The Mother of Life

Reflection on the feast of glorification of St. Mary, Mother of God (December 26^th).

Christ is born! Glorify Him!!

In the book ‘Beginning to Pray’, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom references a statement from another resource that connotes the role of St. Mary the Theotokos in the Incarnation of our Lord: ‘one day a virgin of Israel was capable of pronouncing the sacred name with all her heart, all her mind, all her being, all her body, in such a way that in her word became flesh’.

The Blessed Virgin stayed with St. Elizabeth for three months wherein the wombs, outwardly silent but internally active, witnessed the Voice ministering to the Word. As Life grows in the Blessed Virgin, her organs squeeze in to make space for the growing womb carrying the Son of Most High. The heart asks the Baptist, isn’t it the Blessed Virgin’s womb and thereby her life which taught you - “He must increase but I must decrease” (St. John 3:30).

"Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary..?" (St. Mark 6:3) asked the astonished villagers who found it difficult to digest as to how an ordinary workman that they knew, was now back in the hometown as a Rabbi with His circle of disciples and whose fame was spreading far and wide. A unique passage where Jesus is addressed as the Son of Mary.

Being addressed as 'Son of Mary' could simply mean that the villagers had chiefly known St. Mary and her Son with Joseph being dead long ago.  However, in the eastern communities, the most acceptable way to address a person would be through this father irrespective of when the father died. That He was addressed as 'Son of Mary' might have been with an intent of slur- of being born to a betrothed mother. The small town would have had the murmurs doing the rounds on the special birth of Christ. This was also the sword, a daily sword, as St. Simeon predicted, will pierce the soul of the Blessed Virgin (St. Luke 2:35).

Indeed motherhood is a phase, especially the postpartum period, where the soul is pierced brutally by the changes, words, actions, silence and inaction of those around the mother and the child. Adam named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living (Genesis 3:20). How funny is that from puberty till menopause, a girl/woman is considered ‘impure’ on certain days of the month. This very ‘impurity’ is the basis of the proliferation of the human race. The very phase of ‘impurity’ assures her of biological motherhood.

Beneath the calm exterior of a new mother lies a tsunami of changes that has happened within her. Certain hormones go from highest to lowest and vice versa following childbirth which affects all aspects of a woman's life – physical, emotional, psychological. Add to this the barrage of comments from our ‘helpful’ community ranging from the delivery method to the infants’ physical stats to the feeding techniques is a leading reason for deterioration of the mother’s mental health. In commemorating this feast of St. Mary, the Church teaches us to honor, glorify, help, and shower love on a new mother.

A paraphrased and translated sermon of Fr. Bobby Jose Kattikadu concerning the Theotokos is as follows: Our mothers can only beget us. We need the prayers of our holy Mother to help us transform into Christ-like figures. That is why He entrusted the Theotokos to St. John the Apostle and as an exemplar for the entire humanity, ‘from that hour that disciple took her to his own home’ (St. John 19:27). The impact of the Theotokos on the life of St. John the beloved apostle can be sensed immediately. During the Last Supper the disciples argue who is the greatest (St Luke 22:24). On the day of resurrection when Mary Magdalene informed St. Peter of the empty tomb, he and the other disciple (St. John) went together. “So they both ran together, and the other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first. And he, stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying there; yet he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; and he saw the linen cloths lying there.” (St. John 20:3-6).

Despite reaching the tomb first, St John displays humility as he waits for the more senior disciple to come and look at the tomb. Just a few days ago, St John the apostle argued on who should be the greatest and, in the present, he waited for the other willingly taking the second spot. It is indeed the influence of the one whose “let it be” response ushered in the story of salvation of all.

May the following excerpts be our meditation this day: “When we turn to the Mother of God in prayer, we should realise more often than we do that any prayer we offer to the Mother of God means this: ‘Mother, I have killed thy Son. If you forgive me, I can be forgiven. If you withhold forgiveness nothing can save me from damnation.’ And it is amazing that the Mother of God, in all which is revealed in the Gospel, has made us understand, and made us bold to come to her with this very prayer, because there is nothing else we can say. To us she is the Mother of God. She is the one who brought God Himself into our earthly situation. In that sense we insist on this term ‘Mother of God’. Through her God became Man. He was born into the human situation through her. And she is not to us simply an instrument of the Incarnation. She is the one whose personal surrender to God, her love of God, her readiness to be whatever God wills, her humility is such that God could be born of her. There is, in one of our great saints and theologians of the 14th century, a passage on the Mother of God in which he says The Incarnation would have been as impossible without the “Here am I, the handmaid of God” of the Virgin, just as it would have been impossible without the will of the Father.’” (Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray)

In Christ,

Rincy