MARY OF NAZAR ETH
Her Heart is the Gate of Heaven ‘All generations shall call me blessed.’ BY J. A. GRAY J. A. Gray is a writer and editor, and most recently served as communication manager for the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
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uke the Evangelist tells us that young Mary of Nazareth gave her fiat without reserve when she learned from an angelic messenger that God intended to favor her as the mother of the Messiah. But as she “pondered what sort of greeting this might be,” the angel added some welcome family news: “Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son, in her old age,” he said, “for nothing is impossible with God.” “May it be done to me according to your word,” Mary replied, and then set out “in haste” to visit Elizabeth. When Elizabeth welcomed her with a chant of praise for the “mother of my Lord,” Mary in reply sang out her Canticle, rejoicing poetically that God had “looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness,” and “All generations shall call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me.” Mary was prophetic: For 2,000 years, all generations have indeed called her blessed. She may not have foreseen, at this early moment, the other part of her destiny – that all generations would be calling upon her for help, healing and guidance, petitioning her ceaselessly to be our mother, too, to accompany us and nurture us as she had her son.
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Fra Angelico’s fresco “Annunciation” (ca. 1440–1445) in the Convent of San Marco in Florence, Italy.
“DO WHATEVER HE TELLS YOU.” “Woman, behold your son; son, behold your mother,” said Jesus to Mary and John, just before he died. Mary’s motherliness doubtless encompassed the whole community of followers in Jerusalem; and we’re told that when the apostle James, in about A.D. 40, was fruitlessly preaching in Spain, his courage was restored by the appearance to him of Mary, who became known there as Our Lady of the Pillar. Her vocation as mother of the Church began early, tradition tells us, and a prayer to Mary survives on a papyrus scrap from Syria, dated to about A.D. 250, invoking Mary as “theotokos,” the mother of God. Pope St. Paul VI in his encyclical “Marialis Cultus”, declared, “Mary of Nazareth … was far from being a timidly submissive woman.” The reminder is hardly needed. We know her, from the Gospels alone, to be a woman of intellectual power and spiritual integrity - her prime characteristic, shown repeatedly, is that she ponders things thoroughly and reflects on them deeply. Mary is with Jesus and his disciples through every phase: his life, ministry, death, resurrection, ascension and the “tongues MAY 2022 | CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO
