While having lunch with a friend this past week, the popular Christmas song, “Mary Did You Know” came over the speaker, and my friend proceeded to decompensate in a way that I didn’t expect, exclaiming: YES - SHE KNEW!!!
After pleading with her to simmer down, I started thinking about Mary. And the more I thought, the more I was wrought with the many misconceptions we have about Mary. Which posed the question head on into my path: did Mary really know? What did she know? How much did she know? Could she understand what she knew?
This time of year is dominated by so many things…trees, lights, presents, food, family, drama, aggravation, sadness, depression, expectations…we are over stimulated, over emotional, and just plain over IT; but we are always so good to remind each other that Jesus is the reason for the season. And yes…he is. But he’s not the only person of this season. There are so, so many who are so often overlooked…like Mary.
To be the mother of God in flesh, we don’t know a whole lot about her…and after the ascension of Christ, she’s no longer mentioned in the Bible.
There are so many non-canonized historical texts of the Church’s history penned by historians of ancient times…and I grew up being taught that if we had needed those texts then God would have put them in the Bible. Well, personal Dogma aside, these texts do mention Mary’s life after the ascension of Christ.
Mary was between 60 and 65 years old when her life ended; where she lived, and where and how her life ended is heavily disputed, as is her “final disposition”. By some accounts, Mary never died, but was assumed, or taken while alive, into heaven in the same fashion as Enoch and Elijah. Others claim that she did indeed die, and 3 days later was resurrected and taken to heaven. Other accounts state that she was buried in a tomb near the Garden of Gethsemane and that was the end of it. For me personally, I don’t wonder as much about where or how she met her end, or her disposition; I have other questions, more “human aspect” questions: did her mourning ever end?
I want us to go back, 15 to 20 years in Mary’s life, to what we call Good Friday (I prefer the term Holy Friday). We don’t know where Mary was the night before…when Jesus broke bread with his Disciples, washed their feet, then was betrayed, and arrested in the garden. But, we know she was present for what came next.
In my younger years, I experienced the death of friends, and even at a young age witnessed the impact that event had on their parents. Now as an adult, I have friends, who are parents, who have lost children, and I don’t think that’s a pain you ever really recover from. If you lose a spouse you’re widowed, and if you lose a parent you’re orphaned; and as gut wrenching as both those things are, we don’t have a word for losing a child. I think it’s the ultimate extreme in pain you can suffer as a parent. Or at least I thought that before really studying Mary. Mary didn’t just endure and survive the death of her child, her first born. She witnessed and stood helpless as he was tied up and whipped with straps of leather imbedded with shards of metal that ripped the flesh from her child’s body. She watched as he screamed out in pain that none of us can imagine. She watched as they kicked, beat, spit on and mocked her son. As painful as it was, I don’t imagine she could look away; and like anyone who is a mom will tell you, she felt every bit of it. She followed him while he walked up the hill to the place called Golgotha, the weight of the instrument of torture and death he was forced to carry crushing him. She watched as they nailed her child to the cross, and hoisted him up to hang. It’s important to note, here, that we in our minds imagine the cross being tall, and if you wanted to see you would have to careen your neck upward; in actuality, Christ would have only been 1, maybe 2 feet off the ground. He would have been in reach. So as his mom stood at the base of his cross, she would have been able to touch him, and perhaps even reach his face and head. She would have been able not only to see…but to smell, and hear, both with great clarity, and her son would have been able to hear her. What would they have said to each other? What would have been Mary’s final words to her Son before he died? I don’t have children, so I can’t begin to understand the bond from parent to child, and I’ll take that a step further: the bond between mother and child, and then from mother to son. That’s a special relationship. If it were me, I wouldn’t want my mother there. I’d beg for someone to get her out of there. I wouldn’t want her to see what was happening. That being said, I also know my mother wouldn’t leave…and I don’t think any mother would.
From here I want us to back up 33 years…past the ministry of Jesus, past the experience in the temple when he was 12, past all of the unaccounted for years, to that night. That Silent Night. Which, is ironic, actually. I’ve been in the room for many, many births…none of them were silent, beautiful, or even inspiring. The very first one scared me to death, and it’s been a while, but I don’t ever remember them getting much better. And everything I experienced was in a hospital, with a hospital bed, climate control and running water and anesthesia…so the thought that all is calm, all is bright during the birth of Christ is highly unlikely. Am I right?
Mary and Joseph had just traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem; which per Google Maps is 97 miles, or 2 hours in a car, or 33 hours on foot. 33 hours…walking. And we like the images we see of Joseph, leading the donkey on which Mary was riding…but odds are, that camel was loaded down with their belongings and the things they needed, meaning Mary probably walked as well. 97 miles, 9 months pregnant.
They arrive in Bethlehem. They find an inn. It was full. They were offered a stable. They took it.
This inn would have been more of a boarding house situation…transient temporary housing, bare bones. And the stable, that would have been more of a parking garage for the camels that came with the travelers.
Filthy, exhausted, stinky…they settled in to their lodging. We don’t know how long they were there before Mary started feeling those unfamiliar labor pains. Would she have known what was going on? Would Joseph had known to go get help? Who would they even call on? Would the townsfolk hear her screams and come running? And remember that they weren’t in that familiar hospital bed and climate controlled birthing suite that you and I are used to…they’re in a camel parking garage. It smelled awful, they were surrounded by, well, camels, and camel food, and it would have been just awful. And Mary delivers her first born son in all this mess, through all that pain, in spite of the circumstances around her. They wrapped him in strips and scraps of cloth, and placed him in a feeding trough to sleep and for safe keeping.
And if we go back, one more time, 9 months from what we celebrate annually as Christmas, encountering this morning’s scriptures and The Canticle of the Magnificant, or Mary’s Song, to the future bride to a man named Joseph, who is visited by an Angel of God one night, who tells her the honor and favor she has found with God. That she…this ordinary small town young girl, has been chosen, to carry a son…the Son of the Most High. The King of Kings, Lord of Lords. His name will be Jesus, for he is the Son of God.
I won’t begin to imagine what went through her mind.
We don’t see that the angel Gabriel exposed Mary to the future. There’s no evidence that she was ever made privy to what was to come. What we do see is a girl, with faith that could move mountains, who trusted with every fiber of her being, believing the words thy will be done when they rolled off her tongue. Knowing that, it indeed would, be ok.
Thanks be to God.
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