December 15, 2005
Mary
Advent 4B (Lk 1.26-38)
Agnus Day is an on-line comic strip that reports the conversations of a couple of sheep around, of all things, the liturgical lectionary. In their discussion of Mary’s exchange with Gabriel, the gospel for Advent 4, they exegete thusly:
One says, What if Mary had said, “You know, this isn’t a good time for me… ” But, says the other, she didn’t! God calls, and his people heed the call. It’s pretty straightforward. So, says the first, you’re saying that Mary’s jist a ‘girl who cain’t say no?
Mary doesn’t get much attention until Christmas rolls around, and then, she has to share it with John Baptist of all people. Yet, without Mary — and her profound “Yes” to Gabriel — we’d be in a fine kettle of fish. For her Yes not only allows the occasion for the greatest redirection of human history as we know it, it also models for us who God imagines us to be and what God calls us to do.
I not only wish Christians as a whole made more of this, but I can’t understand why feminists don’t. Thank you very much, God says, but I’ll redeem things any way I please and especially without any intervention whatsoever by you arrogant, generally screw-up males. Do what you will with the Virgin Birth — or with any virgin birth at any level of the fauna and flora — believe it or don’t believe it, but please never overlook that here’s an altogether productive system that does quite well without you.
Christmas has simply got to be a traumatic time for mothers. Not only because they do ninety percent of the work pulling it off at home and hearth and mall, but because, like with their share in Mary’s vocation, there would be practically nothing to it at all. Watch women with any baby, not only their own, and you’ll witness the richness and radiance of creation in all its glory. Further, how they respond inwardly to the mystery of the Nativity must be one of the greatest ongoing mysteries of all. We men will never know, but the least we can do is get a life and show some appreciation and awe.
This “girl who cain’t say no” models for us what the sheep says, “God calls, and his people heed the call.” Don’t we wish. One of the popes called Mary, the “Mother of the Church” and by that, I trust, he meant here is what the church is to be. And in Mary’s magnificent recounting how God scatters the proud in their conceit and casts down the mighty from their thrones, lifts up the lowly and fills the hungry, and sends the rich away empty (Lk 1.46-55), he means what the church is to be about.