Mary, The Catholic Jew

Today is the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God (alternately, it’s the naming / circumcision of Jesus, but we’ll put that aside).

In the catholic traditions, a special kind of veneration is due Mary, called hyperdulia (hyper-veneration?), as opposed to dulia, the veneration of the (other) Saints. I think this distinction was made at the Second Council of Nicea…but I’m not sure, and it doesn’t really matter. Definitely not the worship due to God, however, which makes it a little odd that the Church would replace a Christological feast with a Marian one, but I digress.

Anyway, the point of the homily today was that we tend to turn Mary into a Catholic with our devotions, and forget that she’s not a Catholic but a Jew. The point being, at least in part, that we have to stop doing that if we want to understand her.

This, of course, is absolutely true. Mary was obedient to the law – witness the naming and circumcision of Jesus on the eighth day – chosen by God and accepting of him while ‘under the law.’ In the Magnificat, she quotes the Hebrew scriptures.

What I don’t understand is why it has to be one or the other, and not both. In John’s understanding of the Gospel, Mary is the first person to declare Jesus for who he is, putting absolute faith in him when she tells the stewards to do as he tells them. Afterwards, his disciples begin to believe. She is there at the crucifixion. She is assumed into heaven, the Mother of the Church, the Queen of Heaven, closest to God of all the saints because she bore Him inside of her. Why can’t she be Christian and Jewish both? Her apparitions, some of which upheld and even demanded devotions such as the rosary, show us that her identity as Mary does not end with her death. She is the mother of all humanity. By all means, seek to become closer to Mary by understanding her Jewish life; that shouldn’t mean that we cannot understand her to be – like Jesus, who comes to fulfill the law – living both inside the Church and before it. In God, all things are possible.

Part of what’s interesting about John’s gospel, at least to me, is the role given to Mary as the person who calls forth Jesus’ first miracle, which he does only because she asks him to, against what seems to be his better judgment of his mission. The most perfect disciple, the beginning of the Church. It’s interesting that we somehow manage to maintain such a strong Marian devotion alongside an institutional church which has, for the most part, been composed entirely of men. The catholic faith is full of contradictions, especially when it comes to its Sacraments and symbols, but somehow I still wonder about this one. The Church as Sacrament…what does that mean for the churches that we have built?

But I ramble.

Part of the point of the Solemnity of Mary is a focus on the fact that she’s the actual mother of God – Theotokos, rather than God-bearer. It’s supposed to help us better understand that Jesus is fully human because we see that she did not merely carry within her some random stranger but gave his humanity to him, the humanity which redeems us. The idea that she sacrificed and gave of herself is integral to our faith, if you want to believe that Jesus is both fully God and fully man.

To quote H. Em. Card. Ignace Moussa I Daoud, Prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches, from a speech that was given at the 11th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in 2005 (you can find it and other interventions on the Vatican website):

“We receive the gift of the Eucharist from the hands of Mary also. God has disposed that, thanks to her, the Incarnation, Redemption, the Eucharist and Communion would reach us. Mary was the first to receive in her womb the Body and the Blood of Christ. The Incarnation was the first Communion of history. The first tabernacle was her immaculate heart […] before any apostle or priest it is Mary who gives Jesus to the world. Mary and the Eucharist cannot be disassociated.”

[Warning: do not consume alcohol before blogging]