Mary Our Good Mother

Nathan Ahearne explains how Mary is a model of faith and motherhood for all who follow Christ.

As both first disciple and model for accompaniment, Mary, in her motherhood, teaches us how to listen with the ear of our heart. God chose an ordinary person to be the Mother of God and Mary humbly and courageously gave her yes. Her example of discipleship demonstrates that we must begin by offering the little we have to God, and He will magnify our efforts. Mary’s life was centred on Christ; she gave her ongoing ‘yes’ to God and made her son Jesus known and loved. She was attentive to the word of God; obedient to it, she acted upon it. Her humility, simplicity, and modesty inspire our own journey of denying self, taking up our cross, and following Jesus.  

Throughout her life, Mary lived with the assurance of faith and believed that “nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). She was steadfast, courageous and transformed by His love.

The disciples become what Mary is: ones who hear the Word of God and act on it. (Leonard DeLorenzo)

The disciple is not only receptive to the good news in their own heart, but having received it, he or she is compelled to proclaim it to those they love. Mary’s proclamation of God’s love is in the form of word and action. To understand how the Jewish Mary, Mother of Jesus, lived her call to be the Mother of God, we turn to the Gospels.

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Saint John Paul II taught us to contemplate Christ with Mary's eyes and Pope Benedict XVI explained that Mary offers us the closeness of a mother, but even more important, she is herself an expression of the closeness of God. We can see this closeness expressed in the 13th century Byzantine mosaic from Athens titled ‘Eleusa’, which translates to ‘tenderness’ or ‘showing mercy’. Jesus’s little hand pulls Mary close to his cheek and suggests Mary’s willingness to walk in His footsteps of mercy and tenderness from the very beginning of His life.

Father Johann G. Roten, S.M. explains how Mary models how to relate to her son and encourages us to "enter the school of Mary to learn to love and follow Christ above all else” that her school is one of "feminine and motherly goodness" and “the highway to enter the deepest of Christ's mysteries.” 

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Mary’s proclamation of God’s love is in the form of word and action. #CatholicMom

The maternity of Mary has been at the centre of Christian theological reflection and religious practice and prayer from the early days of great debates over the Theokotos to our present time. It is one thing to be calling Mary the mother of God, but there is another more common experience of being a ‘mother’ which she lived in full. It is true that Mary’s experience of being a ‘mother’ is clearly told in the New Testament language and imagery. However, we don’t want to miss the relevant and important story of Mary as ‘woman’, another expression which the authors of the New Testament commonly used.

In 2019, Richard Rohr brought this theology to life in the language of our times:

In recognising in Mary – not only the mother of the disciple and the mother of the Church – but also as God’s place of encounter with all that is most beautiful among women and men, then we will have gained access to the womanly, maternal face of God. In the many images of Mary, we humans see our own feminine soul. Far too often the feminine has had to work in secret, behind the scenes, indirectly. Yet it can still have a profound effect.

Mary’s example of spiritual motherhood honours the dignity of all and models how we can bring Christ-life to the world through service, prayer, and family life. 

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