Saturday of the Twenty-Seventh Week in Ordinary Time Yr 1 2025

Title

Why is Mary Blessed?

Outline

October is for many the month of the rosary

Now while it took a bit after I was ordained to get into the rosary despite the fact that I fully accepted all the Marian dogmas. First, God brought me to the realization that I had a mother wound due to my mother’s repeated periods of overt schizophrenia (at least, that was the diagnosis then) and I needed my true mother. And, second, to realize practically the value of the praying itself and what it was stamping into my brain, i.e. the key events of the gospels, including some that are still future to us, like our deaths and resurrections, and assumptions and reigning with Christ in, we might say, the pattern and distant shadow of Mary. The East puts more emphasis on the death in the dormition of the Theotokos and the west on the assumption and resurrection. Momento mori is, perhaps, more significant to me at this point of my life.

But I want to jump back to our gospel that clarifies another aspect

As a Protestant about the only time we mentioned Mary was in preaching or teaching the birth narratives. We were like the woman in the crowd, “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.” Now Jesus does not deny this blessedness, but it is the blessedness of a woman carrying out her unique role in this age as woman in relationship to man as they carry out the divine creation commandments of Gen chs 1 and 2. We could say this about Pope Leo’s mother, but of course he is small potatoes in relationship to Jesus so we are right to ascribe this blessedness how much more in the case of Mary.

But Jesus says that blessed as Mary was for that, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” Mary heard the word from Gabriel and responded “Let it be to me,” even if she did not fully understand it. Then she carries the Word within her and gives birth to him. And right up until the ascension, including the cross, she is hearing the word or pondering the Word and is doing her best to observe it. She is largely Our Lady of Silence understanding the full implications more and more as even followed event and even when she only half understands because she has not yet experienced the end of the story she is nodding and saying in her silence, “Let it be to me” or “Do whatever he tells you” or “I do whatever you say.” That, says Jesus, is more blessed than her conceiving, carrying, birthing, and raising Jesus.

And that, Sisters, is important for all of us

We can and should be thankful for Mary’s role as the new Eve. as the Theotokos, as the Mother of God and rightly we say “Blessed are you among women.” But that was unique. As we go on in the following decades of the rosary we have her actions that we can imitate as, yes, starting with the first decade the annunciation but continuing right to the end we can picture her “hearing the word of God,” often from the Word himself, and “doing it.” And usually doing it in silence, whether it be behind the scenes in actually cooking the last supper, kneading the bread that would be the bread of the Eucharist, for Jesus had said, “Prepare,” or silently stepping closer to the Beloved Disciple when Jesus said, “Behold your son,” and in my imagination letting him put his arm around her. We all can be like Mary in that way and receive with her the great blessedness of those who “hear the word of God and observe it.”

Our Lady of Silence, Pray for Us.