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Readings for Today. Listen to our other podcasts.
Mary is the first disciple of Jesus.
The power of baptism
I have every advent, except for this one, because I haven’t really gotten the energy to dig through my boxes of books to find it, read a book by Caryll Houselander called The Reed of God. It’s one of my favorites, and part of the reason it’s one of my favorites is what she kind of writes in the introduction, where she recalls that when she was a little girl, she was told, never do anything that you can’t imagine the Virgin Mary doing.
And Caryll Houselander writes, I couldn’t imagine the Virgin Mary doing anything. Mary was not a real figure for her as a child. She seemed kind of way out there as some kind of ephemeral reality, not someone who actually lived and moved and acted in our world.
And that’s really what Carylll Houselander then seeks to do, is to really make Mary more human, more real, more observable. And I think we need to remember this too, that we know of course the end of the story, and Mary was revered and had a special place in the church from the earliest days of Christianity. In fact, maybe because we believe she’s only fully human, the church worked out what it believed about Mary before it worked out what it believed about Jesus.
And so we celebrate this feast today really because God decided in His grace, in His goodness, to give Mary a special privilege or favor. Now we can say, yes, she was conceived without sin. Paul tells us in fact that sin was something we all kind of inherited in some way once sin entered the world.
But what was the privilege? Why was this such an important thing for God to have done? Or why was it, as is often the language, why was it fitting that this be done? And I’m going to suggest today that the biggest reason, the primary reason, was that Mary was given the privilege of baptism, of being the first disciple of her son because of her fidelity and her faithfulness.
If we read about her life, we see that it was hardly the life that was kind of a golden life with no difficulties. Even today when she encounters an angel, it does not immediately fill her with joy. She doesn’t pat herself on the back and say, oh, isn’t this wonderful and tremendous an angel is visiting me.
She’s terrified. She’s terrified. The angel has to say, Mary, don’t be afraid. You found favor with God. And we know from this moment on when she says yes, when she gives her consent to becoming the mother of Jesus, the troubles aren’t going to end there. In fact, they’re just beginning in today’s gospel.
She has to flee. She has to move as a pregnant mother in a time where travel was quite difficult and then flee after the birth of her son and then struggle to understand the son of hers. One of my favorite moments in the gospel is when the mother of Jesus and his relatives come to get Jesus. But it says this because they are convinced he is out of his mind. They don’t understand this Jesus at all. And in the midst of this lack of understanding, Mary remains faithful. She is by the side of Jesus until the very end. In that she is the perfect model for us. We too have been given the grace of baptism. We too, like Mary, are called to do magnificent and miraculous things for our God. We too, like Mary, are going to be given invitations by God to which we are to say yes. Let it be done according to your will. As we celebrate this feast day of the Blessed Virgin Mary, let us ask the Lord to give us the grace he gave her and let us ask her for her prayers that we, like her, might be faithful.
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