THE WOMAN FROM NAZARETH - (May Reflection Continued) By Sr. Mary O’Driscoll OP
Disciple of her Son
In 1974, 10 years after Vatican II, Paul VI found it necessary to state emphatically that certain aspects of Mary’s image, found in popular writings, are not authentic because they are not true to the gospel image. He then proceeds to present what he considers to be the most pertinent gospel image of her, namely that, besides being Jesus’ mother, she was his disciple. In fact, he describes her as “the first and most perfect of Christ’s disciples”.
In this approach he is joined by many scripture and theology scholars who interpret the passages in the gospels that refer to Mary in the light of discipleship. At the Annunciation, she is the one who is radically open to God. Timothy Radcliffe, commenting on this event, remarks that Mary teaches us how to listen: “This receptivity, this opening of the ear … requires that we be silent and wait for God's Word to come to us. It demands of us an emptiness so that we wait upon the Lord for what He may give us”. On the occasion of the Visitation, she goes “with haste” to the one in need, as all disciples are asked to do, and in her Magnificat, she speaks out strongly on behalf of the poor and oppressed. Later, in the Finding-in-the-Temple episode, she accepts that God’s claims over her son, as well as over herself, surpass all other claims.
There are many times when Mary does not understand what is going on, nor what is being asked of her, but when this happens, instead of rejecting God’s word, she remains pondering it in her heart (Lk.219, 51). She is thus the model of all disciples called to ponder God’s word and allow it to be born in them. As Orabator remarks, Mary in her deep pondering heart was ”able to communicate with God about ...the difficult things she was asked to do, and every time her reaction was the same, ‘Yes, may your will be done’”.
What comes through in the gospels (as Paul VI states) is that Mary the disciple was not “a timidly submissive person” but rather a woman of great courage, strength, decisiveness and active concern for others.
As Mary lived her human life, she increasingly appreciated that her deepest relationship with Jesus was rooted, not in her physical ties to him as his mother, but in her being, like him, someone who heard the word of God and did it (cf.Mk:3:33-5;Mt.12:48-50;Lk.8:19-21). St Augustine makes this point well:
I beg you to listen to what the Lord had to say when he stretched out his hands: ...’whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and my sister and my mother’. Are we to take from this that the Virgin Mary did not do the will of the Father? ...Indeed she did do the Father’s will, and it is a greater thing for her that she was Christ’s disciple than that she was his mother. It is a happier thing to be his disciple than to be his mother.
We can conclude that Mary grew in her understanding of discipleship throughout her life, and that it was precisely in her graced humanity, with all its joys and sorrows, its doubts and hopes - and not outside that humanity - that she became the ‘first and most perfect’ disciple of Jesus Christ. We are blessed to have her as our model in living our own graced human lives as disciples of Jesus Christ today.
