OK, so bear with me in this one assumption: When in the Gospels, Jesus interacts with an unnamed someone, that person is a sort of "universal" who represents us. That is, Jesus interacts with — speaks with — teaches — us Christians throughout history, through that person.
Now. Four exchanges that have a certain symmetry:
The mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine."
His mother said to the servers, "Do whatever he tells you."
[H]e said to his mother, "Woman, behold your son."
[H]e said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother."
That’s John 2:3, John 2:5, John 19:26, and John 19:27, respectively.
What do all of these utterances have in common? Well, all of them involve Jesus, Mary, and unnamed other individuals.
-
MARY speaks to JESUS concerning INDIVIDUALS (the wedding party).
-
MARY speaks to INDIVIDUALS (servers) concerning JESUS.
-
JESUS speaks to MARY concerning an INDIVIDUAL (the unnamed — even though we say it is John — disciple).
-
JESUS speaks to AN INDIVIDUAL (the same disciple) concerning MARY.
If you accept my assumption, then these utterances represent
- MARY speaking to JESUS concerning US.
- MARY speaking to US concerning JESUS.
- JESUS speaking to MARY concerning US.
- JESUS speaking to US concerning MARY.
The utterances occur during two events that bracket Jesus’s public life: the first miracle, and the Crucifixion (the latter conversation happens, literally, between Him on the Cross and the others standing on earth). So what are these utterances?
- She tells Him of our plight, more obvious to her than to us: They have no wine.
- She tells us: "Do whatever He tells you."
- He tells her: Behold, your children.
- He tells us: Behold, your mother.
Herein is the whole story of our relationship with the Mother of God.
At Cana: She, perceptive, asks her son to notice us. Isn’t it likely that He, too, had noticed the wine was almost out? Maybe the They have no wine is more than a simple declaration, implying pointedly: Aren’t you going to do something about it? Given His response to her in John 2:4, which is a bit more than, "Gosh, you’re right, Mom," it certainly seems that He took it that way. So even though He knows of our plight, as well as (or more likely, better than) His mother does, still she tells Him: They have no wine. They have need of You.
She tells us: Do whatever he tells you. She points unfailingly to Him. When we look to her, she points to Him: He, you servants of another, is the one you must obey.
Of course, there’s more to that story. It has a happy ending: The servants obey, the water becomes wine, and the bridegroom is unexpectedly pleased.
From the Cross, Jesus commands Mary: Behold, your son. If the disciple is taken to be standing there for us, He is telling his mother, Take all my disciples as your own children. Adopt them into your heart.
And from the Cross, Jesus commands the disciple, and through the disciple, us: Behold, your mother. I give her to you as your own. Honor her, love her, obey her, become her child. This, of course, brings us full circle, in a way, because to obey Mary — remember what she told us at Cana? — is nothing more than to obey Jesus. In everything she does, says, is, Mary tells us to look to her Son.
This story has a happy ending as well — even before the Ending to end all endings, that is. I mean, the part that goes, "And from that hour the disciple took her into his home." The disciple did obey. And having Mary in his home, at his hearth, in his heart, as his own mother, he had always a voice telling him, "Do whatever he tells you."
Right after that, the Gospel says, Jesus was "aware that everything was now finished."
I know that a lot of people think that Catholic devotion to Mary obscures or replaces the devotion due to Christ. Maybe — maybe — it’s possible to be so devoted to Mary that one fails to honor Christ.
But is it? That is like being so devoted to the command to love one another that one fails to honor Christ, or like being so devoted to the command to go and sin no more that one fails to honor Christ. As long as we honor her exactly as Christ taught us to — as our mother — we cannot go wrong. Indeed, that is how the Catholic Church teaches us to honor her. Combine that mode of honoring with our belief that she is Blessed, a living mother who can hear us and who can pray to God for us, and there is the reason behind all our devotions to her, plain and simply laid out.
This alone doesn’t contain the rationale for everything we say about her — sinlessness, assumpted-into-heaven, perpetual virginity and the like — but it does go a long way toward encouraging the kind of attitude we have toward her, which many Christians are missing out on through no fault of their own.
bearing blog 