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The Rather Unextraordinary Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary



By tradition August is dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, for the 22 was once celebrated as the feast of her Immaculate Heart before it was moved to correspond with the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart. The feast thus would have been celebrated as the octave of her Assumption (Aug 15). Scripture connects these feasts, for Christ told us Where your treasure is, there also will your heart be, and Mary’s greatest treasure was the Kingdom of her Son. With her treasure firmly in Heaven, Mary’s human heart—along with the rest of her body—could not but be drawn up by God into the celestial abode.

Even the little insight into Mary’s inner life the Gospels offer reveals untold depths of love for God and a soul loved by God. Mary’s heart is full of grace and perfectly conformed to the will of God: I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word. Her heart ever proclaims the greatness of the Lord and exults in God her Savior. The events of her son’s life, she contemplates and treasures always in her heart. At the foot of the cross, her heart was pierced with a sword—as prophesied—when her son’s suffering mystically became her own. Rightly then do we celebrate her most Immaculate Heart and long to imitate it.

But in light of the extraordinary super-nature of her inner life, I want to look at Mary’s quite unextraordinary visible life. 

After spoke her “yes” her “fiat,” how the heavens must have rung with celestial joy; Mary offered the perfect “Thy will be done” to God and the Word became flesh. But what happened next? what was God’s will? Did He draw up for her a Rule for consecrated life? Expect of her countless devotions? Did he ask her to withdraw from the world? Ask her to become a missionary, or start a ministry of service? … Quite unexpectedly, perhaps, No.

Well, then did her life’s expectations drastically alter? Did God ask her to call off the engagement to her beloved Joseph? Ask her to leave family and friends to live an unfamiliar life to prepare for this altogether new perfect God and perfect Man? … Again, No.

After she prayed “Thy will be done” most perfectly … the angel left. Mary went into the world to care for her cousin Elizabeth. She married the man to whom she was already betrothed (after timely intervention and careful explanation from the angel to Joseph). The Flight to Egypt would be tempting to consider extraordinary, but with so many refugees fleeing from war and persecution even today, that experience is sadly more commonplace than we might think. After the return to Nazareth, by all canonical accounts, their life was one most ordinary. Joseph remained a carpenter, and Jesus likely learned the trade at his side. Mary cared for the home and maintained friendships and family ties (it was she, after all, who was invited to the wedding at Cana; Jesus and the disciples were her RSVP’d +13). 

Even when Jesus indicates the crowd to proclaim the faithful his mothers and brothers and sisters, while Mary waited patiently, I don’t find this quite so unusual or saddening as is sometimes presented. All mothers watch their sons move out the home, take up new careers, and begin new families. Mothers do experience some nostalgia at the changes, but their hearts are so much more joyful and proud to see their children grow up, find their place in the world, and build new families.

So the most mystical and contemplative heart outside Jesus’, was so in the everyday life of a quiet, ordinary layperson. And so, too, are most of us to be. Mary’s greatest prayer “Thy will be done” should be the same for us. It is a dangerous prayer, for once God says “okay” to that, everything changes. But as Mary shows us, it’s not that most of us will get called to do great works by earthly standards, but instead called to have great faith living visibly ordinary lives. 

It means to the people who every day annoy us, we must be neighborly; that to the poor in our own cities who before we passed by, we must be merciful and generous with the same wages we made before; that we love our children because they are God’s children first, and we love our spouses because they were God’s love first; that we do our same jobs as an offering to God, and we consecrate the tools of our work and care for the household goods “as if they were the sacred vessels of the altar” (Rule of St Benedict); that we forgive ALL offenses, even and especially the little ones; we bear ALL wrongs patiently when before we might have indulged in some self-justification at being annoyed; we learn to treasure Jesus’ life in our heart by spending time with Scripture. To do these according to God’s will IS a major act of conversion; it is an incredible turning of the heart that the Fathers called metanoia.

It means learning to have a heart like Mary’s. In venerating, celebrating, and imitating her Most Pure Heart we learn what Christ meant when he taught “blessed are the pure in heart.” We learn to bear sacred fruit in our visibly ordinary lives by cultivating our most intimate inner life with God.

Comments

  1. Thank you David for this praise of the quotidian mystery. Chesterton remarks that only God and children are strong enough to exult in monotony. That the sun never gets tired of his every day life. Instead, his routine of rising every day in the same way is proof that the joy of his vocation is so gigantic.

    We may be tempted by any new or exciting idea, and distracted from the repetition of our joy and happiness through a simple, well-loved life. But Mary's heart is fixed not on some temporal or exotic interest, but on eternal happiness and truth which holds her attention. The encore of Mary taking care of Jesus, morning after morning, is the profound testimony of her joy.

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