Reimagining Mary’s essence in Marian devotions

Nov 19, 2024

By Jean D’Cunha
Marian devotions have been an evolving part of Catholic Church history, spirituality and the faith of countless Catholics worldwide.

Popular Marian veneration is expressed in simple acts that include wearing scapulars or miraculous medals; praying before Marian images in homes or life-like representations in Churches robed in ‘royal and divine’ blue also symbolizing purity, humility and heavenly grace; praying the daily rosary, and novenas to the Blessed Mother; belief in the Marian apparitions and pilgrimages to these sites to invoke Mary’s healing, protection and guidance; and elaborate but prayerful Marian processions.

Central to these devotions is celebrating Mary as “the Blessed Virgin,” “Mother of God” and “Queen of Heaven,” petitioning her to intercede with Christ for individual and collective intentions and praying to her for protection. Marian devotions provide avenues for palpable expression of faith and strengthening community solidarity when undertaken in communion with others.

However, traditional Marian devotions do not really capture the fullness of Mary’s essence — her role, actions and related attributes — with respect to God’s salvation plan and what this means for Catholic women’s empowered consciousness and action within the Church and wider society.

Moreover, the devotions strongly reinforce Mary as the “Virgin most Pure,” and “Mother Inviolate,” an exemplary role model for Catholic women with deleterious consequences for them, the Church as a whole, and for the very meaning of faith.

The focus on Mary’s purity equated with bodily and sexual chastity sets the gold standard for Christian womanhood, with serious impacts on women. Feminist writer Dorothy Ann Lee argues that “the ever-Virgin diminishes women’s sexuality and makes the female body and sexuality seem unwholesome, impure.”

Those who transgress this high premium on virginity or are sexually abused suffer moral and social censure, loss of self-worth and esteem, emotional scars and economic loss. This limited notion of purity has seemingly blithe disregard for purity of thought, word and deed in the sense of respect, non-discrimination and justice — the essence of Christianity.

So powerful has been the equation of purity with sexual abstinence in the Catholic Church — to which the cult of the Blessed Virgin contributed — that the fathers of the Church privileged virginity over marriage which was essentially problematic. The discipline of clerical celibacy, which became obligatory within the Church around the 10^th century, was another outcome apart from other reasons. Clerical celibacy has serious impacts on clerics, and very importantly on women and children who are abused.

Moreover, many Catholic theologians dispute Mary’s virginity as a perfect combination of impossibles. With biblical exegesis at a nascent stage, theologians assert that the fathers of the Church failed to see that Mary’s virginity had little to do with chastity but was a theological device to demonstrate that Jesus was God’s son, the fruit of God and divine power.

Whether or not Mary was a virgin is a matter of what one believes. However, the obsession with Mary’s complete continence distracts from core Gospel teachings of love, equality, and justice in daily life, and her essential role in the salvation plan. It has also resulted in a fractured Church, completely missing the core of our faith.

What popular Marian devotions often forget is that Mary’s simplicity as a small-town, poor Jewish girl from Nazareth living the community grind, married to a carpenter, bearing Christ in a manger is far from the iconic “queenly” representation that dominates our imagination.

In her male-centric society where ideal women were virtuous daughters, wives and mothers, invisibilized by domesticity; subject to male control; disallowed from giving public witness or being public spokespersons, Mary’s “yes” to being Jesus’ mother, despite doubt and fear of censure rendered her central to the salvation plan.

Her “Yes” was no mindless act of “servitude,” as it gradually unfolded. For Mary demonstrated enduring strength, fortitude, faith, resilience, pure-spiritedness and life-long commitment to Christ’s teachings and life.

His life exemplified love, truth, equality and justice, as he challenged the exploitative power structures of his time, stood for the liberation of the oppressed including women, died for our transgressions including gender inequality and injustice, and rose showing the hope of new life and the coming of the kingdom of God on earth.

Imagine Mary’s pain and insecurity, as she traveled kilometers as an expectant mother to Bethlehem; bore Christ in inhospitable manger environs; fled Herod’s persecution of infants carrying baby Jesus through risky terrain and living as a refugee in concealment to protect him; witnessed Jesus challenging the Pharisees’ and Sadducees’ exploitation and responding to their attacks; witnessed the impassioned crowds and Roman powers reviling, scourging, criminalizing and crucifying him.

Mary stood steadfastly by Christ till his deposition and entombment, as a mother and faithful disciple (Catechist, 2021). She witnessed Christ’s resurrection with other women; prayed with them and the disciples, experiencing the new birth of Jesus via the Spirit’s grace (Acts 1:13-14).

Against this background, we might enhance the relevance of Marian devotions (petitions for intercession and protection notwithstanding) by:

• Casting Mary as a model for Christian women in terms of her humble origins and lifestyle — that ordinary women can identify with, her strength, courage, faith, resilience, pure-spiritedness and enduring commitment to Christ’s teachings of love, equality and justice.

• Highlighting her role in the salvation plan — her “Yes” an act of courage, her experience as a refugee and migrant resonant with many Christians, her public engagement in the ministry of the word to enhance Christian women’s leadership and struggle for justice in the church and society.

• Debunking stereotypes of Christian women modeled on the traditional notion of virginity and motherhood; This entails being non-judgemental on matters of sexuality, supportive to women who have been abused and allowing women/girls to reach their full human potential.

• Drawing on Mary to ensure equality and justice for all human beings in homes, workplaces, religious life, and communities, especially the poor, vulnerable women and children, low-skilled workers, religious minorities, migrants, refugees, oppressed races, and Indigenous people.

• Ensuring that action has equal weight as prayer; Prayer without just action is no prayer at all.--ucanews.com