My memory is failing me. Dates, names, requests,
instructions and information, especially I may say from my
spouse, behave like stealth bombers. They get under the
radar of my memory as if they never existed. And so I haven’t a
clue what I preached about last year, on this self-same feast of
the BVM, not at least without digging out the original text. And
if I were a betting man I’d wager that you lot don’t remember
much either: so that I can safely repeat myself without anyone
noticing!
But what in any case can be said about the mother of Our Lord
which is new or different? So little of what we know, or think
we know, about her comes from scripture, and so much from pious
tradition and devotion, and from legend. The very word
‘Assumption’ is double-edged, and reminds us that doctrines
about Mary are so often tinged with theological presumptions and
assumptions. And I’m probably going to add to all that today,
because I want to reflect for a few minutes on what the bible’s
silence may say about her.
For almost thirty years before his public ministry began, Our
Lord’s life seems to have been largely private and hidden, and
the scriptures give us only occasional tantalising glimpses. It
could be so helpful to know what Jesus was like as a child, a
teenager, an adolescent and a young man; so interesting to know
what struggles he may have had, what difficulties he may have
encountered; but the record is largely blank. And yet it’s clear
from what happened later on that his mother’s love for him was
unfaltering, that through all these years Mary was always
‘there’ for her Son. It’s even possible that for some of this
time Mary brought Jesus up on her own, as Joseph isn’t mentioned
after Jesus was aged twelve, and may possibly have died before
Jesus reached manhood.
Be that as it may, we can be certain that Jesus grew up with his
mother’s total understanding and love, and under her influence
and protection. I very much doubt whether the Incarnation was
completed once and for all at Jesus’ conception or even at his
birth. I am much more persuaded that Our Lord grew into maturity
as the Christ with the guidance and encouragement of his mother,
on whose lap he would have heard the stories of Genesis and
Exodus and of the prophets, and at whose feet he would first
have learnt how to pray.
Within this little picture of Jesus and his mother lies one of
the great creative tensions of the Christian faith. Mary
had the humility to live as the Lord’s handmaid, and as the
willing instrument of the Incarnation. Yet at the same time she
had the incredible vision to see in her son the fulfilment of
God’s ancient promises. And she had the confidence to guide and
encourage him towards his destiny. Luke even tells us that the
child Jesus lived in Nazareth ‘under the authority’ of Mary and
Joseph. There was nothing automatic or programmed about Our
Lord’s response to his Heavenly Father’s will – we know that
from the account of his temptations in the wilderness – and I
feel sure that his understanding of who he was, and what was
expected of him, could not have come about without the love and
support of his earthly parents, and particularly Mary.
I don’t think it is fanciful to draw a lesson here for our own
time, and for our own society. Do we value our country’s
children as much as Mary valued her son? And can we, as the
nation’s parents, learn from Mary to love our children with her
unique blend of concerned authority, responsibility, and vision
for the future? One of the many lessons to be drawn from this
weeks looting on the streets of London and Liverpool and many
other cities, is that parenting is not a bolt-on skill to be
picked up at a few evening classes. We must learn from Mary that
parenting is the means by which our children become grounded in
love: it is a heaven-sent duty and privilege that determines the
future happiness and well being of our society, and indeed of
all humanity.
Of course there was both risk and pain in what Mary did for her
son, and we don’t even have to fast-forward to the Crucifixion
to be convinced of that. Luke gives us an example in the rather
engaging story of ‘the day Jesus went missing’. When Jesus was a
boy of twelve the holy family travelled as usual to the Passover
festival in Jerusalem. On the way home, Mary and Joseph had a
sudden panic: they couldn’t find their son anywhere among the
long dusty caravan of people and animals trudging back to
Nazareth. It was one of those classic cases of ‘but I thought he
was with you’! So back they go to Jerusalem, and after much
anxious searching find Jesus in the Temple, listening to
Israel’s finest religious teachers. ‘My child, why have you done
this to us?’ says his mother, with perhaps a mixture of relief
and exasperation. It was only later that Mary would have
realised that this was indeed where her love and her motherhood
were leading: to that vision of his heavenly Father’s kingdom to
which Jesus was now being irresistibly drawn.
Luke gives another, even more painful example later during Our
Lord’s ministry, when Mary and the rest of the family come
looking for him while he is teaching the crowds. Someone says to
him ‘Your mother and brothers are standing outside and want to
see you’ to which Jesus replies ‘My mother and my brothers are
those who hear the word of God and put it into practice’. The
great love that Jesus had known as a child among his family was
now expanding, rippling outwards, until it was to embrace the
leper, the alien and the outcast: nothing less than the whole
children of God.
Perhaps Mary was the first of Our Lord’s disciples to recognise
that her Son was more than merely a descendent of King David,
more even than the promised Jewish Messiah. Perhaps she was the
first to grasp that Jesus’ sonship with his heavenly Father was
unique and intimate, and that the redemption of the whole world
was to lie in who he was, and what he was to accomplish through
his death. If our faith, like Mary’s, runs deep and true, there
will be times when it hurts. In Jesus, the love of God always
seeks to draw us away from ourselves, deeper into God, and
deeper yet into the needs and sufferings of our world. Sometimes
it can even feel as if our own needs are not being recognised.
But that is never, never, the case. It is just that the great
love that Jesus first experienced at his mother’s breast now
fills the whole world, and spreads through all eternity.