The Blessed Virgin Mary
“And having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!” ” (Luke 1:28, NKJV)
“And it happened, when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, that the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Then she spoke out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! But why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? ” (Luke 1:41–43, NKJV)
“And Mary said: “My soul magnifies the Lord, And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant; For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed. ” (Luke 1:46–48, NKJV)
For a good many years I have thought that we Protestants have been far too fearful of calling Mary, the mother of our Lord – Blessed! Both the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed name her as part of our historic confession of the faith once delivered to the saints. She has been, consistent with the scriptures above, properly called “blessed” by the Church for more than 2000 years. We would do well to do likewise. I even preached a sermon about this several years ago.
And yet, it seems worth noting during this time of celebrating the birth of our Savior, Jesus the Christ, that we should be mindful of some of the ways Christians have gone astray in their estimation of Mary’s blessedness. What makes her blessed is not that she was somehow sinless (either before or after the birth of Jesus), or that she remained a virgin (which she did not), or that she has the ability to aid us somehow in our lives (now and forever). Her blessedness is that she was chosen to bear the Savior of the world. It is Jesus alone that saves us. We did not need Mary for anything else, nor do we need her still. She is not a Co-Redemptrix, as if Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension were in some way insufficient to provide for us all that we need in Him.
Too often Christians have felt that God the Father and His Son Jesus are so far removed from us that we need a mediator to help us receive the grace of God. Mary has become the one whose heart is open to us in a way that the hearts of the Father and the Son are not. Without her, our prayers would not reach God as readily. Because she is blessed of God, millions of Christians throughout history have assumed that she has attained a semi-divine status, and can hear and pass on the prayers of all of God’s people. And because she prays for us (at our request), we are more sure to be heard and answered.
Praying to Jesus about a problem is hard because the Spirit and the Bible answer our prayers. Petitioning Jesus therefore opens you up to change. The minute you submit to praying to Jesus, the Spirit brings to your recollection His word, already hidden in your heart. And for the first time you start to see your particular problem in those terms. The Spirit forces Himself onto your dilemma and you often come to a humbling, but ultimately empowering, solution. Praying to Jesus is an admission you’re interpretation of a problem isn’t good enough.
Praying to one of Jesus’ council members, like Mary or Saint Augustine, is more like lobbying Jesus. Mary has no written word to consult and no Spirit to guide us. When we pray to her we hold out the hope that we’re influencing one of Jesus’ chief influencers. Praying to Mary or a saint holds out the hope we can make Jesus think like us. It’s the opposite of submission. It’s more like lobbying. This is a lot of why I think cultures who pray to saints and Mary don’t change much.
What we do every Christmas, remembering the woman chosen to bear Jesus, fulfills the Bible’s declaration that generations would call Mary blessed. Trying to fan those few verses into a semi-deified Mary flame isn’t surprising given humanity’s history with idols. It’s trying to turn back the clock on a development that dramatically changed the human condition for the better.
Of course, since we are in Christ, Jesus is closer to us than Mary. Hence, any attempt to pray to a saint and ask him/her to pass stuff on to Jesus is plainly heretical. It puts Jesus at a greater distance from us than Mary, and this kind of thing is at the heart of Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy. It’s the other way around. If I want to thank Mary for doing her job, I have to ask Jesus to pass it on to her!
No iconic culture can change, and can only decline. Mary and icons are silent, and can only tell us what we already know. They are mirrors that reflect our flesh back to us, reinforcing sin — sin in the BIG sense of enslavement to flesh, enslavement to ideology. The golden calf is absurd, for how can a statue “go before us.” It can’t. It can’t move. It can only go where WE take it, which means of course, the Ruling Class people in the church or society. Mary is a golden calf. She cannot talk to us. Hence, Roman and Eastern Orthodoxy cultures are slave cultures with warlike rulers at the top. Idols are always merely tools of the elite. It is only Protestantism that such elites begin to lose power. Mariolatry leads to tyranny.
May God grant to us all a wonderful celebration of the birth of Jesus, by the blessed virgin Mary – So that we come to love Him all the more for being our savior from sin, the great High Priest who continually lives to make intercession for us, and reigns forever to bring all things into conformity to His will for our sakes.
