Mary: Not God, Still Kind of a Rock Star

When I was little (and even snarkier than I am now, if you can believe that), I used to take pleasure in criticizing statues of the Madonna and child:

“What’s wrong with sculptors, anyway? Haven’t they ever seen a woman holding a baby? All of these statues of Mary holding Jesus are so unnatural. She’s not a mom, she’s like a Jesus-holder. He’s all hovering in front of her in some impossible position. It can’t be that hard to sculpt a woman holding a baby!”

I’d go on to mention that if you want a baby to face out, you have to hold it by the crotch (because, you know, I had so much experience holding babies) and that was too awkward for the artists’ prudish sensibilities.

Clearly I, at 12, was an authority on art, theology, and child-rearing. I have no idea why anyone put up with me. I can only hope that I’m less obnoxious now.

I’m still not a huge fan of awkward-looking art, but the above statue in a church in Missouri got me thinking the other day. While I still prefer the beauty of more natural, maternal images, there’s something to be said for the “Jesus-holder” approach to the Blessed Mother.

In older works of art, I find,¹ Mary and Jesus are posed much less naturally. This might in part just be the style of the day, but I think there’s more to it than that. Before the Reformation–maybe even before the 20th century–art wasn’t just beautiful or devotional, it was catechetical. When Mary seemed to exist merely to present Jesus to the viewer, it taught believers the essential truth that Mary exists expressly to present Christ to the world.

See how Mary’s purpose in all these images is to bring Christ to the audience? Like somehow the artists didn’t get the memo that Catholics worship Mary and she is the center and meaning or our existence.

Oh, yeah. Cause we don’t. And she’s not.

Let’s go ahead and get a few things out of the way:

• Mary is NOT God.
• Catholics don’t think she’s God.
• Catholics don’t worship her.
• Mary didn’t save herself from sin.
• Catholics don’t go to Mary instead of Jesus.

So why do we honor Mary, why celebrate her birthday (today!), why put up statues and pray rosaries and name all our daughters after her? A few simple reasons.

1. As Christians, we want to imitate Christ. Jesus was a good Jew,² so he obeyed the commandments, notably the fourth commandment: honor your father and mother.³ Since we want to be like Christ, we honor his mother, too.

Let those who think that the Church pays too much attention to Mary give heed to the fact that Our Blessed Lord Himself gave ten times as much of His life to her as He gave to His Apostles. -Archbishop Fulton Sheen

But this is honor, not worship–dulia, not latria, for those Greek nerds among you. When we “pray to Mary,” we’re really just asking her to pray for us. We get that she’s just a creature, but we know how much Christ honored her,⁴ so we do the same.

Besides, how rude is it to go to somebody’s house and totally ignore his mom? That’s what we’re doing if we try to have a relationship with Christ without Mary. It might be possible, but it’s awkward and counter-intuitive.

2. We’re all about following the Bible. In Luke 1:48, Mary says, “From this day, all generations will call me blessed.” So we do.⁵

3. Mary is our Mother. On the cross, Jesus said seven things. Given that he was dying of asphyxiation and getting enough breath to say anything involved ripping the nails a little further through the flesh of his hands, I think we ought to take anything he says from the cross pretty seriously. One of those seven things was giving the Blessed Mother to the Beloved Disciple:

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home. (Jn 19:26-27)

Note that John doesn’t use a name here, although we know that it’s him. He uses instead the title “the disciple whom he loved,” a title he uses for himself not because he’s super-arrogant but because he wants us to insert ourselves into this scene. We are the disciple whom Jesus loves and he gives us his mother, just as we recline on Jesus’ breast and follow him to his death and recognize him after he rises. So when Jesus gives Mary to John, he gives her to all of us.

And, of course, Revelation calls her the mother of all Christians (Rev 12:17).

Since Mary’s our mother, we honor her, we spend time with her, we keep pictures of her around the house, we ask her to pray for us. Maybe we even sing songs about her.⁶

But she’s our mother, not our God. Mary’s purpose in our lives is to hold our hands as we walk to God. Just as a baby learning to walk will hold his mom’s hands while walking to his dad, we hold Mary’s hands as we go together to the Father. It’s not about her and if we focused entirely on her, we’d fail, just like the baby would fall on his butt if he tried to walk forward while staring up at his mom. Any spirituality that has Mary as its ultimate goal is not Catholic–Marian spirituality is always to Christ through Mary.

4. Mary always brings people to Christ. Every time we see her in Scripture, she’s all about God. The reason she existed was to bring Christ into the world. The reason she continues to play such a role in our faith is because she’s bringing him to us again, just as she brought him to Elizabeth at the Visitation.

She lives a life of obedience to the Father, directing people always toward her Son. Mary says very little in the Gospels, speaking only once during the adult life of Christ. On that occasion, at the wedding feast at Cana (Jn 2), Mary first intercedes for the people. Then, her famous last words: “Do whatever he tells you.”⁷

Do whatever he tells you. That’s it–that’s what she’s about. Any authentic Marian apparition always points people back to the Sacraments, to Christ present in the Eucharist. Because Mary knows, as do her children, that it’s just not about her.

For centuries, the moon has been a symbol of Mary, not because she’s a modern fertility goddess but because she, like the moon, has no light of her own. She’s only able to reflect the light of the sun.⁸ The moon is lovely only inasmuch as it shares slightly in the immense beauty of the sun; Mary is holy only inasmuch as she shares slightly in the immense holiness of her Son.

So we love Mary not instead of Christ but because of Christ.

Now, I wasn’t raised with Mary, so this was hard for me, too. I started praying the rosary long before I even thought it made sense, simply because I felt that God was calling me to. It took years of trying to develop a relationship with Mary before I came to understand that every single interaction I ever had with her was always drawing me closer to Christ.

I often hear Catholics say that you go to Mary when you “can’t” go to God, a statement that Protestants (and many Catholics) justly find outrageous. And yet there have been moments in my life because I am so broken that I felt I couldn’t go to God. I was angry or bitter or scared or whatever and I just needed my Momma. And as I tried to storm out of the church, she gently called my name, calmed me down, and brought me back to her poor, patient Son. Or she lifted my face, cast down and covered with tears, to look once more on my God. Those were moments when, rightly or wrongly, I couldn’t go straight to God. So my Momma took my hand and led me there herself.

My friends, Mary is nothing without Christ. And she does nothing but lead us closer to Christ. She’s so devoted to presenting Christ to us that she sacrifices her artistic sensibilities so we can see her as a Jesus-stand, awkwardly holding a baby holding the world in his hand. And somehow that awkwardness becomes more beautiful when we see what it really means: the Blessed Mother asking us to gaze on her son.

So join me today in honoring Our Lady for her intercession and guidance and motherly love. If this Mary stuff is still hard for you, maybe just chat with her for a minute to thank her for saying yes to God. If Mary’s your bffl, why not rock out a whole rosary as a birthday present? Definitely bake her a cake–it’s a feast day, after all.

Here’s to Mary of Nazareth–2000+ years and still going strong. Happy birthday, Momma!

 

Want some more hardcore apologetics on Mary? Try Mary, Ark of the Covenant, An Ancient Assumption, and Mary, Queen of the Universe.

1. I’m not an art historian, I’ve just spent an hour googling images of the Madonna and Child. There are a lot of ugly ones out there. Also, Jesus is naked more often than seems natural. [↩]
2. You did know that, right? [↩]
3. The numbers are different for the Protestant commandments, but they say the same things. [↩]
4. a lot [↩]
5. “Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” Both a line from the Hail Mary and a line from the Bible–Lk 1:42 and 11:27. [↩]
6. I have a distinct memory of 8-year-old twins I know “singing” about how they missed their mommy: “Don’t take my mommy awayyyyy! She’s beautiful like a gypsy princess! Don’t take my mommy awayyyyyy!!” I’m not saying all Marian hymns are more poetic than that, but they certainly stem from a natural, human place, not an idolatrous one. [↩]
7. Jn 2:5 [↩]
8. St. Bonaventure: “As the moon, which stands between the sun and the earth, transmits to this latter whatever it receives from the former, so does Mary pour out upon us who are in this world the heavenly graces that she receives from the divine sun of justice.” [↩]