MARY, MOTHER OF GOD
Of all those whom God has used to mediate His love, none is more honoured than Mary. We honour Mary precisely because, though she did not understand, she had faith enough to say, “Be it done unto me according to your will.”
The Hebrews have a proverb or saying that goes, “God realized that He couldn’t be everywhere at the same time – so He created mothers!” An apt story today comes from Winston Churchill. A work was being prepared on Churchill’s life. When he was asked to check a list of all those who had taught him, he responded, “You have failed to mention the greatest of my teachers – my mother.”
All through the Scriptures, we see that God always works through mediators, using prophets, Mary, shepherds, Peter and Paul to enter our lives. How do we receive God’s blessings? God used Moses, for instance, to call Aaron and his sons forward to make them mediators of His blessings. Incredible! In that culture, no one used another person’s name without permission. To use a person’s name implied intimacy. To use somebody else’s name implied that you were so close to that person that you had power over that person.
Of all those whom God had used to mediate His love, none is more honoured than Mary. First of all, she was a woman. By custom women did not speak for God; only men could do this. Yet God called a young woman to mediate Devine Love by bringing into the world Jesus Christ. While we tend to read backward into history and presume that Mary knew everything going on. She had to be told not to be afraid. She had to reflect on everything in her heart in order to reach some understanding of what was happening. Mary, because she did not understand, she had faith enough to say, “be it done unto me according to your word.”
How has God’s love been communicated to us during our Christmas season? Who became God’s mediator and did or said something to bring us closer to God? In all likelihood that person was not aware of acting on God’s behalf, but we felt God’s presence through that person.
Can we think of some of those mediators of God’s love throughout 2009? God chose a young girl, not a wise matriarch; shepherds, not kings, to mediate between Him and Mary.