Much though it would shock my departed Irish Catholic grandmother to hear it, I sometimes struggle with Mary (sorry Nanny Moughty!). My salvation in this struggle is that there are so many different versions of Mary the Mother of Christ to which we can turn. Are we looking toward a terrified, teenage, unwed mother? Or is it the steadfast woman standing at the foot of the cross? Are we thinking of the Guadalupana of Latin American heritage? Or the one with the Immaculate Heart? It seems like the conceptions of Mary to which we can turn are almost endless.
The facet of Mary that Nouwen discusses in today’s reading is actually the one I struggle with the most. The super, extra virginal Mary. The utterly sinless, immaculate Mary. The Mary that history has told women we must be more like...an impossible combination of virgin and mother. A perfect parent who never finds herself at wits end with her son. This Mary seems superhuman and unrelatable to me (but if she works for you, go with it).
The image of Mary that I am most drawn to is the one that comes from our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters - the image of theotokos - the “God-bearer.” Mary is the one that bears God into a hungry and desperate world. I can never aspire to the kind of perfection that is placed on the Immaculate Mary, but I can hope to be like the theotokos, bearing my experience of God to others.
Is there an image of Mary that particularly resonates with you? Or perhaps a way that you bear God into the world?
I too struggle with the different images of Mary. She is not an easy persona to get at. However, I do relate to the Christ bearer image as one that I am most comfortable with. As a woman that is trying to live out a Christian spirituality the image of Mary being called by God to be the bearer of Good News causes me to ponder what must have been going through Mary's mind at the incredible-ness of such a gift--- one that would play out all the way to the end with Jesus dying on the cross. I must ask was being the Christ bearer a gift at all?
ReplyDeleteAs Advent comes closer to ending and the birth of Jesus is getting closer I want to be able to anticipate the immensity of the task put upon the Christ bearer and so my prayer has to come down to what is said in the Magnificat and Mary's willingness to take on the challenge and the gift of a young girl chosen for a monumental task.