Mary - an Extraordinary Mother

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is perhaps the most enigmatic of all mothers. Her story is simply told. According to the Gospel accounts, she was a young Jewish girl, betrothed to an older man, Joseph. She received an angelic visitation informing her that she was to be the mother of the saviour of the world, whose father would be God. The first thing about her that takes my breath away is her great faith - instead of having hysterics on the spot, which I think would have been quite justified in the circumstances, she accepts her fate: "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word."

(image: Wikimedia Commons)

I have often wondered what it must have been like for her, bearing and raising such an extraordinary person. Even if we don't believe that Jesus was the divinely-begotten son of God, which most Unitarians don't, he was still very far from an ordinary man.

Mary has complete faith in him and continues to follow him, wherever he goes. She is there at the foot of the cross when he is crucified at the end of his ministry. And according to the Gospel of John, one of his last thoughts is care for her, when he hands her over to "the disciple whom he loved." In the Book of Acts, she is mentioned as being one of those in an upper room with some of the apostles, devoting herself to prayer.

And then she disappears from Biblical accounts. Yet she went on to become one of the most venerated figures in Christianity, not to mention Islam. Later Church traditions argue that not only was she a virgin when she conceived Jesus, but remained one for the rest of her life. Some go even further and state that she was born free of original sin, so that she could be a suitable vessel for the carrying of the son of God. Catholics in particular reverence her as the Blessed Virgin Mary, and she is often prayed to, to intercede on behalf of humankind.

But it is as a mother, an ordinary human mother, that she moves me. She brought him up, took care of him, taught him the best she knew, did her best to give him a good start in the world. Then, as all parents must, let him grow into adulthood. I know that 2000 long years separate us from Mary, but I believe that parenting has not changed. Her concerns must have been much the same as ours. I wonder with what mixture of pride and stomach-knotting fear she watched her son embark on his public ministry? In spite of the message from the Angel Gabriel, at the beginning of it all, it must have taken an awful lot of faith to stand by and let him get on with it, knowing the dangers he would face, and feeling powerless to do anything about it.

I believe that mothering, that parenting, of whatever kind, is the most important job in the world. All of us need somebody we can depend on to love us unconditionally. As Dave Tomlinson writes in How to Be a Bad Christian, "The heart of Christ's message was the love of God. He brought to ordinary people - downtrodden by ruthless rulers - the sense of their belovedness. Each person Jesus touched knew, perhaps for the first time, that their life mattered; that they were loved and cherished."

I cannot believe that he would have been able to do this, had he not experienced this kind of love for himself, growing up. So I think that the most we can do for anyone we care for is what Mary did for her son, to love and cherish them, so that they know they are beloved. So that they in their turn can go on to love others, as Jesus did. As we do, the best that we can.