#Blessed Mother Mary | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

andrewuttaro · 7 months ago

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Mary's Sacred Yes

Due to how early Easter was this year, the earliest it can be on the Catholic calendar I’m told; the Solemnity of the Annunciation was moved two weeks later to April 8th. This almost never happens. The Annunciation is about the closest you can get to an immovable solemnity without being an immovable solemnity. Holy Week is the only celebration that happens anywhere near it that can put it off its date. The Annunciation refers to the Archangel Gabriel appearing to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and asking her consent to become the mother of God incarnate.

Read that last sentence again. Focus on “…asking her consent…”. Sometimes we glaze over thinking about these big moments and miss the subtly of this moment in the story of salvation history. Sometimes we even drop the whole consent thing altogether and make it more of an orientation for the Blessed Mother as if we’re simply commemorating the day she was told she’d bear Jesus. In the humor of Christian volunteerism the world over: the ultimate instance of being “volun-told” to do something. Alas, this was not Signing Day for a divine contract.

The consent is key here. I found myself contemplating this again recently when I came across a quote from the late Pope Benedict XVI’s book “Jesus of Nazareth” (2012). The late Pope wrote: “[St. Bernard of Clairvaux] portrays heaven and earth as if it were holding its breath at this moment of the question addressed to Mary. Will she say yes? She hesitates… will her humility hold her back? Just this once – Bernard tells her – do not be humble but daring! Give us your yes!”

The drama! Heaven and earth are transfixed at this moment it seems that God has staked his whole plan of salvation on the decision of a woman in a culture where she was inarguably considered a second-class citizen. Her response was so loaded with importance that both the realms of the mortal and divine are held in suspense by it.

Some poets and Saints of Christian history put even more emphasis on this moment tying it to the rebellion of Lucifer and his fallen angels. So, the old legends go that Lucifer and his party were enraged that God would save humanity after their rejection of his grace, positing that this declaration by God to save humanity is when Hell’s rebellion was formulated. This outrage in mind, we may consider Mary’s Annunciation the most contentious moment between the forces of good and evil across Christian lore, perhaps second only to events like the Temptations of Jesus himself or his tearful prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane before his passion. But even those events depend upon Mary’s yes occurring first.

The latin translation calls Mary’s joyful consent to the divine plan her fiat. It is not with resignation or mere acceptance that she consents to becoming the mother of Jesus, the Word made flesh, it is with an overwhelming joy to work with God in such a tremendous way.

The key thing to remember in all this is Mary’s absolute freedom. According to the Catholic tradition Mary was preserved immaculate from her own conception, that is, preserved without the stain of original sin we all bear on our nature because of simply being human. Mary was free from the ways our sinful human nature limits our freedom by way of addiction and the lesser affections for evil we all seem to harbor. Mary’s freedom to make this decision was so profound that we might consider her free in a way that only her own son exceeds. Mary’s decision was made with absolute, incomparable freedom. Mary was as free as could be and with that freedom her response was a joyful yes.

I cannot help but see a radical inclusion in this. Not just radical inclusion, but the overflowing scope of God’s merciful love for humanity. Not just these but also the greatest affirmation of human freedom and a multitude of implications beyond this so vast that I don’t know I will ever be able to wrap my head around them all.

But I will attempt a contemplation of these three points here in this article, nonetheless. We are now in the midst of the Month of Mary. What a beautiful time of year to contemplate all that Our Blessed Mother can teach us. Mary’s Sacred Yes: radical inclusion, God’s merciful love for humanity, and the great affirmation of human freedom.

Radical Inclusion by Mary

How is the Annunciation radically inclusive? “Yes” was all it took. We sometimes contemplate God giving us a mission as if it is a fantastic burden. We hear the old adage “God doesn’t choose the prepared, he prepares the chosen” and stick up our nose: surely you do not mean me, Lord? Call it fear, trepidation, or plain old resistance to any calling… or a mix of all three, we prefer to treat a call from God like an awesome impossibility.

The Annunciation tells us we just have to say Yes and say it honestly. But to say yes honestly requires a bit more background information: Mary is no fool, she asks. Mary’s first response isn’t the Yes: it’s a question – how?

Sidenote: I cannot imagine a more charming first response. I was raised by a very practical woman. So many of the women in my life who have influenced me the most exude a grace that rolls up the sleeves and gets the job done. Mary asking “how” feels to me like these countless role models asking for the blueprint for the work ahead. Just like a mother teaches you how to get things done, Mary mothers Jesus before that divine conception even occurs. Mary asks how. In that same spirit: there is also an incredulity there.

How can I bear a child if I haven’t been with a man? How questions can seem like the scariest ones to ask God. We don’t often understand the messages we get from God at first blush so it seems like such a necessary question; but we fear we won’t be able to figure it out and wonder if God would answer such a question anyway. Could God give us detailed answers? How do I go about the calling I have just been given with real action steps?

Just think about how human that response is from Mary. She must have thought to herself: Am I really about to ask God how babies are made? I know that! No, this is different she must have thought: There is something incredible going on here that I want to be a part of.

The angel gives her an answer that is just cryptic enough to be annoying but just explanatory enough to be comforting: basically, that the Holy Spirit will do it. And with that Mary gave her Holy Yes and accepted the defining work of her life and eternity. In that Yes there is so much faith. She believes in God enough to trust him even when the answers aren’t as clear as they could be. She says Yes even in the face of the practical and cultural consequences of this decision.

She asked the question with her heart first. And she got the kind of answer we usually get from God when we sincerely pray to him: cryptic but comforting. If we can answer Yes in such circumstances, then we can do God’s Will too. Mary is giving us the blueprint for faith. Mary is showing us how to do something anybody can do.

How many pursuits in our lives are not as clear as can be? How many of those pursuits are nonetheless worth it? Has there ever been a woman who has set out on the journey of motherhood and known every variable ahead of time? Of course not, faith is necessary. Mary is the ultimate beacon of that diligent, daring faith that takes on such an enormous responsibility that not only becomes a mother but chooses to participate in God’s will.

Anybody can do God’s Will. We don’t need to be preserved sinless at birth like the Blessed Mother to receive a call from God, get a cryptic but comforting response from God to a valid question, and give our ascent. Nobody is excluded from working with God. WORKING WITH GOD! Drink that in for a minute: anyone can work with God if they can say Yes with a little bit of faith.

Anyone can work with God. Young or old. Rich or poor. Man or Woman. Everyone may enter into the sacred honor of being a coworker with Christ! The only price to be paid is faith along the way. This is a development in the history of salvation.

Before this Marian moment and the advent of Jesus Christ himself, God picked those he would call and send them out. Now the call goes out to whoever will accept God in faith. A new age has begun. You may still be thinking: why can’t God just give me clear directions and show me the whole picture from square one? The short answer is respect for human freedom, but we’ll come back around to that.

For the sake of contemplating the radical inclusion Mary shows us consider this quote from Saint John Paul II: “Faith leads us beyond ourselves. Faith leads us directly to God.” Mary’s Yes is such a profound act of faith that we are invited to return to Mary for help following her son. She is a guide in faith.

Like every mother, Mary is always willing to point out the great things her child has done. She’ll take you and show you the way to what Jesus is trying to get through to you. Call on her and she’ll help you find Jesus, she was the original follower, she accepted him before any other human did. She will help anyone willing to search for him too. When you feel broken and out of luck, call out to Jesus and reach for Mary to help show you the way. God’s mercy flows through her just like God’s own son came to us through her!

But faith would be just a fun adventure if it weren’t for the mercy of the one we have faith in.

God’s merciful love

How does the Annunciation show God’s merciful love for humanity? Consider how ancient Gods often didn’t ask first. The Gods of the ancient world shot first and asked questions later to use a modern figure of speech. Zeus creates several members of the Greek Pantheon by way of sexual assault. Historically these kinds of violent Gods were commonplace in the ancient world. Gods in the ancient world were so combative and self-interested that even their own devotees recognized their humanity: a sinfulness that seems like such a clear projection to us moderns looking back.

The God who asks Mary her consent is a fundamental, radical shift away from how humanity had always viewed the divine. If God is not just a scheming superhuman, but rather a kind partner in dramatic self-giving then the whole contemplation of God is new. Wow, what a thankful change! We can work with a God like that. There’s that divine participation, that radical inclusion once again.

Mary’s Yes is in some way a solemn prayer, a solemn prayer of thanksgiving. This prayer we know as the Magnificat. If you haven’t heard it, then you might soon understand why:

“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed: the almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation. He has shown the strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has come to the help of his servant Israel for he remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever.”

That second paragraph has a sharp edge to it doesn’t it? You can almost feel a clenched fist pressed up to a chest containing a heart docile to the work of such a just God. The sense of justice in what God was doing through her is palpable. Mary’s prayer is informed by the historical situation of her people but its inspiration rings down through the ages. Her prayer is eternal. God wants justice even though our world may seem so evil and without justice at times. A loving God must be a just God as well and Mary’s Prayer recognizes this.

The most common, cynical retort you might hear to believing in God in our day and age is usually some version of: why bother with a God who allows evil and suffering in the world? He should be able to correct all that with ease since he is God after all, right?

We’re about to have a more thorough tour of the human freedom implications of that. For now, consider God’s mercy that we exist at all. God could have pulled a more creative version of Noah’s Flood and just finish the job this time. Numerous times in Salvation history we see the power of God to just end it all at will. Some of my most nihilistic peers might even see that option as the only merciful option.

No, there is love in God’s mercy. Moreover, there is justice in God’s mercy. St. Thomas Aquinas once wrote: “Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution; justice without mercy is cruelty.” If humanity has the capability for endless war and all manner of atrocities, then why allow it to exist at all? Perhaps the nihilist has a point: Mercy for a humanity like that should be extinction. When we look around and see the effects our species has had on the climate of the planet you could even see a moral reason for such an end. There is a morbid fascination with this morally perverse idea.

National Geographic Channel ran a show I remember vividly in this vein of thought: “Life After People” (2008-2010). The show largely explores how infrastructure slowly erodes away over decades, centuries, and millennia as if all humans just vanished one day. Ultimately the series shows the earth millennia after our presence ended looking no worse for the wear. More recently the 2021 film “Don’t Look Up” addressed the other side of this: what I can only call humanity’s capacity for self-delusion. I won’t spoil that great Jennifer Lawrence film, but the ending seems to suggest that total annihilation is a relief, humanity had it coming because it’s just so full of itself: a modern way of recognizing an inborn sinfulness.

Even if destroying humanity is the most just answer, God chooses mercy. God chooses mercy definitively by working with us through Mary to achieve salvation. God chose mercy so he also chooses justice to some extent to think back to the St. Thomas Aquinas quote. Mary’s Yes is the greatest example of this. It’s almost comedic it’s so beautiful. The divine subversion of expectations if you will. Think about it.

Mary, a woman wronged by the conditions of humanity so much for simply being a woman, amplified by her time in history, is, in effect, asked: So should God save this shattered world? You have seen some of the worst of it: should God save humanity in spite of it all? If she wasn’t so dumbfounded by the arrival of an actual archangel, you’d think she might even laugh at the profundity of it all.

Even more funny: Jesus’ people were expecting him to hop on horseback, throw off the Roman occupiers, and get to some legendary conquering like Alexander the Great or something. What a divinely perfect disappointment! That’s how it is with God’s mercy: we imagine, even desire in our more nihilistically angry moments, a much rougher justice than God actually doles out. God’s mercy seems like injustice to us sometimes! Sorry, God is just so merciful and just that its funny.

If we believe God is absent for a lack of justice in the world it is for a lack of mercy on our part. We bring the mercy and God works justice through us because he has already brought the ultimate, saving mercy through Mary’s consent: Jesus.

I think God deciding to do all that, and do it with our cooperation through Mary, is reason enough to throw off the nihilism of our time and embrace how precious we are if this is how God treats us. What profound mercy that sees humanity unable if not also completely unwilling to choose good over evil repeatedly: over and over again, the continual theme of human history.

God’s mercy is so amazing it can tie our brains into knots! Would such an awesome work of God occur had we not first sinned and therefore called down God’s mercy upon us? Oh happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a redeemer! Those are the words we sing in the Proclaimation of Easter, the Exsultet. Saints Ambrose and Augustine echo this counterintuitive hymn. In some profound divine way that almost extends beyond the reach of our human minds: God brings us even closer to him than what had existed in original innocence because of that primordial rebellion.

God says: I know you gave me the finger. I choose to love you nonetheless! Not just that, I am going to include you in the grand work of mercy to save you from yourself!

And once again: all through the humblest of women in the Blessed Virgin Mary. God’s mercy is just, and it is extravagantly over the top. There is freedom in embracing all this. Yes, Mary’s affirmation of the divine plan is as much an endorsement of human freedom as can be. Time to talk about what freedom really means in the divine context of all this. How does affirm our human freedom with the Annunciation?

The Great Affirmation of Human Freedom

The first gift God gave humanity at the dawn of creation was life. The Genesis story is a beautiful piece of poetry laying out God lovingly making all things and then us. Once he makes us, however, he immediately gives us our free will: the second gift to us after life itself. God didn’t want little obedient robots, he wanted to love beings who weren’t being forced to love him. He wanted a real relationship in other words.

This is why there is a tree with forbidden fruit on it in the Garden of Eden. It’s not God being cruel, it’s God giving us the freedom to choose him or not. Every good relationship is built on a minimum standard of shared consent. The same is true with our relationship with God. God wants to be in a relationship with us, but we have to make our own choice in response. God goes to great lengths to preserve our freedom throughout, even if it means allowing us to rebel against him.

The poetic connection between the forbidden fruit and Mary is as simple as the “Yes”. Eve and Adam said No to a clear boundary and chose rebellion against God. Mary and Joseph said Yes and chose obedience to God. In that is the beginning of the saving work that will be completed in Jesus Christ’s paschal mystery. Humanity participates in its own redemption by way of Mary and Joseph, just as it opted out with Adam and Eve. Humanity cooperates with God once again as was hoped for at the beginning of creation. Mary is the new Eve, and Jesus is the new Adam.

That crucial consent, that Yes Mary gives the angel, it is the Great Affirmation of Human Freedom. Even after the betrayal of Original Sin God is not going to go back on his respect for our Free Will. He works us into his plan to rectify the relationship between himself and humanity which was split asunder in Eden. Once more: he becomes one of us in Jesus Christ in the ultimate act of divine intimacy. Mary echoes the divine humility she is participating in: God lowering himself enough to be made flesh in Jesus Christ.

You would be forgiven if you feel this all seems a bit too poetic. Why does God work in these sweeping, mysterious plans? If he is all-powerful, why does he not simplify this whole thing dramatically and show himself to humanity and heal all wounds therein? The story of the bible and salvation history in it is very ugly at times along the way, why does he not avoid all that mess and just give us all that he is and wipe all that separates away with one divine swoop?

No, it’s not a cynical question to ask. In fact, it gets to the core of what makes us human beings and why we have this free will in the first place. If God is going to respect us, then he has to protect us to some degree. He is God and we are not. Human freedom must be respected here all the while.

In my line of work as a Long-Term Care Ombudsman I often encounter older adults living in Nursing Homes and Assisted Living facilities who are going to make a bad choice. They might even know they are making a bad choice. If you’re struggling with your ability to walk and you insist on going back to your own home without any modifications to your living space or in-home care then you might just find yourself in a worse situation than when you started. But the autonomy, the free choice of the residents I serve, comes first. They have the right to make a bad decision. To use the technical jargon: they have the “right to fall”.

You might imagine God as any variety of healthcare professionals in this metaphor. He knows the right thing to do, he even stands ready to help provide you with some of the interventions that can best help avoid something bad happening. Nonetheless, he has to let you make the choice however bad it can be. To stretch this metaphor a bit further we might consider the Blessed Mother a trusted peer of our older adult heading for a poor decision. God brings in a trusted voice to point in the right direction and maybe even convince their peer that a safer choice is necessary.

God will not force us to do anything we don’t choose to do for ourselves. God in his very being is too beyond us for this. He is God and we are not. We cannot simply look at God in this life. That is why whenever God appears in the bible, he always does it through an angel or a voice or some other sensible intermediary. God is inconceivable in his being. St. Anselm of Canterbury says, “God is the being which no greater being can be thought.” A lot more about our relationship with God can be explained by way of God’s ineffability than you may realize.

In the metaphor of the stubborn older adult, the medical professional can tell them all manner of facts and figures without getting their patient any closer to making the right choice. In the thinking of the older adult this is a matter of independence and dignity, not the density of their bones or the strength of their muscles. God must respect our freedom just like the medical professional has an ethical code to stand by.

Those familiar with my writing will know I often ponder if God intentionally makes it so that few people see miracles and tangible proofs for the faith. This is why: if God just shows us what’s what as clear as day, is there room for the faith that makes for a real relationship? Moreover: can there be any freedom if the correct, divinely appointed answer is always right there in front of us? Sounds like that would be robotic, eh? Food for thought, I guess.

The forbidden fruit tree was called “the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:9). That little detail says a lot. The effect of that fruit, Original Sin in the broad sense, is still with us in one way you will be able to affirm before you finish reading this paragraph: our human drive to understand all things. We want to know as much as we can, everything if possible. Knowledge is certainly a good thing but as an idol unto itself it can do us harm. This is in some way a desire for conquest against God just like Eden.

Sit with that for a moment. We fancy ourselves sophisticated modern people: we know War is ugly and regrettable. We know to avoid unnecessary violence, that’s if there is even such a thing as necessary violence! We fancy ourselves as living in a time after old fashioned conquest. We don’t do that anymore: we let everyone be and get what we need without violence. What kind of conquest can exist in this worldview? The answer, for us in our cultural context at least, is intellectual conquest.

In essence, we still have distance from the ultimate perfection that is God because we still have this yearning to control God that we consumed from the juice of that fruit on the forbidden tree. We want to be the ultimate moral arbitrators of good and evil which God can only be. We want the ultimate conquest: conquering God by knowing the universe and knowing God to be just a creation of the primitive human mind looking to lend meaning to the world around us. We have used our freedom to wage conquest against the creator of our freedom.

It's a poetic irony. If I had a dollar for everyone I’ve encountered throughout my short life so far who has that belief, at least in a subconscious way, that belief that God is just a concept humanity made to create meaning in a meaningless universe, then I would have no student loan debt. This is the modern conqueror’s mentality we carry: the newest iteration of that same desire to conquer God that motivated us in the Garden of Eden.

God doesn’t just show himself, erase all sin and its effects with the snap of his fingers, and end all our suffering in this life because what space for free will would that leave us? Would Mary’s Yes be just as free if the Angel also said “Mary, I am also your new bodyguard and I will vaporize anyone who even thinks ill of you.” God wants the freely chosen relationship with us and that is just not possible between we humans and the being that is God if there is no mediation, no working together along the way.

That’s the amazing affirmation of God asking for Mary’s Yes: Mary says yes with faith, not possessing all knowledge. She understands the one necessary thing: that even if I can’t grasp the vastness of God I don’t need to because God is here asking first anyway. Real faith isn’t blind, it knows whose asking.

God doesn’t compromise who we are or who he is by resurrecting our relationship with him. Everyone’s freedom is respected. That healing begins with Mary’s Yes and is fulfilled with her son Jesus’ resurrection a few decades later. The Blessed Mother shows us such freedom yet such cooperation with God’s Will. The Blessed Mother prays forward justice while docile to God’s amazing mercy. The Blessed Mother brings on radical inclusion, incredible faith in God’s mercy, in all freedom, and yet brings us in her very being the definitive answer in her son Jesus Christ.

Mary the Queen

If you haven’t been convinced already here it is again: Mary is the mother of all the faithful. On May 20th this year we will be celebrating Mary under her title as “Mother of the Church”. She is the new Eve, a Yes where there had been a No. Mary is our guide to Christ and forerunner in the immense mercy of God, prime participant in the plan that radically includes everyone in the saving work.

From the Annunciation until at least Joseph being brought in on the whole plan, Mary is the whole Christian Church. She is bearing Christ as the Church does in a very literal, embodied sense, Theotokos in the Greek. Even after the Holy Family becomes the whole Church, though little and domestic, Mary is the mother holding the whole thing together like so many moms do.

At one point Mary even becomes a single parent and has to guide Jesus into adulthood right up to the start of his ministry on her own. Even after Jesus’ Ministry begins she is right there for the first Apostles, the nascent Church itself. Then she faces the ultimate torture of any mother: watching her child suffer and die when she can do nothing. Jesus formally puts his mother under the protection of his Apostles from the cross (John 19:26-27) giving her to the whole Church as its Queen. She must have sat among those men and women who loved her son, the earliest Christianity, and thought: “Wow, God brought all this good through me.” I think many mothers might be having that thought this month.

Mary remains the first intercessor for the Church for the rest of her life. She is there for the Resurrection, at Pentecost, and on the missionary journeys to follow. The celebration of Mary the mother of the Church later this month is all about this. Right after Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, we have Mary there to be its guide. She gave birth to Jesus; she gave birth to the Church in that way! Indeed her Yes was to Jesus forever: long beyond his physical life on earth and beyond her own for that matter!

I think it is even appropriate to consider Mary a Queen in the more colloquial sense: what a Queen way to be doing all that!

The folk religion of this recognition of Mary transcends religion itself. Crowning Mary as the true Queen she is has become a tradition in the month of May. Some do it on Mother’s Day just because it feels so appropriate even without a hard-fast religious connotation of that secular holiday. As you embrace your own mothers and the mothering people in your life this month consider the Queen of Mothers: The Blessed Virgin Mary.

Mary’s Sacred Yes is the Yes of every mother. Mary’s Yes is the beauty of faith. As the English poet William Wordsworth once wrote in his 1822 sonnet: “Mary is our tainted nature’s solitary boast.” Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb: Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. AMEN!

#catholic #catholicism #jesus #mary #blessed virgin mary #blessed mother mary #mothers day #May #Annunciation

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