use His divine power for simply human purposes! 

Mary however, guided by the Spirit within her and backed-up, so to speak, by the heavenly Father, completed her request in such a way as to give Jesus the opportunity to embrace what was ultimately His Father’s will: that Jesus at the very beginning of His ministry, be fully manifested as the One called to bring ultimate joy and fulfilment for all who would love God and each other.   That ‘initial manifestation’ of a fulness both divine and human that was to come only after His death and Resurrection was, by the Father’s good pleasure, Mary’s maternal blessing for her Son’s future career as our Saviour, our Glory, and our great Joy.

Jesus would always treasure and protect His Father’s wishes for Him above all; friends and relatives might interrupt ‘Your mother and your brothers are wanting to see you’ but Jesus’ answer was henceforth always as fully-grown Man, ‘these who do God’s will and are now listening to My words are my mother and my brothers’.   And Mary would never again put herself forward.  But men and women of today’s truly adulterous generation (Jesus’ words!) must never forget Jesus’ ultimate commendation of His mother to all His true disciples:

                 BEHOLD, YOUR MOTHER!

Respect, love, and treasure her if you would be My true disciple!