FRIDAY POTPOURRI: WHAT WERE YOU PONDERING MARY?

Lumen Gentium paragraphs 53 &54

 

What was she thinking?  What was she feeling?  What was she facing?  To some extent, these are easier questions to ask about Mary than they are about her Son.  Mary is, after all, a human person.  Jesus is a Divine Person and therefore it is often very dangerous to say, “At this point, Jesus was feeling (fill in the blank).”  How do we know?  True, He was fully human, but He was also fully Divine and to think we could know the inner workings of His mind might be presumptuous.  (This is my opinion, not part of this document.)

 

Mary on the other hand is fully human without divine being a divine person.  True, she was also sinless from her conception, but still, it is a little less tricky to ponder what she might be thinking.

 

As she was the Mother of God and Mother of the Redeemer, she is also our Mother.  By her saying yes to God, she helped bring about our birth into Christ and everlasting life.  In this way, while being the best of us, she is still one of us, “who occupies a place in the Church which is the highest after Christ and also closest to us.”  (54)

 

The II Vatican Council did not write a complete end all be all treatise on Mary and even allowed for further development of our understanding of her place and our relationship.  Immediately following VII, there was the erroneous thought in many circles that Mary was being downplayed in order to more fully focus on Christ.  Nothing could be further from the truth to anyone who actually read the documents.  In fact, all valid schools of thought on Mary were upheld while still allowing for future development by theologians.