What do the teachings about Mary say to women?

A talk given by Sr Tamsin Mary at an event for the wives of married Deacons.

One cannot talk about women in the history of the Church without talking about Mary. What has she to say to us as women, married and religious? Many different things, but I will concentrate on those which flow out from the teachings about her proposed by the Church for our belief.

As Catholics we are obliged to believe that Mary was sinless for every stage of her existence from conception until the end of her life (The Immaculate Conception). Secondly we must believe that she remained physically and emotionally and spiritually a virgin before during and after the conception and birth of Jesus (The Virgin birth). Thirdly we are obliged to believe that at the end of her life Mary did not see corruption, but that her body was taken up into heaven and she is with Christ reigning in glory (the Assumption).

Now I have read a piece of feminist propaganda which attacked this picture of Mary as setting up before us as women an impossible ideal, which we cannot follow, being both Virgin and mother. I want to suggest that in fact in these doctrines about Mary a model is set before all mankind, but particularly before women, that they can and should follow. I would argue that on the contrary the devotion to Mary in the Catholic Church gives honour both to celibates and to wives and mothers, in ways that I shall explore.

I shall take the teachings about Mary in the order they took place in her life:

The Immaculate Conception: At no point in her life, from conception to her Assumption into heaven, was Mary touched by the stain of sin. Why is this ‘necessary’? In brief for three reasons:

Firstly, an argument from equality, or the loving reverence which God shows to His creation. It was not enough that there should be the sinless Jesus as the New Adam – there had to be, in complement to Him, a sinless woman to be the New Eve. (This did not mean that Mary had no need of a Saviour, since the grace with which she was filled flowed from the Passion, Death and Resurrection of her Son, as do all graces in the history of mankind.)

Secondly, It was in order that in her ‘yes’ to God’s request, there should be no trace of those equivocations, qualifications and evasions which are the trace of sin in even our most sublime words and actions, so that that ‘fiat' ‘let it be done to me according to your word’ was the first truly free action on record that had been performed since the time of the fall.

Thirdly it was not fitting that She who was to become for a time the Temple of the most high God, should sin while carrying Him in her womb.

What does this say to us as women? It shows us the value that God puts on his creatures, on humankind, including women. It gives the lie to any notion that there is a second class citizenship in the Kingdom. We should here celebrate and know our dignity precisely as women. It also shows us what it means to follow Christ fully – that our yea should be yea and our nay be nay, and that we should follow with undivided hearts the loving plan which God sets before us – with all its graces and sufferings, to bring us to heaven. It also puts the humanity of the conceptus – the beginning cell of our existing as an individual organism right at the heart of the story of our salvation. To deny the humanity of the zygote is to deny a basic tenet of our faith.

The perpetual Virginity of Our Lady, or to put it in other words, the Virginal conception and birth of our Lord is first and foremost a sign that God is truly the Father of Jesus. God could have done it otherwise – He could have become incarnate as a child with a human father as well as a human mother; the perpetual virginity of Our Lady is as it were a sacrament of the Divine origin of Christ, which is more natural and easy to understand than if there were a human father as well as a divine one.

Secondly, it has a significance for the work of salvation – that the blood and suffereing that needed to be shed and undergone for the redemption of the World was shed by Christ, and not by anyone else. On the other hand the Church Fathers say that Mary suffered at the foot of the Cross the pain which she was spared in childbirth.

What does this say to us as women? Does it denigrate the pains of giving birth – not at all, if we take seriously the last point made, that those pains are in the life of Mary equivalent to the sharing in the Passion of Christ. What then? All women, and indeed all men, are supposed to be ‘mother’ to Christ – and frankly, I think this is something easier for real mothers to comprehend that for anyone else, since they alone understand the profundity of love which that implies.

As a celibate woman it has not often come my way to be fully responsible for a child for more than an hour or so, but I remember once looking after a niece over a period of a month. The thing that struck me most forcibly was the way I was never off the hook – not when she was with me, but more worryingly, not when she was not with me either. I do not know how mothers cope! But also, all of us should understand that this bringing forth of Christ in our lives will not hurt us in the ways that we fear and expect, which hold us back from complete commitment – that the pain of discipleship comes from external forces, and not from the fact of saying ‘yes’ to Christ in our lives. He will not hurt us, though He may allow others to do so in His service. Anyone who prays will reach a point in prayer when the fear of what being totally submissive to the will of God truly means – and this truth about Mary is again in a way a sacrament of the gentleness of God towards His creatures.

Finally, there is the doctrine of the Assumption. This is the doctrine according to which Our Lady ‘was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death.” (LG 59) In this mystery we have as it were a guarantee of the truth of Christ’s promises, since what Mary has already received is a foretaste of what is promised to all of those who follow Christ faithfuly.

What does it say to us specifically as women? I think it is the absolute answer to the fashion magazine’s false imaging of womankind. There is an inherent dignity and beauty of womankind which is of body and mind, which endures into old age and in the case of Our Lady, and we hope eventually for ourselves, in the glory of heaven. This dignity and glory, which cannot be reproduced or made up –is there in the frailest and least attractive specimens of humanity.

This truth is shown forth in a particular way in Our Lady, which is not shown in Our Lord, since His being in heaven, body mind and spirit is hardly surprising, as He is God. It is she who has been lifted high above all other in a way that we could neither imagine nor expect, and in her every woman can lift up her head and say ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my Spirit exults in God my saviour, Since He has looked on His Maidservant in her lowliness.’

Every doctrine about Mary tells us something more about Christ, and my final point about her therefore is this – can that also be said of us? This is the model we have been given, as the prototype of woman hood, and it is inasmuch as we ‘hear the Word of God and keep it’, ponder the word of God and bring Him forth fruitfully in our lives, that we succeed in modeling ourselves on her, the model disciple.

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