Part 4: Final Thoughts on Mary
My Soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior...
In this final conversation with myself I resolve the last loose threads that nagged at me as I entered the Church. All of these fall directly from the Protestant mindset, and in this two week lenten fast leading up to the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos, I have sought to put these arguments to rest and, like Mary, submit. If she is part of the story of my faith, then I desire her presence there. If I am to uphold her as a model and follow her example, I want to understand her completely. As the fast concludes today, and the Feast begins, I dedicate these conversational posts to the the Theotokos.
Protestant Me: So the question boils down to whether I need to believe all these things about Mary in order to be a Christian. It seems peripheral—not central to our salvation. Why is it really important that Mary be an important part of the whole picture?
Orthodox Me: I see your point. You’re probably thinking about Hebrews 12:2 in which we are instructed to “fix our eyes on Jesus the author and finisher of our faith” and in other translations it is expressed as “the founder and perfecter of our faith.” We are to fix our eyes on him. That is all. Except that the passage is a continuation of chapter 11 which discusses the “great cloud of witnesses” and brings to the forefront all of those whom we are to consider as models of faith who have gone before.
But if Jesus is the author of our faith, then He wrote his mother into the story for our benefit.
In Protestantism there is great emphasis on the humanity of Christ, suggesting that he became man to give us the example we are to follow, and he is all we need. However, I know I am not alone in feeling frustration with this and holding onto a “Yeah, but” with that line of thinking. “Yeah, but…He was perfect. He was God incarnate. Yes he was fully human, but that Man was also fully God. I am just…human.” Furthermore, if the Bible calls women “the weaker vessel” in I Peter 3:7 (and it does—I’m not trying to be sexist or denigrate my womanhood here) then theoretically, my ability to relate to Christ as the person I should aspire to be most like is even further diminished.
But Mary had two parents, was fully human, was a woman and a mother. Though by her own confession (Luke 1:47) she calls God her Savior, by her pure devotion to Him she remained unstained by sin. If God accepted her as a pure vessel to contain “that which cannot be contained,” became incarnate within her, and humbled Himself to be raised by her and obey her, then shouldn’t I look to her as an example that I should follow—she who is fully human?
While it is true that Mary provides women an accessible model of faith to follow, even more, she gives men a woman to honor and cherish in their journey of faith, as well. In Mary, men have a benchmark for relating to women: relate as they would to the Mother of God until they should be blessed with a wife. Then esteem, protect and love a wife as a treasure of equal value. I have reflected on this at length, and have concluded that one potential answer to healing sexism and modern “toxic masculinity” is a proper understanding of the Mother of God. In Orthodoxy, it is the men whose devotion to the Theotokos that impresses me. Their veneration and love displayed toward her is unlike anything I have witnessed before. It is within this context that I believe a proper and healing relationship between men and women can arise.
In speaking about this with my husband, he admits that he views Mary as the ideal woman. She cannot be sexualized. She is honorable, sinless, and willing to receive the love that is due her. She doesn’t need to wield a sword or enter the fray of battle, but allows herself to be hidden and protected while still modeling strength and sinless character. The fact that she remains ever-virgin presents a woman who is to be guarded and honored by the men to whom she is entrusted—first to Joseph, later to the Apostle John at the Cross, and ultimately to the whole Body of Christ.
In heterodox faiths, there is often the emphasis of Christ being sufficient as mother and father to humanity. My husband admits that the way this is conveyed forces men to relate to Christ in a way that is unnatural to them. He was often put off by the “swooning” love expressed in worship music and by guys who would be “so in love” with Jesus. He pointed out that there is no evidence of the apostles relating to Christ in this way, but there are definitely examples of women doing so, not the least of which is the devotion shown by my own patron Saint, Mary of Bethany, who broke a bottle of pure nard on the feet of Christ and washed them with her hair—a uniquely womanly action. It wasn’t for lack of a towel that she did this, but for a two-fold reason: to express her extreme humility and devotion to the Lord by touching his feet with her hair, and secondly out of desire to carry with her the powerful aromatic reminder of this action, and to commend her heart constantly to that moment. (John 12:3) No comparable interaction can be found among the males in Jesus’s circle.
Contrast this Orthodox Tradition of an ever-virgin Mary with Protestant teaching in which Mary gives birth to Jesus, then is wed to Joseph, gives birth to other children, and is ranked with other women. Mary is common, sexual, and a link in the redemptive chain, not deserving of any special rank or honor. What an unfortunate victory for the Deceiver of this world! If Mary is thus reduced, we have a few exemplary New Testament women to love—Anna, the prophetess in the temple, Elizabeth, mother of John the Forerunner, the woman at the well who turns from her sin, the woman of great faith who touches the hem of Christ’s garment, my patron Saint Mary of Bethany and her sister Martha, and Mary Magdalene…but none of these are so powerful and beautiful as the Mother of God. With a reduced Mary and no strong female “lead,”—with a redeemed Adam but no redeemed Eve—the door is flung open for an unbalanced and broken understanding of the proper relationship between men and women. In this paradigm, women lack an ideal feminine role model, whereas men have the apostles and Christ himself, the second Adam, who is perfected manhood. Men and women need both Adam and Eve, Christ and Mary.
Protestantism destroyed this concept further by removing the role of monastics, suggesting that celibacy was in error. Martin Luther was the first to renounce his monastic vows and encouraged other monks and nuns to do the same. He believed that to remain celibate defied reason and was an unnatural expression of holy living.1 But who are upheld as the first monastics? Those heroes of the faith, Mary the Mother of God, Christ himself, St. John the Forerunner, and St. Paul. Until Luther's movement against monasticism, women who followed in the footsteps of the most-pure Mother of God were upheld as holy. We read in the lives of the saints countless women who chose chastity and purity for the sake of prayer in lieu of marriage, and this is a beautiful thing! But a woman who chooses marriage should also be respected as holy—that by putting herself in the role of a potential life-giver, she is submitting her body as an offering to God and to her husband—not as a possession, not as an object of desire, but as a sacrifice to bring about life, just as Mary submitted to God and allowed herself to be overshadowed to bring forth The Life.
PM: But doesn’t Jesus sort of equalize her by his words in Matthew 12:46-50?
46 While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him.[a] 48 But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 49 And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother.”
OM: Protestant reaction to Jesus’ comment about “who are my mother and my brothers?” interprets this statement as a reduction of Mary’s role and an elevation of the role of his followers, but this is a woeful reading of the text. Who else but his own mother was the FIRST to answer the call to do the will of the Father? Furthermore, this is where the notion that Mary went on to have other children originates, but this is incorrect. In this culture, “brothers” could be stepbrothers, half brothers, or cousins. The brothers spoken of in this passage are understood to be relatives or Jesus’s stepbrothers, the sons of Joseph, who was a widower at the time he took Mary in.
PM: Okay, I think I give up. I see that Mary cannot be sidelined and is an integral part of our relationship with Christ, and to remove her from that is to create a kind of handicap for Christians. With her she brings another dimension to our life as members of the body of Christ, and a fullness to the faith that I have previously not experienced. I think we are finally on the same page.
OM: Allow me to leave you with one reflection, because as I was pondering these things I could not escape the reality of the dailiness of being simply “mother” to Christ. As a mother of a son, I cannot help but wonder how many times Mary had to patch scraped knees and wipe a bloody nose for the incarnate God. He was, after all, a truly human boy. And as a toddler, did he ever run up to her as if to hug her but also wipe a snotty nose on her clothes, right about the top of her legs? Because my human boy did. And did he find it hilarious to sneak up and startle her and make her laugh and chase him? Because my human boy did. And did he love snuggling down in her arms and fall asleep listening to tales of the patriarchs at night and then she would quietly creep away so as not to wake him? Did he mimic her quirky tones of voice until she doubled over with laughter? Did he bring her wilted flowers or “special” rocks or sticks as gifts? Did he tell her that he loved her, then grinning, ask for a treat? All of these are the treasures of mothering a son. With all of the amazing “God” things about Him, there must have also been an abundance of “boy” things.
Mary was a fully actualized woman—the facilitator of that precious balance of God and Man in the person of Christ, and that leaves me in awe of the woman that she was.
Lord, Jesus Christ, through the prayers of the Theotokos, have mercy on us!
I read this Mary series and there is so much to consider. When I read part 3 I felt a sorrow that I had not considered her more. And even now, still in my protestant church and continuing to seek, I can't unknow this. ~Shelley