Magnify the Lord with Mary

Re-post from a former blog:

I received a request to link up my 6th Quick Take with Fine Linen and Purple for the Celebrating the Assumption Link Up, so I am doing so but I'm making it a post in its own right: to justify that move, I revised the text I had and added a good bit more at the end, so if you've already read my Quick Takes, it is worth skimming this to get to the new stuff.

Thursday was the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, a holy day of obligation celebrating that God assumed (took up) the Blessed Virgin Mary, body and soul, into Heaven at the end of her life.

The gospel reading was about the Visitation, which is when the newly pregnant Mary went to visit her cousin, St. Elizabeth, who was very pregnant at the time with St. John the Baptist.  The gospel reading included the text of the Magnificat, the "hymn" from Mary to God. The Visitation is one of the Joyful Mysteries of the Holy Rosary, and the Magnificat is a popular prayer said daily by millions during evening prayer. So both have long been considered highly fertile ground for reflection by Catholics.

The homily got me thinking. Mary's soul magnified the Lord. What is magnification? Per Wikipedia, "Magnification is the process of enlarging something only in appearance, not in physical size. A magnifying glass, which uses a positive (convex) lens to make things look bigger by allowing the user to hold them closer to his eye."

By way of analogy, Mary didn't actually make God greater somehow, that is impossible. However, Mary causes God to appear greater by bringing Him closer to the human eye. She brought God closer to the human eye by bringing Jesus, the Image of the invisible God, into the world. The eternal Word of God came into the world through the Virgin Mary and became the Incarnate Word, and like the image of fine print when it comes through a magnifying glass, we better behold the Word.

Mary also brings human sanctification closer to the eye. Through her, we see the work God can do in us, the work God wants to do in us. Assuming the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven, Body and Soul, magnifies several great truths. God wants to make us holy, He wants us with Him, in Heaven, and He doesn't just want our souls: He wants our bodies too. He created them and they are part of our eternal destiny: resurrection.

When I was Pentecostal we used to sing a song that reminds me of the Magnificat, Mary's song, called "Magnify the Lord." This is the main verse:

Magnify the Lord
Let us exalt His name together
Magnify the Lord
He has done great things!

Mary was the first to receive Christ, she is our foremost example in faith. Like her, let us make the image of God appear greater, let us make Christ easier to see. Magnify the Lord with Mary.

Mary: Just the Mother of Christ

Happy Assumption Day!

Re-post from a former blog with an update at the end:

I have heard it said - many times - that when a Protestant is seriously considering the claims of the Catholic Church, that his three biggest problems with the Church are Mary, Mary, and MARY! The idea is that many Protestants just can't figure out how to deal with the love and devotion given to the Christ's mother by the average devout Catholic. Some Catholic amateur-apologists (whose lowly ranks I don't merit to even be named amongst) seem to think that if you can persuade the average Protestant to cease objecting to Marian devotion, that said Protestant will be halfway across the Tiber river, approaching the banks of Rome. Clinging, perhaps, to our Blessed Mother much as a drowning man might cling to a life vest.

This may be the case for many Protestant converts. It wasn't for me. Frankly, for me, Mary just wasn't important enough (to me, at that time) to have so much leverage pulling me into the Church. Mary was mostly a character in a manger scene, and not really any more important than Joseph, or the wise men, or the shepherds. The angels may well have been more important than her.

She was just a person; a person who knew Jesus in real life. She ate with Him and talked with Him. He listened to her and he hugged her, and he told her He loved Her. She made Him meals and washed His clothes and kissed His boo-boos when he was a Child. She carried His Body and Soul - the body and soul of God - inside herself for nine months. She was just the person who knew and loved Jesus first. That's all. Not very important, right?

Mary's role in the life of Christ was entirely too physical. Like many Protestants, I wanted the intellectual stuff, I envied the Apostles their three years following Christ during His public ministry, not Mary's 30 private years at home with Christ. This despite the fact that my life with Christ was far more likely to look like Mary's than like that of the Apostles - decades "living with Him" in obscurity, at home.

That didn't matter, because whenever thoughts turned to Mary, I never really got past the thought, "She was just a person - she wasn't that important." Sometimes the thought was slightly different though, along the lines of, "She was only a woman.", or, "She was only His mother." Those thoughts are common for many Protestants (and all too many Catholics, unfortunately). What do they mean?

"She was just a person."

If Mary is unimportant because she was "just a person," that implies that people, are not important. People, made in the image and likeness of God, it implies, are not important. Why did Jesus, who is "the image of the invisible God", take on "human likeness" if people just aren't that important? Why did He come to save us? To die for us? People, are supremely important to God the Father and His only Son Whom He sent. Every person has inherent dignity because they are made in God's image, because they are important to God.

"She was only a woman."

This thought, which many would dare not think or say about any other woman is too often thought and said about Christ's own mother - by those who love Christ! If Mary is unimportant because she was "only a woman," that implies that women are not important. Women, who - like men - are made in the image of God; Women, who - like men - Christ came to save.

"She was only His mother."

Are mothers not important? Was Mary merely a character in the Christmas story? A plot device designed to bring Christ into the world and nothing more? Was God's use for Mary merely utilitarian? If so, when Mary was lovingly caring for the Christ Child, she something akin to a nanny engaged by God the Father to watch after His Son. Just a servant. Even if that was all she was - isn't "servant of Christ" the highest honor most Christians could ever hope for?

If Mary was "only His mother," then when she carried His precious Body - which one day would bleed and die to save us - she was, essentially, just a womb. Just a body, just flesh, supporting the life of Christ until birth. Such sentiments remind me of another oft-repeated phrase: "It's just a fetus, just a lump of tissue... it's not important."

In Pro-Life circles we often point out the obvious, "If the mother matters, so does the child."

Amen! And if the Child matters, so does the Mother."

***In this post, I am not attempting to exhaustively cover the importance of Mary or to convince anyone on Catholic Marian dogma, only to demonstrate the absurdity of several common claims as to why Mary isn't even important.***



Update:

As I have blogged ad nauseum, my wife is now expecting twins. I'm a dad now. Since my children are currently inside my wife's womb, I cannot interact with them except by going through my wife. She tells me how the pregnancy is going, and I watch her for signs of it too. I kiss her belly and speak to my babies. I know they can become accustomed to my voice that way. Some day, they will likely kick in response to my voice and my touch. Just two days ago, my wife felt them for the first time. Two separate tiny flutters from opposite sides, too subtle for me to feel yet from the outside. An anniversary gift from each of them to Mommy and Daddy.

I'm not going to belabor this point, suffice it to say, that my relationship with my children depends on their mother, and that really is good food for thought when I think about the role of Mary in our relationship with Christ.