Mary - Mother, Sister and Midwife

 This article focuses on the vocation of motherhood and womanhood (looking also at fatherhood and manhood), in light of Mary's role as Mother, Sister and Midwife, drawing on the Visitation account.

"Visitation," at the Museo Matris Domini, 1320-30, Wikicommons.

WHEN MARY was visited by the Archangel Gabriel, receiving the revelation and the concrete realisation of her motherhood of the Word, she was also informed about the pregnancy of her cousin Elizabeth. We read that she went “with haste,” animated by zealous sisterly charity, to help in the preparation for the birth of the Baptist.

Luke tells us that Elizabeth “was advanced in years,” “in her old age,” thus at the very least comfortably past the years of fertility (Lk 1:7,36). This explains why Zechariah her husband doubted the news when Gabriel told it to him. Elizabeth was not just barren (1:7) but had gone through menopause.

Mary’s visitation to Elizabeth is animated by a desire to assist a fellow sister in the Semitic sense, and faithfully fulfils the cultural norm whereby a woman relation would help another in the role of moral support and midwife, even if Mary might not have been the only one. Mary’s haste in going to visit Elizabeth is likely motivated in part by the added need of Elizabeth for help. After all, Elizabeth is “in her old age”. Old age plus pregnancy equals a lot of support needed!

The gift of Mary’s motherhood was realised once she pronounced “Yes” to the proposal to conceive the Word by the Holy Spirit. The fact that in the same revelation whereby Mary received the gift of her motherhood that the secret motherhood of Elizabeth is also revealed, teaches us something about the gift of motherhood. This in addition to the interconnected revelations of Zechariah and Joseph concerning their respective paternity. Motherhood does not exist in isolation. Like any vocation, it is not an individualistic vocation, it is not something merely bestowed upon an individual woman. Motherhood is intrinsically relational. It includes not just the bond between mother and child—the child the simultaneous fruit and source of motherhood; a relational horizon to which modern society often reduces motherhood to; but it also includes the bond between husband and wife, father and child, and the trinal dynamic between all three.

According to the natural order and ideal ordained by God, a wife receives the gift of motherhood from her husband, in the same very act in which she receives that part of the life needed to form the child in her womb. Alas, this can sound shocking to modern ears! A secular blasphemy against the individualistic and reductionist view of motherhood. But hang on… in turn, the wife gives to her husband the gift of his fatherhood. In this view no one can claim their maternity nor paternity as a self-created phenomenon that exists outside of relationality and the integral complementarity between the sexes. Thus neither maternity or paternity are brought into existence with warring rights, as though ordered toward hostility against one another as the cultural Marxist narrative would have us believe, but rather, with a shared and common responsibly, with shared and common rights, and a shared dignity resting on a single foundation.

Motherhood is given to woman by God, through man, and fatherhood is given to man by God, through woman. The perfect objective exercise of these parental vocations depends upon the loving cooperation between both parties, relying on the gratitude of man for woman, and woman for man, honed-in as such gratitude is on a concrete “wife” and “husband” and on the fruit of their union—the child.

In Mary’s instance the physical agency of man was substituted with the moral agency of Joseph, God working super-naturally, beyond the natural order. In Elizabeth’s, and all other mothers’ instance, the physical agency of a man is involved.

We live in a fallen world. Thus, unfortunately, without there being any place for us to judge, things do not always go according to the natural design nor does reproduction always transpire in a context of love, but sometimes in fractured relations, the laboratory, or through sexual violence. Then there's simply instances of one parent dying prematurely. In all such cases the perfect objective exercise of motherhood and fatherhood cannot be realised, and instead, a perfect subjective exercise of either vocation remains possible, with or without mutual cooperation between natural parents, but the exercise of either a mother or a father will not attain relative perfection if hatred and resentment abides between the parents of a child and/or of one sex against the other.

Only the rock of love and forgiveness serves as a stable foundation for a relationship, including the relation between mother and child, father and child. To build such a relation on envy and bitterness against anyone, especially of a mother against the father of her child, and a father against the mother of his child, even when humanly justified, will only be to build one’s relationship with their child on sand. The child will grow insecure, since a parent’s love, if poisoned by a lack of forgiveness, cannot be fortified by God’s love which can only enter in power within a forgiving heart.

Nevertheless, through the mystery of the Crucified Christ the absence of one parent’s love or even both, can serve as wounds through which a child can grow in receptivity to the love of God as Father who pours out His love in the full maternal and paternal power of His Spirit. Ideally however, the love of two parents, a mother and a father, nurtures a child and through natural parallels disposes their child to the higher and supreme love of God.

However, motherhood does not exist in the vacuum of the nuclear family. Of course, the “nuclear family” consisting of the trinal relational of mother, father and child, is its sanctuary, but just like the temple of old, the sanctuary formed only a part of the temple, the main part, but not the only part.

As mentioned previously, Mary’s motherhood was revealed to her simultaneous to Elizabeth’s motherhood. This reveals to us that the vocation of motherhood (the same with fatherhood, but we’ll focus on motherhood here) is intrinsically shared: first with God, the Maker of all things, and secondly, with fellow women who are mothers. The motherhood of one woman is intrinsically ordered towards a communis sororitas, a common sisterhood, a sisterly communion, what could also be called a communio matrum, the communion of mothers. Such a communion is of course not divorced from the Communio Sanctorum, the Communion of Saints, nor is it somehow separated from or at odds with the unique sub-communion/s between men, but simply describes a sub-communion, a special shared relation between those called to motherhood—and all woman are, at least spiritually, if not, physically.

Indeed, the Body of Christ is One, and there is one Communio, but this does not take away from the unique and distinct relations, communiones, friendships if you will, that abide between various members of this Body, who while all One, are also many. Each member of Christ’s Body shares in unique relations with each and every other member of this Body and some of these relations can be grouped and are likewise shared with others. The martyrs share a unique small “c” communio with other martyrs. The holy virgins with their fellow virgins. Priests with their fellow priests. Those who are mothers with other mothers, and so on. These communiones are concrete relational horizons of participation in the Communion of Saints, and since each communio is part of a concrete participation in the Communion of Saints, it is not something that must wait for heaven. It is a reality within our mortal lives too, integral to our identity and vocation. We must seek it out, and nurture such fellowships in order to grow as persons.

Thus, without denigrating the fraternity between men and women, men should also seek fellowship with other men, fathers with other fathers; and women should seek fellowship with other women, mothers with other mothers. This is how we are strengthened to grow as the men and women, fathers and mothers (physical and/or spiritual), we are called to be.

As Mary came to Elizabeth’s aid so too Mary comes to each woman’s aid to help her live out her maternal office. Mary comes to mothers to help them be mothers after God’s own heart. To become both mothers and saints.

Mary comes to all women, perhaps yet to have their natural vocation to motherhood fulfilled, or who have been called to fulfil it only spiritually along the path of consecrated religious life or in a single life of godly dedication or in a marriage stuck with the heavy cross of infertility.

Mary is there for every woman. Yes, Mary is there for every person, every human being, man or woman. But human beings do not exist in the abstract (although, human nature as a universal does exist in the mind of God), instead, in concrete reality, human beings exist as either men or women. “Male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). Even those born with intersex organs or who are confused about their biological sex are either one or the other (pastoral care, patience and sensitivity are needed to help guide such persons towards a direction of understanding their own innate, natural and God-appointed sex). Thus, just as Mary comes to each man as a woman coming to assist a man; Mary comes to a woman as a woman coming to a woman, as a Mother coming to a mother. She comes as a sister to work alongside her sister to help her love the Lord Jesus and to raise children in the faith—whether biological children, or other souls. Mary comes as a midwife to help each woman in her time of pregnancy and birth, but more importantly, to help each woman in giving birth to the love of Christ in the world, in each woman’s home, family, workplace and community. Mary wants to teach each woman the art of nurturing love in the hearts of men. From their fathers, to their husbands, to their sons, and in all souls, male or female, nurturing such love through a life of service and prayer.

Both Mary and Elizabeth shared peculiar circumstances. The gift of their motherhood was given in unusual contexts. Mary was a virgin, her motherhood was substantially a divine gift, and its existence was precarious in view of the misunderstanding of human minds. Thus, Joseph was appointed to veil the gift of Mary’s unique motherhood, to help it grow freely in hiddenness.

Elizabeth on the other hand was a barren woman past the age of child rearing, and yet beyond the dictates of nature she received the gift of motherhood, having to struggle with the difficulty and nuances "old age" brings to such a vocation.

Throughout the Old Testament we come across various mothers whose motherhood was intricately tied to suffering and difficulty. We need only think of the matriarchs, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah. All these suffered with barrenness, and each in their turn was healed and brought forth offspring. Elizabeth shared literally in the lot of her maternal forbears, and Mary too in respect to relying on the miraculous intervention of God the Father, working through the Holy Spirit, in the Person of the God the Son.

Then there’s Eve. Eve suffered the loss of a son, the innocent and righteous Abel. Mary too suffered the loss of her Son, the Righteous and Innocent One.

All the matriarchs, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah, including Eve, all these also suffered the maternal pain of experiencing divisions between their biological and/or legal children. Cain against Abel, the descendants of Cain against Shem’s, the tension between Isaac and Ishmael, the animosity of Esau against Jacob, of the sons of Leah against each other, and above all against Joseph, the son of Leah.

Mary too suffers the maternal pain of seeing her children at odds with one another. The world is not a peaceful place, and the division that fractures the communion of Christians from the Catholic Church, and the internal divisions on top of that, breaks Mary’s heart as a Mother.

There is no experience of any mother, any woman, that at its core, Mary has not suffered. She suffers in communion, in solidarity, with every man as a woman, as a fellow human being, and so too with every woman as a fellow human being, a fellow woman.

Whoever we are, man or woman, Mary comes as Mother, Sister and Midwife. The way a woman shares with Mary, and receives God’s grace through Mary, according to these three aspects will be a little different to how a man does so, paralleling the different role Elizabeth played compared to Joseph or to Zechariah, and vice versa, in the visitation narrative.

Regardless, we are all called to invite Mary into our hearts, homes and lives, and she will come. Not that she isn’t already present, but how much more actively can Mary fulfil her God-appointed role in our lives if we let her and ask her to.

Whatever the difficulties of our lives, no matter whether we are male or female, called to be mothers or fathers, called to live this vocation out naturally and supernaturally, or only supernaturally, if we welcome Mary into our lives, as God so wants us to, we will come to enter into the joy of the One whom Mary infallibly brings—Christ the Lord. It is God who sent Mary to Elizabeth through her conviction of love of neighbour, and it is God who sends Mary to us through the conviction of her love for us. In turn, Mary brings the one who sent her, even as the one who sends her already abides in us.

Those who call upon Mary, in vocal prayer or in the silence of their heart, can be confident that Mary and the fruit of her womb is with them in a special way, and so too her hidden spouse, St. Joseph, all three mediating and witnessing to the presence of the Holy Trinity.

For those who pray the Rosary, the Rosary is as it were, a sign of the umbilical cord that ties the child to its Mother, a bracelet shared between siblings, the hand of a help-maid. Those who pray the Rosary are nourished by Mary as Mother, accompanied by Mary as Sister, and strengthened by Mary as Midwife in enduring the labour pangs of the cross, appointed to every Christian. 

However we do so, those who call on Mary, whether they feel Mary’s maternal presence or not (because the reality is, she is there), can exclaim in faith:

“And why is this granted me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy.” (Lk 1:43-44).

Yes, man or woman, male or female, a pregnant woman or not, all Christians share in the blessing of bearing the life of Jesus in the womb of the heart, and this babe leaps for joy, sanctifies and consoles, and increases in stature within the soul that calls on the name of Mary and opens their heart to her maternal love.

Finishing Works in the Lord: Joseph the Worker

THE FEAST OF St. Joseph the Worker was instituted by Ven. Pope Pius XII in 1955.

The date chosen for the feast is not a coincidence. The first of May, originally an ancient Spring festival called “May Day,” heralded the new season with pagan rituals and customs (e.g. the ‘May Pole’), still practiced in diverse ways in many European countries with or without their original religious connotations.

In the nineteenth century May Day was chosen as the choice day of the Socialists and Communists for ‘International Worker’s Day’. It remains a secular “festival” till today, sometimes called “Labour Day,” especially commemorated by worker’s unions (not all socialist), and socialist and communist States.

May Day is a public holiday in many countries.

Catholic pious tradition has long since enculturated the ancient celebration of May Day. It is a traditional practice to crown Mary, usually with a wreathe of roses, on the first of May which is considered “Mary’s month,” a month especially dedicated to devotion to Mary (see Rev 12:1).

Following the development of Catholic social teaching, championed by Pope Leo XIII in response to the socialist trends of the time, Pius XII providentially selected May Day as the day for Joseph the Worker.

In selecting this day, we see at work the incarnational logic of the Catholic faith. Instead of doggedly denouncing everything pushed by the socialist and communist agenda, Pius XII takes the true Catholic approach: to take the radical left-wing proclamation of an International Worker’s Day as an opportunity to affirm that which the natural law attests, and the Judeo-Christian tradition has esteemed with a divine sensibility: the noble and essential role work plays in human life, and its essential dignity. The Christian spirit esteems work all the more, recognising the enrichment it brings to the sustaining and development of the human person, family and society in light of Jesus Christ, the God Man, who in becoming one of us worked like us, and lived for thirty years as a carpenter.

 In choosing May Day to celebrate Joseph in the context of “The Worker” the Church is saying, “Look here, do not look to man made ideologies. The socialists and communists are right to esteem the value of the worker, but they do not understand the true and divine dignity of work, and the real meaning of what it means to be a worker. They have a pinch of the truth but miss out on so much! Look here instead to Christ, look here to St. Joseph, the appointed Father to Jesus, who taught Jesus the practical craft of workmanship and provided for God Himself and the Blessed Virgin Mary by the work of his hands. So sacred is work that God the Creator, the Sustainer of the Universe, humbled himself, and willed Himself to be sustained by the work of human hands, above all, the work of a man named Joseph, who together with Mary sheltered, fed, clothed and supported God as a child, an adolescent and as a young man. How can we, finite creatures, spurn work and its supernatural purpose when the Creator Himself, All-Powerful and All-Mighty, put his hand to the plane and the plough?”

Paul exhorts us. “Everything you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” (Col 3:17).

This is exactly what Joseph did to perfection. Everything he did was done for the sake of Jesus his Son, for the glory of the Father above. Even before Joseph joined Mary in wedlock, under mutual vows of virginity, everything Joseph did was out of anticipation for the Messiah. What a blessing to be chosen as the man called “abba,” “father,” by God Himself. Joseph was enraptured by the Wonder Child. It filled His heart with joy and peace to see Jesus grow and to know that everything He did was for Him, for the boy and God whom He called “Son”.

Joseph sets for us an example to live by. That everything we do, whether in word or deed, we do it out of love for Jesus, imbued with a faith that we are working and operating with Him, in Him and through Him, in thanksgiving to the Father who pays us in return with the free wage we do not deserve or merit, the wage of grace and salvation, the blessings of holiness and increase in the extent of our participation in the divine nature (1 Pet 2:2; 2 Pet 1:4).

Why work when we receive the grace of life in Christ through faith? Well, Joseph shows us that authentic faith in Jesus is not idle, nor an abstraction of the intellect, but an engagement of the whole person, mind, body and will, in professing that Jesus is Lord. As Paul in his letter to the Colossians writes, “Whatever you do, work from the soul [with all your being], for the Lord and not for men, knowing that you will receive from the Lord the reward of the inheritance. For it is the Lord Christ that you serve” (3:23-24). Our ordinary human activities, short of sin, can all be offered to Jesus as a work of praise. Only in heaven (by God’s good grace!) will we know the spiritual ripple effect our smallest offerings of love have had on the world in drawing souls to Christ and bringing spiritual relief to those in need, the living and the dead.

The incapacity of the free exercise of mind or body is no obstacle to this profession of faith that summons our whole being to worship and proclaim Christ, since it subsists in the assent of the intellect and will, our interior spirit, and manifests itself in our bodies no matter their capacity. The healthy body can glorify God in hard physical work or any other kind of work, from cooking to cleaning, to paper work and study; while the bodies and minds of the frailest carry out a hidden work that can cooperate in a profound way in Jesus’ work of redemption, where on the Cross His body glorified God to an exalted degree even though pinned in immobility.

In Genesis we read that “on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done” (2:2). These words, however one takes them, speak to a fundamental truth. God created everything that is, and after completing the original array of all created things and setting in motion created reality with all its laws and mechanisms, figuratively, God “rested,” that is, although He could have continued to create new heavens and new earths, and would and does continue to exercise His creative power in upholding the world and all its creatures, visible and invisible, God has chosen to settle with creating this heavens and this earth, although indeed, they will be radically renewed at the end of time, they will fundamentally remain the heavens and the earth God chose to create at the very beginning.

We see this theme of “finishing” in the concluding prayer for the Office of St. Joseph the Worker.

Lord God and Creator of the universe,

  you imposed on mankind the law of work.

Give us grace, by Saint Joseph’s example and at his intercession,

  to finish the works you give us to do,

  and to come to the rewards you promise.

“Give us grace, by Joseph’s example and at his intercession, to finish the works you give us to do.” What is meant by finish here? What makes a work complete in God’s eyes?

It is tempting to adopt a rationalistic and economic definition of a completed or finished work as that which is tangibly and measurably accomplished. A finished house is a finished house. It can’t be missing a roof or interior features. To finish weeding one’s front lawn means all the weeds have been removed, or at least by relative standards, all the weeds one intended to weed, either before starting or after one realised how much weeds there really were. One retires and ‘finishes up’ their career, when they have completed their term of employment. It’s a no-brainer, we know what it means for something to be literally or relatively finished according to the standards of the world.

God’s idea of completion is much different. From God’s perspective many works carried out by human hands, that are judged “finished” or “complete” by human standards, are incomplete. All human actions, all human works, from the intellectual to the practical, that are not imbued with a supernatural love for God and neighbour are spiritually incomplete. Such works have failed to attain to a supernatural end and to their final end—God Himself, by appropriation, principally to the Person of the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit. They have failed to reach their destined goal post. They have failed to attain the completion of the "Sabbath". Conversely, those works imbued with supernatural love, with an underlying intention “to do” for God and act in His Will, in His Love, in Him, with Him, and through Him, such acts have soared to heavenly proportions and have found their rest in the Father’s hands.

All our works, even the most menial, are called back to the Creator who made us.

At the end of the day, even if we completed nothing by the standards of the world and by the standards we might set for ourselves, if everything we did happened to be offered to God in love, without neglect to the needs of our neighbours around us, such a day would be complete in God’s eyes and so would all its composite works.

Divine love alone can bring spiritual completion to our works.

This is not to undermine the duty, value and sometimes even moral prerogative to strive towards completing works in the temporal order according to earthly standards, but it does put them in perspective as groundless and ultimately worthless if carried out without love. “If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor 13:1). “For what profits a man if he gains the whole world [without love] but loses his own soul” (Mt 16:26). Only grafted to Jesus can our souls and our works be imbued with eternal life and bear everlasting fruit (Jn 15).

Joseph’s life testifies to this truth in a profound way. Tradition has it that Joseph died before Jesus’ public ministry, likely, only shortly before. Joseph wasn’t there to see his Son fulfil His main mission. Joseph wasn’t physically present at the Cross. Nor was he physically there to nurture the faith of the Apostles after Jesus’ Ascension, despite being the expert on Jesus after Mary. There’s something so ordinary about Joseph’s life that it can almost be dissatisfying at first encounter. It was terribly dissatisfying for many in Jesus’ hometown, a cause for disbelief in His divine nature, “We know him, that’s just Jesus, the carpenter’s son!” (para. Mt 13:55).

Joseph the Worker was originally an obstacle for many in their belief in Jesus. Perhaps he remains an obstacle for many today. Maybe some would find a God who zapped down to earth in triumphant form and spent his years outside the secrecy of a carpenter’s workshop more believable!

But for those who do believe, Joseph the Worker is a helpmate for the interior life.

There was no outward glory for Joseph during his lifetime. He did not work the amazing miracles of the Apostles. He did not share the limelight of His Son’s public ministry. There isn’t much about Joseph in the Gospels, and none of his words are recorded, only some of his actions, and these actions remained veiled until after his death.

Yet Joseph is vehemently revered by the Church as the greatest Saint, eclipsed only by Mary. All the merit and value of Joseph’s life is thus wrapped up in the ordinary actions of His hidden life spent working alongside Mary in love for Jesus. Joseph the Worker shows us that the value of a life is not judged on anything else. He silently echoes Paul:

“Whatever you do, do it for the Lord, for He is the real Master you serve. Know that you will receive from the Lord the reward of the inheritance."

“Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord."