A Christmas song is entitled, Mary Did You Know? It has a gentle haunting quality about it, both in tune and poetry. It comes more from man than angels, but emotionally warming for the Christmas story. The song is another evidence of desire in persons to find someone between God and mankind through whom a person can talk about God, or to him. The Catholic Church makes this inclination a part of its doctrine and liturgy, so venerates Mary. Some persons take the matter so far as to equate Mary with Jesus. Protestant Christians find, in Mary, great virtue and devotion, but do not venerate her above humanity’s best limitations. This last can be important if we are to find the life parable of Mary, wholly human model for devout Christians. From what we know she seems to me to be the most humble of all the persons related to the historical Jesus.
Mary was temporarily in consternation over events. The striking point was a miracle. She was going to have a baby, but she had never been intimate with a man. Once the miraculous factor could be managed, the rest would come easier. It worked out that way. She had help in avoiding social rejection partly in the protection of Joseph, to whom she was betrothed, and could, with parental permission, be married at any time. Her cousin Elizabeth, mother-to-be of John the Baptist, helped keep the secret of her pregnancy. Mary visited Elizabeth, some distance from her own home, so would keep her timing from neighbors and acquaintances. To Elizabeth she spoke the Magnificat which poured out, in poetry, her amazement. That amazement included two opposites in thought: 1) that she was in a personally humble state; and, 2) that she would be perceived as blessed in ensuing generations – by that which would emanate from her. This last, if we recall the lot of women in patriarchal times, was essentially to say that she would be among the most highly regarded persons. This is part of the paradox of the Christian, and Mary seems to have perceived it well, that though a person is in the humblest life context, there is status for that person beyond one’s dreams. How can one be humble enough to please God and also significant enough to be honored by future generations? If I were female and asked who I would like to be of all women who have lived, or are living, I would surely choose to be Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary was truly devout. Can I be? The lesson for us is that, in all circumstances in God’s grace, we can be humbly devout. Her experience as fully human speaks forcefully to me.
Mary was a peasant girl. She was to marry a peasant man, Joseph. Scripture identifies Joseph as a carpenter with a word that means rough carpenter. He was not a finish carpenter, which is another term. He nailed the studs. Other carpenters did the finish work seen by the people of the house. Both Mary and Joseph are identified as chosen by God partly because of the honesty of their humility. Genuine humility makes truth tellers of us. We have received nothing that is not from God. Even though we cooperate with God’s plan in life, we ought not think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think – in genuine humility. Reviewing Mary’s few appearances in the New Testament one is struck by the sense of humility that marked her entire life. Her words were few, but directed. Submission was her grace, even to her twelve year old son on a visit to Jerusalem. Ours is in identifying with Mary in her role as an ideal human model of Christian virtue and humility. For me it is a larger, more magnificent provision in understanding the birth of Jesus carrying both human and divine natures, than if she were differentiated in her humanity to some special spiritual status. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020