Imagine grown men and women cringing with terror at the thought of a sweet little Jewish woman who lived in Roman-occupied Galilee and Judaea in the first century. Oddly enough, my Evangelical and Protestant brothers and sisters seem to be afraid of just such a woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Growing up in the evangelical world, I heard the rumors that spread fear throughout entire denominations: Catholics pray to Mary. Catholics worship Mary like a goddess. Catholics think she's the mother of God.
None of those rumors are true.
Except for the Mother of God part.
We do believe that Mary is the mother of God. See, what we believe about Mary is based on what we believe about Jesus, so let's try this one out for fun. It's just a simple syllogism:
You get the idea.
Because Mary is the Mother of God, she is the most shining example of motherhood that every mother should aspire to. In fact, her example shines so brightly, she would probably make a fantastic subject for a Mother's Day sermon. And she almost did once.
On a lovely day in May many years ago, at a tiny Wesleyan church, the pastor had begun his annual Mothers' Day sermon. On the cusp of mentioning what a great mother Mary was, he inserted St. Joseph into the mix so quickly that it suddenly became a Parents' Day sermon. True enough that Mary and Joseph shared incredible responsibility raising the God-man from an infant through the clever-clogs teenager phase—didn't you know I'd be in my Father's house?—and into a holy man and rabbi who was indeed faithful to his Father's mission.
But it was Mothers' Day. On Fathers' Day we can talk about St. Joseph's fatherly example: a hard-working man protecting and providing for the family in Bethlehem and Nazareth. We could talk about how he rescued the boy and took him hundreds of miles away to escape a murderous king. And we could speculate about how he must have felt hearing his Son at the temple talking about "my Father's house." But on Mothers' Day, we shoud honor our mothers. St. Joe can wait a month.
In order to be honored as a mother on Mothers' Day (or at any other time, really), one must first be a mother. So how, you may ask, does one become a mother? It's the basic biology we all learned in health class. A woman conceives and bears a child. This makes her a mother. Pretty simple.
In Mary's case, the conceiving was done, not by her betrothed husband Joseph, but rather she was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, in much the same way that the cloud descended upon the Ark of the Covenant for the ancient Israelites. I suppose that we can say, in a certain way, that the Blessed Virgin Mary is like an Ark of the New Covenant. After all, the same God that made the ark the seat of his presence amongst the people of Israel made himself present in both his divinity and his humanity in the Virgin's womb. St. John, who became her guardian at her Son's crucifixion, makes the same allusion in his Revelation:
And the temple of God was opened in heaven: and the ark of his testament was seen in his temple.... A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. And being with child, she cried travailing in birth: and was in pain to be delivered. And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with an iron rod. And her son was taken up to God and to his throne. (Rev 11:19-12:5 (DRB))
Calling Mary an ark seems a little impersonal though. "Mother" is definitely more evocative. But Mary is at once Mother and Ark. She conceived and carried the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, both his divinity and the human nature he assumed unto himself, within her own body for nine months. Imagine being the seat of God's presence and then nursing your own creator. Imagine nursing the King of the Universe.
Being the mother of the King makes Mary, by the fact of their relationship, royalty. John's crown of stars in the passage above certainly suggests royalty. Any good Davidic King would see fit to give his mother her own throne, much like Solomon did for his mother. The throne Jesus gave his mother, though, must be ever so slightly more majestic—she has, after all, the moon for her footstool. But the Blessed Mother doesn't rule in her own right. Anything she might do on behalf of her spiritual children (us) is done under the authority of her Son. Being the mother of the King doesn't make her a ruler, it makes Mary what the Brits might call the Queen Mother.
Before she was a mother, though, Mary was an aunt. Probably. Maybe. Could be. Sort of... Aramaic words for extended family are imprecise at best, and whether her kinswoman Elizabeth was an older aunt, sister, cousin, or other distant relative is anybody's guess. In any case, when the angel announces to the Virgin that she will conceive and bear a Son, her elder, barren kinswoman Elizabeth is already six months pregnant with John the Baptist who, if you believe Josephus, was arguably more popular than Jesus in the first century, much like the Beatles in the 20th. Mary then goes to visit Elizabeth, possibly to help her during her pregnancy and delivery. It is also possible that Mary, now pregnant herself, was sent to stay with family that lived out of town. It was until recently a fairly common practice for young girls pregnant out of wedlock to be sent away to live with geographically distant relatives.
Whatever Mary's reasons were for visiting Elizabeth, upon her arrival John the Baptist leaps and dances in Elizabeth's womb in much the same way that King David leaped and danced when the Ark of the Covenant was being returned to Jerusalem. Elizabeth, because John is surrounded by amniotic fluid so is unable to speak, echoes David's words herself: "How is it that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, prophesies and contributes her own bit of what became the Hail Mary prayer ("blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb").
Mary stays with Elizabeth for another three months. Doing some elementary-school arithmetic on the timeline, we can presume that Mary was present for the birth of St. John the Baptist, the one who cried out in the wilderness, who preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, who was the forerunner of the Christ—the Messiah—who would redeem Israel. The one with whom the proclamation of the gospel begins.
From this beginning of the gospel, Mary is present throughout. She watches Elizabeth's husband who, lately unable to speak, finally sing out when his son John the Baptist is circumcised: "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, he has come to his people and set them free!" She ponders in her heart the appearance of shepherds and angels and men visiting from the East. She further ponders the prophecies of Simeon and Anna and the sword that will pierce her heart. She flees with the boy as her husband leads them to safety in Egypt, so that her Son is not massacred with the Holy Innocents in Bethlehem. She raises her divine Son as he grows in wisdom and the grace of God, even feeling the terror of not being able to find her Son for three days. She insisted that Jesus, now in his 30s, should finally begin his public ministry at the wedding feast. She accompanied him when he was tortured, crucified, and buried. After her his resurrection, she is with the disciples on Pentecost when the Holy Spirit anoints the church accompanied by a great wind and tongues of fire.
Mary is the mother of our Lord and God-incarnate Jesus Christ. She is also the mother of the church, because if we are adopted sons and daughters of the Father, then we are adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus—the firstborn among many brethren—and therefore sons and daughters of his mother. Mary is the mother of the gospel for if she had not said yes to the angel, there would be no gospel, no good news to have been proclaimed.
When she first arrived at Elizabeth's, before even the Baptist was born, Mary prophesied:
My soul doth magnify the Lord. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. Because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid: for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. Because he that is mighty hath done great things to me: and holy is his name. (Luke 1:46-49 (DRB))
The Almighty did great things for the Virgin Mary and, in so doing, did great things for us. All generations Catholic and Protestant ought to call her blessed. For the Blessed Virgin Mary is indeed the mother of us all. We should have no reason to be afraid of our mothers, biological or otherwise, although next time we should make an effort to find out what the Church really believes before we spread rumors that strike fear into the hearts of well-meaning folks who want to avoid idolatry.
But Catholics don't worship Mary. We honor her. We venerate her. We ask for her intercession. But she doesn't sit on the throne, she has a smaller one just to the right of the big one, like King Solomon's mother. She never glorifies herself, but always points us back to her Son. Her maternal admonition to us is the same as the instruction she gave to the servants at the wedding feast: Do whatever my Son Jesus tells you.