Mary, Priest of God

The Ladies Guild recently asked me to do a presentation at their monthly meeting. So, of course, I readily agreed and then asked them what they wanted me to speak about. Naturally, the answer came, “Mary.” Duh, well, of course. And yet, of all the topics, this one is hard for me. It is hard because Mary’s image for me is very different from those traditionally portrayed by the Church and Marian hymns.

Mary, pure and lowly or gentlewoman and quiet light or even meek and mild are just way too passive and too wimpy for me. My vision of Mary is the vision of Mary as a strong, determined, passionate woman. My vision of Mary is not of her walking in a garden with the birds singing and her hands steepled in prayer. My vision of Mary is a powerful, courageous woman who overcame one obstacle after the other. She is a woman who had the strength to go beyond convention and, in absolute trust, say yes to an angel even though it put her in mortal danger. She is the woman who isn’t trapped in stained glass windows but trudging beside her son on the road to Calvary.

My concept of Mary is as the very first priest of God. Jesus was the Son of God and the Son of Mary. He was bone of her bones and flesh of her flesh. 

Mary gave Jesus to the world in the Incarnation, and she presented Jesus back to God at Calvary. One of the most critical functions of the priesthood is to be a bridge. The priesthood brings people to God and God to the people. Through her pregnancy and the birth of Jesus, Mary did this more powerfully than any priest of any age. Her body was the altar on which the sacrifice was made. In her birthing of the Child Jesus, she presented God’s Son to the world, and she, in the fullness of her humanity, gave her son to the world. The words of the consecration are lived out in her body. More powerfully than any priest, bishop, or pope, Mary witnessed the reality of consecration through the Incarnation, “This is my body, and this is my blood.”

Mary did the very same thing again at Calvary. Looking up to heaven and watching her son die, she can say with ultimate truth and authority, “This is my body, and this is my blood.” Then, with a mother’s love, she presides at the altar of the cross and accepts the broken and beaten body of her son into her arms one last time before she returns him to His Father. And finally, in an upper room, she was with the apostles when the Spirit of God came to them, missioning them to go out and do as He had done.

Jesus was God’s Son and Mary’s Son, the fullness of humanity and the fullness of divinity. In the 3rd century and beyond, Mary was often depicted as a priest. She was portrayed wearing a chasuble and a pallium, her arms raised in the gesture of the High Priest. The pallium is reserved for only the highest-ranking Bishops and the Pope. At the beginning of the 20th century, Pope Piux X referred to Mary in prayer, asking, “Mary, Virgin priest, pray for us.”

God called Mary, and her response was not a sedated whisper. Instead, she sang out in a strong voice and an unfailing love, her willingness to be “that woman.” That woman who was pregnant and unmarried, that woman who raised her child in the ways of faith, that woman who lived a life that no one else, save her cousin Elizabeth, could know or understand, that woman whose son changed the world.

Mary was not just the mother of Jesus; she was His teacher and inspiration as he grew into manhood. Mary introduced Jesus to His Father. The Jewish faith’s truths, practices, and traditions they shared did not come to Jesus through osmosis. They came to Him because His mother taught them to Him. She told Him the stories of the prophets and the history of His people. She told Him of His birth and who His Father was. She told Jesus about an angel and how He came to be. She infused Him with both the fullness of a mother’s love and the love she had for His heavenly Father as well.

Perhaps this Christmas season, we can see Mary not just as meek and mild but to recognize her as a bridge between God and humankind, the first priest of our faith,

In God’s Unending Love,

Gwen