December 15, 2008

The Real Mary

The Holy Family First United Methodist Church Bella Vista AR

Post begun 12-15-2007, and it got back burnered...I havea number of such posts and its my hope to get back to some of those topics and post them.

Breath of Heaven


I have traveled
many moonless nights,
Cold and weary
with a babe inside,
And I wonder what I've done.
Holy Father, You have come,
And chosen me now
to carry Your Son.

I am waiting
in a silent prayer.
I am frightened
by the load I bear.
In a world as cold as stone,
Must I walk this path alone?
Be with me now.

Be with me now....

Breath of Heaven,
Hold me together,
Be forever near me,
Breath of Heaven.

Breath of Heaven,
Lighten my darkness,
Pour over me Your holiness,
For You are holy.
Breath of Heaven.

Do you wonder
as you watch my face,
If a wiser one
should have had my place,
But I offer all I am
For the mercy of Your plan.
Help me be strong.
Help me be....

Strong...

Breath of Heaven,
Hold me together,
Be forever near me,
Breath of Heaven.
Breath of Heaven,
Lighten my darkness,
Pour over me Your holiness,
For You are holy.

Breath of Heaven,
Hold me together,
Be forever near me,
Breath of Heaven.
Breath of Heaven,
Lighten my darkness,
Pour over me Your holiness,
For You are holy.
Breath of Heaven.
Breath of Heaven.

Breath of Heaven.in Hawaiian Hamakua, one of my favorite words

One of the things that I have been doing is reading. My RCIA formation is pretty much up to me. I have made up for the few classes that I have had by reading on topic. Then I meet about once a month with my sponsor who is also the wife of the Catechist for our parish. One of the topics that we discuss is my stand in becomming a Catholic and how am I handling the questions comments and some hostility to my choice of this version of Christianity

No topic is more controversial than Mary the Mother of Jesus. However I just finished reading "The Real Mary: Why Evangelical Christians Can Embrace The Mother of Jesus" by Scott McKnightand I so enjoyed this book. It very clearly laid out many of the feelings that I have had a long time about the Mother of God, and the Catholic faith as a whole.

I get all of the comments...
"Catholics worship Mary"...uh... no...
"Catholics Pray to Mary like they would to God" Only the poorly taught
"Mary wasnt special, God could have used anyone" again uh...no.

Truth is that we Protestants tossed Mary out for political reasons and later to fit cultural and droctinal mores that really were not true or right.

Mary is a powerful figure. Her "yes" to God made her the Mother of God, the deposer of Kings,(think the murders of those babies was the end. They would have killed her along with the infant Jesus if they had found her.), and the first and maybe greatest disciple.Her courage to say yes to God, condemning herself, and her son, to a life of conflict and controversey is mind boggling. She risked her very life.



I wont go into every point Scott makes, but I will say this. I think my understanding of Mary, and how she fits into the grand scheme of Gods plan, has helped me to embrace the fullness of Catholic teaching.

I am not the only one. Tim Perry,professor of Biblical Theology at Providence College calls this movement "Mariphillia" the love of Mary. He believes that the cultural shift away from a male centric view of Christianity which made Mary into nothing more than a fleshly vessel to hold Jesus and any womb would have done the job has brought Mary into the forfront of not only the Nativity narrative but the whole Gospel. For it is she who write these Gospels... She had to be the one to tell the story, first to Elizabeth later to the gospel writers... No one else had the intimate details...

Why was Mary believeable in a world where a womans role and scope was narrow. She was a princess without a throne. A linial decendent of King David, wife of another such person. She was not an "unknown" peasant woman as some theologians have espoused. While much of the Churches tradition is drawn from the Proto Gospel of James a document that has mixed hisortic value, it sheds light on and answers some of the mysterious questions regarding the background of the Blessed Mother, even if the document is incompleate or partially true, it leads on to believe that Mary was a woman of particular merit by God's grace alone, and the Gospel narrative would have been less rich without the nativity narrative.

The real Mary was not a womb borrowed by the Holy Spirit, the Real Mary was a gift. A gift to God of herself to Eternity. I am not sure that she understood everything that her "yes" to God would mean to herself and to the world. But thankfully she said yes to God and her future was changed. Her sinlessness didnt change her free will. "Sinless?" you say... she had to be sinless because God couldnt create a Son with a sinful woman. She was spared a "sin nature by the grace of God, not any work of her own. Yes, that dogma and others like it have become a part of my spiritual thought, and have changed the way I look at Jesus birth. What a miracle! What an amazing event!

And what an amazing woman. Thank you God for the gift of Your Mother. Thank you, Mary for the gift of your "yes" to God's plan. Your "Yes" changed the world, the universe for all of eternity. It saved the world from damnation by making the way for my Savior and I and the world will forever be grateful.

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