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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 482. The Events in Mary's Life
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Blessed art thou among women.- Luk_1:42.
Fruitful shoot from Jesse's root graciously emerging?
Lily we might call her, but Christ alone is white;
Rose delicious, but that Jesus is the one Delight;
Flower of women, but her Firstborn is mankind's one flower:
He the Sun lights up all moons thro' their radiant hour.
“Blessed among women, highly favoured,” thus
Glorious Gabriel hailed her, teaching words to us:
Whom devoutly copying we too cry “All hail!”
Echoing on the music of glorious Gabriel.1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Poetical Works, 173.]
1. Many qualities go to the making of that image of the Perfect Woman which every man carries in his heart and first associates with his mother, which he protects from the stain of every evil thought, and which is daily alluring him to holiness. Beauty is here in the nature of things, for one does not think of form and colour, but of the soul, which makes heaven of the face; and it is not merely the unbroken tradition of the Church, or the fame of the women of Nazareth, but a sense of fitness as we read her life, that represents the Virgin with a face of meek and holy loveliness, as becomes “the handmaid of the Lord.” The face of the Madonna was the first thing of earth the Infant saw when He opened His eyes in the manger, and through His boyhood its spiritual grace would be as a bit of that heaven from which He came.
Whether a mother be brilliant or clever is of little account, but it is of great price that her mind be noble and sensitive to the highest-that she be visited by those profound thoughts which have their home in the unseen, and be inspired by unworldly enthusiasms. Mary was only a village maiden, but the Spirit of God “bloweth where it listeth,” and to her we owe one of the most majestic hymns of the Church Catholic. It mattered nothing that she was not learned after the fashion of the scribes; she had seen the angel who stands in the presence of God; it was less than nothing that she lived in a house of two rooms, since it opened into Eternity. For her Divine motherhood Mary was prepared twice-once because she had so little of the world which is seen, once because she had so much of the world which is not seen.
Mighty is the force of motherhood! says the great tragic poet to us across the ages, finding, as usual, the simplest words for the sublimest fact-δεινὸν τὸ τίκτειν ἐστίν. It transforms all things by its vital heat; it turns timidity into fierce courage, and dreadless defiance into tremulous submission; it turns thoughtlessness into foresight, and yet stills all anxiety into calm content; it makes selfishness become self-denial, and gives even to hard vanity the glance of admiring love.1 [Note: George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life (“Janet's Repentance”).]
Mary of Nazareth, the mother of our Lord, was the only mother in the world that ever found it an impossibility to make an idol of her child. There were many virgins in Israel in the days of Herod the Great, but only to Mary was the lofty privilege given to bear on her maternal breast the Bright and Morning Star, as the blue heavens bear up the star of day-the noon-day sun. So old pious masters had been used to represent the mother robed in blue-in blue raiment-with the sunlight beating upon her breast. She had the lofty privilege to be the mother of our Lord-a lofty privilege of which all mothers of the race might well have been ambitious, down from that Eve, the mother of us all, who said, “I have got a man,” or rather the man, thinking she had got the promised Lord. Poor Eve! like many of her daughters after her. Well might the angel Gabriel salute Mary with “Blessed of the Lord art thou among women”; and her cousin repeat the salutation-“Blessed art thou”; and that she herself should sing-“My soul doth magnify the Lord; my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour, for he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.”2 [Note: W. B. Robertson, in Life, by A. Guthrie, 326.]
2. When we escape from the weary labyrinth of legend that the fancy of centuries has woven round the name of Mary, and resolutely confine our attention to those traits of her character which are indicated in the gospel records, we may suffer some disappointment on discovering how few and faint they are. Compared with the picture of Jesus that comes to us down the ages, still vivid in its convincing realism, the New Testament portrait of the Virgin is but a dim shadow, fitting across the page for a moment here and there, and then fading away into total obscurity. So marked is this contrast that we are almost tempted to suspect a deliberate design on the part of the Evangelists to reduce the mother to relative insignificance in the presence of her Divine Son. And yet the narratives are too artless to admit of any such subtlety. The simpler explanation is that this slightness of texture is itself a note of genuine portraiture; for the reason that Mary was of a retiring nature, unobtrusive, reticent, perhaps even shrinking from observation, so that the impress of her personality was confined to the sweet sanctities of the home circle.
It is noticeable that among the Evangelists St. Luke alone gives a full and intimate account of the Mother of our Lord. St. Matthew commences his Gospel with the briefest possible memoir of Mary, passing at once to the scenes in Bethlehem, and the visit of the wise men; St. Mark commences with the public ministry of Christ; St. John, who is the interpreter of ideas rather than the biographer, is entirely silent on these matters. It is to St. Luke that we owe the story of the journey to Bethlehem, the story of the shepherds in the fields by night who hear a wind-borne heavenly music, and all the earlier stories of the visit of Mary to Elisabeth, the scenes at the circumcision of Christ, the blessing of Simeon and the prophecies of Anna. The last time that Mary is mentioned in the New Testament is in the opening chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, which is also the work of St. Luke; and he alone records the deeply interesting fact of her association with the infant Church.
Wonder and alarm are Mary's most natural feelings at the moment when the amazing truth dawns upon her. But as she gathers assurance she bows in quiet submission. This is the Evangelist's conclusion. Mary is the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to her as His messenger has said. As yet there is no word of joy, no note of exultation, no sign of triumph. The trembling girl simply accepts the tremendous fact as the will of her Lord.
Painters of various schools have given us their several interpretations of the Annunciation, but perhaps none have seized upon the purely human aspect of the scene so evidently as Rossetti. It may be said that the nineteenth-century pre-Raffaelite artist cannot emancipate himself from the age in which he lives, and in spite of his archaic sympathies is still essentially modern in thought, so that the expression of his Madonna is also distinctly modern. And yet it is only modern in the sense that it is frankly human. Rossetti tells what the old painters with a fine reticence concealed. To them the Divine glory of Gabriel's message extinguished all earthly considerations in its ineffable splendour. To us the study of the Nazareth maiden in this crisis when she suddenly passes from girlhood to womanhood in its most profound significance cannot but be of primary interest. We want to know how it affected her girlish consciousness; and Rossetti, who, if not exactly a theologian, is a poetic interpreter of human life, clearly answers that question. Mary shrinks from the splendid angel, almost cowers at his feet; but not because she is dazzled by the coming into her presence of one of his lofty estate, for she fixes her eyes upon him in a steadfast gaze. Those dark eyes have in them the terror of the hunted deer. It is not Gabriel, it is his overwhelming message, that smites her with alarm. Her maiden modesty is troubled. There is nothing of the joyous gratitude of the Magnificat in the picture. And yet is not this just such an attitude as would be natural to the startled innocence of a peasant girl?1 [Note: W. F. Adeney, Women of the New Testament, 4.]
This is that blessed Mary, pre-elect
God's Virgin. Gone is a great while, and she
Dwelt young in Nazareth of Galilee.
Unto God's will she brought devout respect,
Profound simplicity of intellect,
And supreme patience. From her mother's knee
Faithful and hopeful; wise in charity;
Strong in grave peace; in pity circumspect.
So held she through her girlhood; as it were
An angel-watered lily, that near God
Grows and is quiet. Till, one dawn at home
She woke in her white bed, and had no fear
At all,-yet wept till sunshine, and felt awed:
Because the fulness of the time was come.1 [Note: D. G. Rossetti, Collected Works, i. 353.]
She is a happy maiden who has a mother or a motherly friend much experienced in the ways of the human heart to whom she can tell all her anxieties; a wise, tender, much-experienced counsellor, such as Naomi was to Ruth, and Elisabeth to Mary. Was the Virgin an orphan, or was Mary's mother such a woman that Mary could have opened her heart to any stranger rather than to her? Be that as it may, Mary found a true mother in Elisabeth of Hebron. Many a holy hour the two women spent together sitting under the terebinths that overhung the dumb Zacharias's secluded house. And, if at any time their faith wavered and the thing seemed impossible, was not Zacharias beside them with his sealed lips and his writing-table, a living witness to the goodness and severity of God? How Mary and Elisabeth would stagger and reason and rebuke and comfort one another, now laughing like Sarah, now singing like Hannah, let loving and confiding and pious women tell.2 [Note: A. Whyte.]
A month later, in obedience to the Law, Mary, accompanied by Joseph, took her Child from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, at once to make the offering for her own purification and to pay the five shekels which were the ransom for the life of her first-born Son. The offering of purification was properly a lamb, but in case of poverty “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons” sufficed; and this “offering of the poor,” as it was called, was all that Mary could afford. There was in Jerusalem in those days an aged saint named Simeon, one of those who in that dark and calamitous time were expecting the Dayspring from on high and the consolation of Israel. “It had been revealed to him that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ”; and, like an imprisoned exile, he was yearning for his release. He was in the sacred court, engaged in the offices of devotion, when the Holy Family entered; and, recognizing the Child, he took Him in his arms and blessed God with a glad heart: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.” Not in vain had Simeon mused on the Messianic Scriptures. While his contemporaries were dreaming of a victorious King, he had laid to heart the prophecies of a suffering Redeemer; and he forewarned Mary what would be: “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be spoken against (yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also), that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”
While Simeon was speaking, another saint appeared on the scene-an aged prophetess named Anna, who, since she had been a widow for eighty-four years, must have been over a hundred years of age. She haunted the Temple, giving herself night and day to fasting and prayer. Entering the sacred court while Simeon was still speaking, she took up the refrain of praise, and afterwards spoke of the Holy Child to such as, like herself, “expected Jerusalem's redemption,” quickening their hope and preparing a welcome for Him when He should be manifested unto Israel.
Her Son's striking answer must have conveyed to Mary a rebuke. We cannot suppose that Jesus intended anything of the kind. He was far too dutiful a son to be found taking upon Him the part of mentor to His mother. We should do a great wrong to our idea of the Divine Child if we credited Him with conduct which in any other boy of twelve years would be justly designated priggish. Most assuredly He spoke in absolute simplicity-“Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?” He had not imagined that they would search the whole city before looking for Him in the Temple. He had assumed that if they had wanted Him this was the first place where they would have looked for Him, because it was the most natural thing in the world that He should be there. What more likely place is there in which to find a child than his father's house? What more appropriate duty than his father's business? But at that innocent saying of His, spoken in the simplicity of childhood, Mary felt the first chill approach of the terrible sword which was to pierce her to the heart in later years. Here was something for her to ponder over; and at this point St. Luke repeats his significant statement that Mary “kept all these sayings in her heart.” Yet he is careful to tell us that Jesus still remained “subject unto” His parents.
There is working to-day in England a man, of whom most of you have heard, but whom I hesitate to name, who is serving in a high position, but serving as simply and humbly as though he passed his days in a cottage; he might be obscure, so childlike is he, and so simple in his way of facing life. He is the son, too, of a great man, and this is what he tells me was an experience of his in relation to that father. He said the greatest crisis of his life, the most overwhelming sorrow he ever passed through, was when God called that father home. “But,” he said, “I made him my model and my inspiration-not that I have ever reached to the height to which he towered. In one of my darkest hours, when trouble had made me ill, and I lay, as it seemed, between life and death, I dreamed that I was a child again, and when I woke and opened my eyes for the moment it seemed as if it could not be a dream. I remember turning to look up in my father's face, and I felt round me my father's arms. Is it too much to suppose that I dreamed what was true?” I do not answer his question here, save to give it a larger meaning. He dreamed what was true; he lost his father, as it seemed to his earthly consciousness, for the time being; but he lived in his memory, in his atmosphere, and then there came the one moment of insight when he felt as if the father was not gone, but the loving arms were around him still. If it was true of the earthly father, a thousandfold more is it true of the Heavenly Father.1 [Note: R. J. Campbell, The Song of Ages, 233.]
The wine of the feast gave out, as it would seem; whereupon the mother tells Him, “they have no wine,” as if expecting of Him just the miracle He is going to perform. Whereupon Jesus turns upon her sharply, saying, “Woman, what have I to do with thee? my hour is not yet come.” She pays, we notice, no attention to His rebuke, as she certainly would if she had felt the severity we do in it, but goes aside to the servants, telling them to wait His orders and do whatever He bids them. She has no idea what that will be; but she evidently hopes that He will somehow make up the deficiency and permit them to go on with the distribution.
“His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.” These are the last recorded words of the Virgin Mother. We hear of her on one or two subsequent occasions in the gospel history, and with regard to one of these we are told something as to her wishes; but this is the last occasion on which the words which she uttered have been preserved for us. It is worth while remarking that most of what we know respecting her words and acts is told us of the time before, or just after, her Divine Son was born. The sum-total of what is told us in Scripture respecting her does not amount to very much, but by far the larger portion of what is recorded refers to the time before, or immediately after, the birth at Bethlehem.
Life breaks down first of all on the side of its exhilarations. “They have no wine!” said Mary at the feast in Cana of Galilee. And she might say it still. It is life's first point of collapse. Health holds out. Money increases. Friends multiply. We have abundance to eat, plenty to drink, and warm beds to sleep in. But the wine fails. Life somehow loses its sparkle and its sprightliness. The gaiety and the elasticity depart. An eminent art critic stood before a picture. “Yes,” he said, “it is very good; but it lacks that”-expressively snapping his fingers. Every man discovers sooner or later that he lacks “that.”1 [Note: F. W. Boreham, Mountains in the Mist, 87.]
We have our troubles and perplexities, and there are times when they seem to be overwhelming. But in all such seasons of trial there are some commands of Christ about which there can be no doubt, some duties which beyond all question we ought to do. Let us pay more than ordinary attention to them, and do what we are quite sure about with increased care. Trouble too often makes us slack about plain duties. But the loyal discharge of plain duties is often a refuge from trouble and sometimes a remedy for it. But, whether we are in trouble or in prosperity, we can have no better guide for our daily life than the last recorded utterance of the Mother of the Lord, “Whatsoever he saith unto you. do it.”
And let us also take to ourselves the command which He gave to those servants: “Fill the water-pots with water.” All round us the empty water-pots are standing. Like those at Cana, they say nothing; but their very emptiness is mutely eloquent, and the Lord speaks for them. There are dreary homes, empty of Christian peace and Christian affection: ignorant minds, empty of everything that can instruct, and enlighten, and ennoble; desolate, withered hearts, empty of all that can brighten, and quicken, and console. Our great cities, hardly less than the distant regions of our great Empire, swarm with heathen, whose condition is one long spiritual thirst, ever recalling the charge, “Fill the water-pots with water.”2 [Note: A. Plummer, The Humanity of Christ, 142.]
Soon so great is the strain on Him-pressed on all sides by an eager, selfish crowd, the sick continually appealing to Him for the help of His healing, His disciples needing careful training, the multitude hanging on His utterances in great assemblies gathered by the seashore, the scribes and Pharisees ever on the watch to catch Him in His words-He has no leisure for retirement, no time for rest, not even an opportunity for taking food during the long, busy day. We can well imagine how an anxious mother must have regarded such a mode of life. It was cruel. The strongest could not stand it. Something must be done to save Him from the people, to save Him too from Himself. He is at the call of all who need Him. He has no thought of Himself. Then His friends must interfere.
They send in word, accordingly, that His mother and family are without, desiring to speak with Him. Perceiving at once the over-tender concern that has brought them hither, instead of going instantly forth at their call He finds opportunity in it to say to the multitude about Him that He is here among men, as in a large and most dear family. And who is My mother, and who are My brethren, but you all here present, who can do the will of God? “For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother”-such and so great is the dear blood affinity with mankind into which He is born. The whole significance and beauty of the appeal is from family affection to the broader affection of God's universal family.
The effect of Jesus' exclamation, “Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother,” may have been modified by its being pronounced with a smile; and it shows how close and tender He felt the natural relation to be that He compared the new spiritual one to it; yet this was a distinct preference of the relationship formed by discipleship to that due to nature.1 [Note: J. Stalker, The Ethic of Jesus, 345.]
“My mother-brothers-who are they?”
Hearest thou, Mary mild?
This is a sword that well may slay-
Disowned by thy child!
Ah, no! My brothers, sisters, hear-
They are our humble lord's!
O mother, did they wound thy ear?-
We thank him for the words.
“Who are my friends?” Oh, hear him say.
Stretching his hand abroad,
“My mother, sisters, brothers, are they
That do the will of God!”
My brother! Lord of life and me,
If life might grow to this!-
Would it not, brother, sister, be
Enough for all amiss?
Yea, mother, hear him and rejoice:
Thou art his mother still,
But may'st be more-of thy own choice
Doing his Father's will.
Ambition for thy son restrain,
Thy will to God's will bow:
Thy son he shall be yet again,
And twice his mother thou.
O humble man, O faithful son!
That woman most forlorn
Who yet thy father's will hath done,
Thee, son of man, hath born!1 [Note: George MacDonald, Poetical Works, i. 225.]
The narrative of St. Luke tells us that during a considerable portion of the Saviour's Passion “all his acquaintance, and the women that followed him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things.” Now, after nearly three hours of awful endurance there was a lull in the strong excitement of those who hated Him. It was felt by some of those who were dearest to Him that a possibility of approach was afforded. John and a little group of believing women-Mary the mother of Jesus, and two other Marys, the wife of Cleophas and Mary of Magdala-then for a while stood beside the cross of Jesus.
It is not every woman who would have found it possible to be there. The story of the cross has been handled so much as a topic of cold abstract theology, and any real experience of what it means is so very remote from the world in which we live, that the actual horror of it does not affect us in any degree proportionate to the facts of what must have taken place. A man nailed to the beams, hung up in the blazing sun, dragged, strained, longing to shift his posture in an agony of cramp, yet unable to do so, and his slightest movement sending a fresh thrill of torture through his body; then a burning thirst, a throbbing head, the weight of which on the weary neck grows intolerable; and all this to continue-since no vital organ has been touched-till the relief of death supervenes only from sheer exhaustion, when longenduring nature can hold out no longer. We shrink with horror from the contemplation of the ghastly spectacle.
Now, this was witnessed by Mary, if not to the very end, still in the agony of its tortures. And the Sufferer was her Son. Could any sword pierce the soul as hers was pierced now?
And then came the crowning deed of love. Jesus is taking His farewell of the world-His last legacies have been given-only His mother is left. He will not leave her an orphan and unprovided for. Joseph is dead, and there is none to look after her. Bravely she bore in secret shame and misunderstanding on His account in the early days at Nazareth and Bethlehem, now she shall have an open and public honour. His best loved disciple is at the foot of the cross-so good a son is worthy of such a mother, and to him Jesus offers her. “Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.”
That Jesus enjoins on John to care for Mary, although the latter had several sons of her own, is not sufficiently explained by the unbelief of the brothers (Joh_7:5), for His speedy triumph over this (Act_1:14) could not be hidden from Him (Joh_2:24-25); but it presupposes the certainty in His mind that generally to no other's hand could this dear legacy be so well entrusted. Ewald well remarks on such traits of individual significance in the Gospel of John as “from that hour the disciple took her unto his own home”: “It was for John at a late period of life a sweet reward to call up reminiscences of all that was most vivid, but for the readers it is also, without his will, a token that only he could have written all this.”1 [Note: H. A. W. Meyer, The Gospel of John, ii. 351.]
She sees her son, her God,
Bow with a load
Of borrow'd sins; and swim
In woes that were not made for Him.
Ah, hard command
Of love! Here must she stand
Charg'd to look on, and with a steadfast eye
See her life die:
Leaving her only so much Breath
As serves to keep alive her death.2 [Note: Richard Crashaw.]
From this moment the Virgin Mary, though her name is just mentioned among those who formed the assemblies of the early believers, practically disappears from Christian history. Even apocryphal tradition scarcely so much as mentions her. It is not known how long she lived. It is not certain whether she died at Jerusalem or at Ephesus. She is not referred to as a source of information, still less as a fount of authority, though she could have told more than any living being about the birth of the Saviour, and the thirty long years of His humble obscurity. She “kept all these sayings, pondering them in her heart.” But though she must ever be cherished in Christian reverence as the chosen handmaid of the Lord, and “blessed among women,” it is impossible not to see in these indisputable facts the strongest possible condemnation of that utterly unauthorized worship of the Virgin which, centuries afterwards, began to pollute the swelling stream of Christianity. As though by a Divine prevision of the dangerous aberrations which were to come, in which Christians by millions were taught to adore the creature even more than the Creator who is blessed for evermore, the name of Mary is scarcely noticed in the whole New Testament after the beginning of Christ's ministry, and indeed after the one incident of His boyhood. In three of the instances in which it is introduced, our Lord says, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?”; “Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother”; and, “Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.” It might, therefore, seem as if special care had been taken to discourage and obviate the corrupted forms of Christianity which have thrust the Virgin Mary into the place of her Eternal Son, and made her more an object of rapturous worship than God, to whom alone all worship is due.
In a letter dealing with women's work among the poor, he remarks, “I sometimes think ‘the woman' is the representative in the family of the third person in the Holy Trinity, the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, who is the fountain of all the beautiful, the tender, the motherly, the womanly-the human family being considered the reflex of the Divine, who said, ‘Let us make man in our image after our likeness,' and then we read, ‘male and female created He them.' Nothing will destroy the worship of the Virgin Mother in the Romish Church, where in their pictures she is blasphemously placed upon the same throne with the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit, whom she has replaced, only hovering as a dove over her head-nothing, I believe, will dethrone her and destroy her worship but a scriptural understanding of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as the tender, the motherly, the womanly. It was after the Athanasian Creed was made (and you cannot put love and tenderness into a hard, dogmatic creed) that the personal love and most melting tenderness of the Holy Spirit was lost sight of, and His throne and worship profanely given to Mary. But any holy woman is such as she, a representative on earth of Him.”1 [Note: Life of William B. Robertson, D.D., Irvine (by J. Brown), 425.]
Far in the apse [of the Church of SS. Mary and Donato] is seen the sad Madonna standing in her folded robe, lifting her hands in vanity of blessing. There is little else to draw away our thoughts from the solitary image.… The figure wears a robe of blue, deeply fringed with gold, which seems to be gathered on the head and thrown back on the shoulders, crossing the breast, and falling in many folds to the ground. The under robe, shown beneath it where it opens at the breast, is of the same colour; the whole, except the deep gold fringe, being simply the dress of the women of the time. Round the dome there is a coloured mosaic border; and on the edge of its arch, legible by the whole congregation, this inscription:
Quos Eva Contrivit, Pia Virgo Maria Redemit;
Hanc Cuncti Laudent, Qui Cristi Munere Gaudent.
The whole edifice is, therefore, simply a temple to the Virgin: to her is ascribed the fact of Redemption, and to her its praise.…
Mariolatry is no special characteristic of the twelfth century; on the outside of that very tribune of San Donato, in its central recess, is an image of the Virgin which receives the reverence once paid to the blue vision upon the inner dome. With rouged cheeks and painted brows, the frightful doll stands in wretchedness of rags, blackened with the smoke of the votive lamps at its feet; and if we would know what has been lost or gained by Italy in the six hundred years that have worn the marbles of Murano let us consider how far the priests who set up this to worship, the populace who have this to adore, may be nobler than the men who conceived that lonely figure standing on the golden field, or than those to whom it seemed to receive their prayer at evening, far away, where they only saw the blue clouds rising out of the burning sea.1 [Note: Ruskin, Stones of Venice, vol. ii. chap. iii. §§ 39, 40.]