When I was a youngster I loved superhero comics. Every Friday I would receive my allowance, about 25 cents, and would go for a walk with my Dad to the nearest news vendor where I would buy the latest Superman or Bat man comic for 10 cents. I learned how to read with those comics. At school they dis- tributed another comic book every few weeks. It was called Treasure Chest and told bible stories and stories about the lives of the saints. Their adventures were extraordinary and larger than life. I saw them as superheroes, sort of like Batman and Superman, only superheroes for God. The problem was that the priests and sisters told us that our goal was to be saints today. I was confused because I had no idea how I could be a superhero. I couldn’t perform miracles or do any of the other great feats attributed to the heroes of the bible or the great saints. I figured that being a saint was too far beyond my capability. I was just too ordinary!
What added to my confusion was that they told me that the greatest of the saints was Mary, the mother of Jesus. What confused me about Mary was that, aside from being the mother of Jesus, she wasn’t extraordinary. Certainly, she had a difficult life at times, yet World War II had ended only a few years before I was born and I knew a lot of people who had very difficult lives. So, what was it that made her into the greatest of God’s superheroes? On New Year Day, we celebrate the solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God. This feast points us in the direction of an answer to that question.
In the early centuries of the church most Christians acknowledged Jesus as the Son of God but there was little agreement on what that meant.
- Was Jesus a divine spirit that inhabited a human body?
- Was he pure spirit and his body an illusion?
- Was he an inspired human and no more divine than any gifted religious teacher?
Indeed, the first ecumenical council was held in Nicea in 325AD for the express purpose of sorting out this issue and arriving at agreement on what Christians meant when they spoke of Jesus as the Son of God. In the end the Church Fathers reached the understanding that Jesus was truly God and of the same divine sub- stance as the Father, yet Jesus is also truly human. Both of these aspects of the Church teaching are important because they tell us that the God who created the immense universe and holds us in existence from moment to moment loved us enough to become one with us, to enter into human experience. This is the idea of incarnation that is the foundation of Christian faith and belief.
Ok, I understand that the incarnation is important but what does it have to do with Mary or with us ordinary human beings? For that, we must go back to the Church Fathers…
One of the arguments that arose after the Council of Nicea was the relationship of Mary to Jesus’ divine nature. Some argued that Mary was only the mother of the human nature of Jesus but couldn’t be the mother of the divine nature. How could a creature be the mother of the creator? It took another ecumenical council to sort this out but in the end the Church Fathers taught that it is not possible to separate out the divine and human nature of Jesus. Such an understanding is contrary to the idea of the Incarnation. If Mary is the mother of Jesus, then she must be the mother of both the human and divine nature. She was given the title “God bearer” or Mother of God and it is this title we celebrate.
Now, in celebrating Mary as the Mother of God we are not just celebrating some theological development that took place centuries ago. We celebrate a reality that is important to each of us.
Mary is considered the greatest of the saints but she never did anything that most people would consider great or even extraordinary. She raised a son to manhood. She was a widow at a relatively young age. She was concerned when her son went out preaching and teaching and began to gather followers, because gaining the at- tention of the Romans or the local leaders could be hazardous to your health. Yet, despite her concerns, she let her son do what he felt he had to do. When everything went wrong and Jesus ended up on the cross, she was there heart broken. She was a normal mother doing what many mothers do.
This tells us that sainthood doesn’t require the extraordinary. In the time of Jesus and even today many people think of holiness as something that is extraordinary and far removed from everyday life. To be holy they think that we must take on strict spiritual disciplines and experience terrible penances. Of joining some monastery or convent. For the people who are called to this way of life such things are great but 99.99% of the human population is not called to this. Further, this is not what Christ taught nor the example he gave us.
Christ certainly challenged us to take up our crosses and follow him. He made time for prayer and silent time with the Father but he also spent a lot of time with people talking, eating, healing, comforting and confronting. Incarnation means that in Christ God entered into the ordinary aspects of human existence and dem- onstrated that the natural could be as holy as the supernatural. Was Jesus any more holy or less holy when he was praying, chopping wood, preaching, having a meal with friends, working miracles or even dying on the cross? He was always God incarnate and all his actions from chopping wood to dying on the cross were holy.
Mary’s greatness is found in doing what God asked of her; that is, in agreeing to be the mother of Jesus; not that she fully understood what she was agreeing to when she said yes. She agreed because she knew that God was asking it of her and her ordinary response to God was to say “yes”. Our greatness, our holiness is found in doing what God asks of us, most of which is simply doing all the ordinary things that make up our daily lives.
The incarnation gives us hope. Each of us is capable of being a great saint, of being one of God’s superheroes. We may not be the mother of God but, like Mary, by doing what God asks of us in our daily lives, we can allow him to take on flesh, to be incarnate in each of us through our actions.
Our sainthood is realized in the ordinary and an attitude of openness to Christ that allows him to work through each of us, through ordinary acts of kindness, faithfulness, compassion and mercy that are part of any Christian life.