The Lion and the Lamb - 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

John 1:29-34
John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said,
“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
He is the one of whom I said,
‘A man is coming after me who ranks ahead of me
because he existed before me.’
I did not know him,
but the reason why I came baptizing with water
was that he might be made known to Israel.”
John testified further, saying,
“I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from heaven
and remain upon him.
I did not know him,
but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me,
‘On whomever you see the Spirit come down and remain,
he is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’
Now I have seen and testified that he is the Son of God.”

---

Why do we call Jesus a lamb? Why does John the Baptist, upon seeing Jesus, shout to the crowd, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”? How exactly is Jesus a lamb? And how do lambs take away sin?

For an answer, we need to go way back in time. Nearly 700 years before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah recorded a series of poems about a mysterious figure called the “suffering servant of the Lord.” In the fourth and final poem, we read about how this servant will undergo agony and humiliation: “He was despised and rejected.... He was oppressed and he was afflicted.” Yet, because of this, the suffering servant will receive honor, prosperity, and life (Is 53).

What is interesting is that this “suffering servant” is strangely described as “a lamb that is led to the slaughter, a sheep that before its shearers is dumb” (Is 53:7). On top of that, this lamb is supposed to “make himself an offering for sin.” Indeed he is supposed to “bear the sins of many” (Is 53:10-11). 

So when John the Baptist sees Jesus and shouts to the crowd: “behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” we now know the reference. John is recalling Isaiah’s suffering servant — the one who will be despised and rejected, oppressed and afflicted. The one who will bear the sins of many. 

That’s all fine and good. But is there something yet to learn from the image of the lamb itself? Why, of all things, a lamb? 

A lamb is nonviolent. A lamb is meek. They are followers, not leaders; hunted and never hunters. They do not defend their territory. They are silent when they feel pain. This is the exact opposite of another image the scriptures sometimes use to describe Jesus: the lion. 

In the last book of the Bible — the Book of Revelation — we see an extraordinary apocalyptic vision of heaven’s throne. We see people weeping because none of the angels are powerful enough to open a certain mysterious scroll. “Weep not!” a strange figure announces, “the Lion of Judah has conquered so that he can open the scroll!” (Rev 5:5)

But when we finally see the scroll opened, it is not by a lion. It is opened, rather, by “a slain lamb.” At that moment, the text says there broke out in heaven “the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice: ‘worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing’” (Rev 5:11-12).

The slain lamb, of course, is Jesus. He is also the lion. Indeed, Jesus is both lamb and lion. He is, like a lamb, hunted. He is hunted by our sins. He is oppressed and afflicted, bowed down and killed by them — “like a lamb led to the slaughter.” Instead of defending his territory, he “turns to them his other cheek also” (Mt 5:39). Like a lamb, he is silent through the pain. 

But it is precisely in this that he is also like a lion. Jesus once said, “my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). It’s one of the most startling things he ever said. “Although he was crucified through weakness,” St. Paul would go on to write, “[Jesus] lives by God’s power” (2 Cor. 13:4). He was killed, yes, but he lives. He was raised. The lion-like strength of God is revealed most vividly in the places of human weakness. Indeed, Jesus was only raised by way of a human death. He was a lion by being a lamb. It is the same with us. The place in your life where you are most weak and broken is precisely the place where you are most in contact with God’s mercy, with God’s strength. “When I am weak,” Paul said, “then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10).

He is lamb and he is lion; he is death and he is resurrection. He cannot be resurrected unless he dies; he cannot be glorified unless he is humiliated. The lion needs the lamb. In the Book of Revelation, only the wounded lamb was powerful enough to open and read from the scroll of God. In life, how true it is that only the soul that’s been wounded can truly grasp what it means to live well, to love, to be merciful.


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"You are coming to ME?" - The Baptism of the Lord

Matthew 3:13-17
Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan
to be baptized by him.
John tried to prevent him, saying,
“I need to be baptized by you,
and yet you are coming to me?”
Jesus said to him in reply,
“Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us
to fulfill all righteousness.”
Then he allowed him.
After Jesus was baptized,
he came up from the water and behold,
the heavens were opened for him,
and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove
and coming upon him.
And a voice came from the heavens, saying,
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

---

Why in the world does Jesus need to be baptized? One of the principal reasons for baptism is the cleansing of sin. We read that people came to John the Baptist and “were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” It is described as a “baptism of repentance” (Mk 1). But Jesus has no sins to confess. He has nothing from which to repent. This is why John is shocked by Jesus’ request. “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?” (Mt 3:14)

Jesus’ reply is extremely important, even if it’s a tad cryptic. He tells John to “allow it for now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Mt 3:15). Fulfill all righteousness? What does that mean? The word Jesus uses for “righteousness,” in the original Greek, is dikaiosunē. It’s a word that would have stood out to the Jews listening nearby. It meant something specific. 

In the Jewish mind, dikaiosunē referred to God’s justice. God is “righteous”; God is “just”; God is dikaiosunē. These were all synonyms. But it meant more than that. God’s dikaiosunē also referred to the fact that he treated the Israelites with an over-the-top generosity. “I have drawn near to you with my dikaiosunē,” God told them in the Greek Old Testament. “I have taken you by the hand and I have kept you” (Is 42:6). Indeed, in the Jewish mind, part of what makes God “righteous,” is that, in spite of our failings, God still wants to draw near to us. He keeps us anyway. That is over-the-top generosity. That is dikaiosunē. 

But it’s still a little strange, isn’t it? Why does Jesus answer John the Baptist this way? How does it make sense that, when asked why he wants to be baptized, Jesus says it’s because of his dikaiosunē, because of his over-the-top generosity? How is it generous of him to get baptized?

In short, Jesus’ baptism reveals the over-the-top generosity of God because it reveals that he is human. Humans get baptized, not God. Humans have heads upon which we pour water. Humans have chests upon which we smear oil. God has neither. Until Jesus, that is. Jesus wants to be baptized because he wants to be like us. Jesus wants to be baptized because he wants to feel what you feel, to experience what you experience in the same way you experience it. 

This is more radical than you might be thinking. This is more than just water and oil. By his baptism, Jesus is affirming his desire to be like you in every way, to be like you in your pain, in your anxiety, in your sense of abandonment. Jesus has baptized himself into our condition, and our condition is radically broken. 

We should not be surprised, then, to read that John the Baptist actually “tried to prevent [Jesus]” from entering the waters of the Jordan (Mt 3:14). We want to prevent him from these miseries. But this is a mistake. It is a mistake to imagine that God will not be generous to us. 

We do the same thing everyday. We prevent God from descending into the deeper waters of our life, from entering into our misery. Not necessarily because we have hard hearts, but sometimes because ― like John the Baptist ― we’re certain he won’t be that generous to us. “You are coming to me?” we ask with John. Really? To me? The answer is “yes.” He has come to you. God has baptized himself into your life. He has poured your fears across his forehead and smeared your sins across his chest. It is a mistake to keep him standing upon the shore. It is a profound mistake to prevent him from entering even your muddiest waters.

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Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh - The Epiphany of the Lord

Matthew 2:1-12

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea,

in the days of King Herod,

behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying,

“Where is the newborn king of the Jews?

We saw his star at its rising

and have come to do him homage.”

When King Herod heard this,

he was greatly troubled,

and all Jerusalem with him.

Assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people,

He inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.

They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea,

for thus it has been written through the prophet:

And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah,

are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;

since from you shall come a ruler,

who is to shepherd my people Israel.”

Then Herod called the magi secretly

and ascertained from them the time of the star’s appearance.

He sent them to Bethlehem and said,

“Go and search diligently for the child.

When you have found him, bring me word,

that I too may go and do him homage.”

After their audience with the king they set out.

And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them,

until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.

They were overjoyed at seeing the star,

and on entering the house

they saw the child with Mary his mother.

They prostrated themselves and did him homage.

Then they opened their treasures

and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod,

they departed for their country by another way.

---

"What can a child do with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh?" Surely Mary was too polite to ask that of the magi, but more than a few people have wondered about it. These are not just curious gifts for a child. They are curious gifts to give God. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis ― a Trappist monk from Massachusetts ― makes the point that, if the magi knew Jesus was God, if they knew, as the text says, to “fall down and worship him” (Mt 2:11) then they also would have known that “there was nothing they could give him he did not already possess.” He’s God. What’s he going to do with a bit of gold? [1]

A similar situation occurred some years later when Martha’s sister poured out an entire pound of pure nard upon Jesus’ feet (Jn 12:1-8). Do you remember who complained? It was Judas. “Why was this ointment not sold and given to the poor?” Judas’ question is not far off from ours. What good is it to pour out expensive perfumes upon Jesus’ feet? What good is it to gift him treasures? Isn’t there a better use?

The Fathers of the Church understood these gifts symbolically. Jesus wasn’t supposed to do anything with the frankincense. On the contrary, it was meant to honor him. In the case of the magi, there was gold because he was a king; frankincense ― the fragrance burned during worship ― because he was God; and myrrh ― a resin used for burial ― because he was to die. 

The gifts of the magi were not meant to be used. They were meant, rather, to convey something that was happening within their hearts. Their gold, frankincense, and myrrh were meant to convey their devotion. It is the same for Martha’s sister, pouring out her prized perfume upon Jesus’ feet. When retelling this story, John remembers that “the whole house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment.” He remembers that she even knelt down and “wiped [Jesus’] feet with her hair” (Jn 12:3). How gritty is that? Can she convey her devotion any more vividly? 

It is the same with our own gifts for Jesus. Probably you don’t have any myrrh for him. Probably you don’t have any nard ointment. That is not the point. Matthew’s text says that, upon seeing Jesus, the magi “opened their treasures” to reach for their gifts (Mt 2:11). That is the point. When the Christian encounters Jesus, their first move is to “open their treasures.” Their first move is to reach for their most cherished possessions and to pour them out upon the feet of Jesus, to dry it all up with their hair. 

What is your most cherished possession? Maybe it’s some material thing; maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s your family? A friendship? A memory? Some people cherish their things by guarding them. There are some things we keep hidden and buried, far away from even our own sight: past mistakes we’re not sure how to move forward from, broken relationships that don’t make sense, things we’re still angry at God about. In an odd way, these are things we treasure. These are things we can’t really look in the eye, but they are also things we refuse to let go of. 

Are there things you have buried away in the coffers of your heart? Things you don’t even let God see? These are precisely the things we find when, upon encountering Jesus, we “open our treasures.” These things are our gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These are what we can lay at his feet, what we can give him to convey our devotion. It is, in the end, the most costly thing we can give him. It is all we really have if we want to give him something precious. 

Recall Jesus’ response to Judas’ complaint about the perfume that could have been sold for the poor: “Let her alone…. The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.” Give your money to the poor. Give your time and your energy to the poor. They are always with you. But give your gold, your frankincense, and your myrrh to Jesus. Give what you treasure, what you cling to, and even what you fear to Jesus. What can this child do with your gold, frankincense, and myrrh? I don’t know. But I’m certain he’ll think of something.

---

[1] The opening question, too, is from the lectio of Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to St. Matthew, vol. 1 (Ignatius: San Francisco: 1996), 85.

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What Makes a Family Holy? - The Feast of the Holy Family

Note: Through Advent and Christmas, I have decided to focus these reflections on the Virgin Mary and not on the weekly Gospel reading.

What Makes a Family Holy?

There is a funny and somewhat surprising story tucked away in Mark’s Gospel. After publicly healing a man of his withered hand, Mark reports that an enormous crowd began following Jesus (Mk 3:8). Many brought their sick relatives to be cured (3:10). The crowds pressed thickly upon Jesus and he was unable to rest a moment that day. We read that it became “impossible for him even to eat” (Mk 3:20). But amidst all this fervor, we learn of an odd detail. Jesus’ own relatives had caught wind of the commotion and were ― of all things ― embarrassed of him. The text says that “when his family heard about this they set out to seize him, for they said, ‘he is out of his mind’” (Mk 3:21). The Son of God was apparently acting in a way unbecoming of the family name. 

We should not be imagining that it was Mary or Joseph who were ashamed of their son. Indeed, most scholars suspect that Joseph ― not mentioned at all once Jesus begins his public ministry ― had by this time passed away. And it was Mary who once prompted Jesus to turn water into wine at a wedding in Cana (Jn 2). Mary was not ashamed of Jesus causing a commotion. Indeed, in the story from Mark’s Gospel, we learn just a few verses later that it was probably Jesus’ cousins who came to protect the family’s reputation from any further embarrassment (Mk 3:31). 

When we celebrate today’s “Feast of the Holy Family,” we don’t usually think of Jesus’ broader family. We’re even less likely to imagine that Jesus might not have been well-liked by all the cousins. And, more than that, when we think of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph we often think of their family life as the kind of thing that should be depicted on an ornament, as something quite cozy. We imagine them gathered around a warm hearth untroubled by the sinful world around them.

On the contrary, part of what makes the Holy Family holy is that it wasn’t the kind of thing that could be depicted on an ornament. Indeed, no real family’s daily life is the kind of thing that should ever be depicted on an ornament. And the Holy Family was a real family. That means they had real relatives who really were whackos. Just like your family. Part of what makes the Holy Family holy is that they didn’t isolate themselves from that whackiness, but were in the fray.

An important detail: when Jesus’ relatives came to collect him, Mary was right in their midst. Someone from the crowd even told Jesus: “your mother and family are outside looking for you” (Mk 3:32). Whackos or not, these were Mary’s people. This was her family. She was in the fray with these cousins who were embarrassed of her son. Did she have to listen to them apologizing to those who’d gathered? “I’m so sorry for this. He’s out of his mind.” Was she admonished by her relatives? “Didn’t you teach him better than this?”

This was the Holy Family’s family, and ― odd as it may seem ― that family was embarrassed of Jesus. But Mary did not cut them out of her life, safely retreating to those people who accept her. The Holy Family would not have been very holy had it remained walled-off from the world’s unholiness, had it remained contentedly around the hearth at Nazareth. Holiness is not closed in on itself. It wants to go outside itself, even into very dark places. Indeed, the holiness of the Holy Family was not for Jesus, Mary, and Joseph alone. It was also for those cousins who were embarrassed of Jesus. 

Yes, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph lived lives of extraordinary holiness. They were the “Holy Family.” But we should not imagine that the coming together of their lives formed some sort of impenetrable bubble around their home. The bitterness of the world broke into their lives. It crucified one of them. And he left his home knowing it would. 

The world is as embarrassed of Jesus today as it was when he was causing a commotion in ancient Israel. This is no reason to cut those cousins out of your life. On the contrary, it is reason to model your family after the Holy Family, to remain close to those who are convinced you all ― like Jesus ― “are out of your minds.” Click here to subscribe to these reflections by email

On the Face of Jesus, for Christmas - 4th Sunday of Advent/Christmas

On the Face of Jesus, for Christmas

Note: For the season of Advent and Christmas, I've decided to focus these reflections on the Virgin Mary rather than the weekly Gospel.

The Jews understood that no one could see the face of God and live to tell about it. “I pray thee,” Moses once pleaded with God, “show me thy glory!” In a beautiful passage, God proceeded to show Moses “all his goodness” but insisted that Moses could not see his face, “for man shall not see me and live” (Ex 33:18-23). The difference between God and humanity is too great: “God is in heaven; you are on earth,” the Book of Ecclesiastes says (Ec 5:2). Bridging that gap ― encountering him face-to-face ― would simply overwhelm us.

But the Jews were far from satisfied with this arrangement. “Show us your face!” (Ps 4:6) they pleaded all throughout the Old Testament. It was the constant petition of their psalms. When priests offered blessings, they’d say “may the Lord bless you and keep you, and may the Lord make his face to shine upon you” (Nm 6:24-25). In times of pain, they could be sharp: “Are you sleeping, Lord? Wake up! Why do you hide your face from us?” (Ps 44:23-24)? Their conclusion is a beautiful one. Humanly speaking, they cannot see the face of God. But, as it says in one of their psalms, “my heart says, ‘seek his face.’ And so your face, Lord, I will seek” (Ps 27:8-9). Even if God has hidden it ― even if finding it would kill them ― they will seek the face of God.

The birth of Jesus is the definitive moment. Christmas changes all this. Christmas celebrates the fact that, in Jesus, we have seen the face of God and lived. Mary, of course, was the first to see this, the first to peer into that face. We must not miss the extraordinariness of that first glance. God looked at Mary and Mary looked at God. Think about that! Their eyes rested upon each other. And what did Mary see?

How fascinating that Mary looked into the face of God and saw a face much like her own, a face that had inherited her features: cheeks like hers, eyes like hers. Indeed, it is Mary “of whom Jesus was born,” (Mt 1:16) and so it is Mary of whom Jesus received his human features. As he grew, she would’ve noticed it more. When he laughed, did he toss his head like she did? Did he lick his lips like she did? Sneeze like she did? Wouldn’t she have been the first to understand the emotions on her son’s face ― frustration, curiosity, joy ― because she knew how they played out on her own? 

In a sense, the human face is for communicating emotion. Indeed, the face conveys our personality most intimately. This is why the Jews wanted to see God’s face so badly. In the face of Jesus, God has revealed his divine personality to us. How surprising that God’s face is a human face ― a baby’s face! How surprising that he carries himself just like his mother!

Mary knew the tradition of her ancestors ― that looking into God’s face meant death. But this was her son. “Blessed is she,” St. Jacob of Serugh (d. 521) once wrote of Mary. “She has born the mighty giant who sustains the world.” In her son’s eyes, Mary did not find a death sentence, but “infinity dwindled to infancy.” Today God blinks and smiles at the caresses of his mother. That is the marvel of Christmas ― the fact that the same God whose face made the patriarchs tremble now lies gurgling in his mother’s arms. Christmas means that God is not just blinding light and unquenchable fire, but a baby in need of his mother’s tenderness. “Blessed is she,” St. Jacob insisted, “her lips have touched Him whose blazing made angels of fire recoil…. She has embraced Him and covered him with kisses.”


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"Betrothed to a man named Joseph" - 3rd Sunday of Advent

Note: For the season of Advent and Christmas, I've decided to focus these reflections on the Virgin Mary rather than the weekly Gospel.

"Betrothed to a man named Joseph"

There’s an old story about Mary that nobody really tells anymore. A text called the Golden Legend from the Middle Ages described how, when Mary was ready for marriage, a whole host of suitors ― Joseph included ― lined up before her with branches from their homes. Whoever’s branch, when laid upon the Temple altar, produced a flower would be the one she married. It was said that a young man named Agabus was so crushed by Joseph winning Mary’s hand that he snapped his branch over his knee and fled weeping into the desert. He swore never to love another woman and lived the rest of his days as a celibate monk. You can find this legend painted in churches across Italy. In Raphael’s depiction ― a copy of which still hangs in Germany ― a youthful Joseph slides a ring onto a blushing Mary’s finger as Agabus annihilates his branch in front of the wedding party. It’s all very dramatic.

It reveals something about us that we don’t tell this story anymore. We don’t usually think of Mary getting caught up in these kinds of things, of her blushing over a boy. We don’t think of her as a heartbreaker. We’re not totally wrong here. In Mary’s time marriage had little to do with love. We didn’t marry for love until the nineteenth century. The odd thing is that the medievals who told this story didn’t marry for love either. Yet they translated this story into numerous languages ― they told it far and wide. Several dioceses even held feast days for it. The point is that ― and many historians have pointed this out ― just because the ancients and medievals didn’t marry for love doesn’t mean they never fell in love. How much of their art, music, and literature is about love? 

In crafting this story about Joseph winning Mary’s hand ― even if it’s not historically true ― the medievals had grasped something profoundly true about the marriage of Mary and Joseph that we modern Catholics often forget, namely that they were in love with each other, even romantically. Even if the ancients didn’t usually marry for the purpose love, how could the Holy Family not have been a locus of real married love? Indeed, Mary and Joseph are the spiritual parents of Catholics. We should not be afraid to imagine that our parents loved each other. 

Do not mishear me. Mary and Joseph’s marriage was a continent one. The medievals held this as dearly as we do. But they also knew love and intimacy cannot be reduced to sex. Why don’t we meditate on that more often? Did Mary not find Joseph handsome? His voice soothing? His arms safe? What keeps us from imagining a Mary who can’t stop smiling when she thinks of her Joseph coming home soon? He was very much her Joseph, her beloved. And what, on the other hand, prevents Joseph from thinking he’s the luckiest guy in the world? He was certainly luckier than poor Agabus! The way her hair falls upon her shoulder, the joke she tells that he doesn’t quite get but laughs at anyway, the odd way she dips her bread in their oil. It was all uniquely her. How many times did Joseph stop at his work just to think about her? She was his Mary, his beloved. 

It was no mistake that God decided to become human within a marriage. He could have become incarnate to Mary alone, without the addition of Joseph. God could, when Joseph learned of the strange pregnancy, have let him “send her away quietly” (Mt 1:19). But God decided to enter the world in the context of married love. God wanted to be raised by two people whose hearts beat a little faster when they looked at each other, whose hearts were vowed to each other through thick and through thin. Whatever that phenomenon is ― we could call it romantic love ― God is part of it. Indeed, God decided to be born within it.  That’s worth remembering.


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2nd Sunday of Advent (and the Immaculate Conception)

Note: For the season of Advent, I've decided to focus these reflections on the Virgin Mary rather than the weekly Gospel.

On Mary's Immaculate Conception

There’s an unfortunate misconception about Mary, namely that she was a bit of a wimp. We tend to think of her as delicate, as someone who never spoke louder than a whisper. With her hands folded and head bowed, we’ve imprisoned a very fragile and lifeless Mary into our figurines and into our imaginations. Caryll Houselander was an old Catholic writer from the 1940s who talked about how, as a little girl, people encouraged her never to do something the Blessed Virgin wouldn’t do. The trouble was, she joked, “I simply could not imagine her doing anything at all.” The Mary in our minds is not very dynamic.

On account of this, the real Mary, the one who actually walked around, has become difficult for us to imagine. We forget that she was once a desperate refugee who escaped her hometown in the dead of night (Mt 2:14). We forget that Mary gave birth alongside animals (Lk 2:7). We don’t think of her as the kind of woman who, when she sings, sings about “scattering the arrogant in their conceit, throwing down the mighty from their thrones … and sending the rich away hungry” (Lk 1:51-53). Mary was no delicate little thing. When nearly everyone else fled for their lives ― even after they swore never to desert him (Mt 26:35) ― Mary remained with Jesus at the foot of the cross (Jn 19:25).

This confusion about Mary, in part, comes from a misunderstanding about her “Immaculate Conception,” which Catholics will celebrate this week. We often point out that the Immaculate Conception refers not to Jesus’ conception inside of Mary, but to Mary’s conception inside her mother. Indeed, the teaching is that, from the first moment she was conceived in her mother’s womb, Mary was “preserved free from all stain of original sin.” But there is a second way of misunderstanding the Immaculate Conception that applies to our problem. We misunderstand Mary’s sinlessness if we think it makes her totally unlike us. 

We must not think that, because Mary was sinless, she was somehow unapproachable, that she floated a few inches above the dirt. No. Mary was as gritty as her neighbors. She stoked flames and carried water. We certainly don’t think of Mary as the kind of woman with whom you’d split 2 liters of homemade wine, but that is how much the average Israelite drank each day. I don’t know about you, but I can’t drink that much! 

Mary’s holiness does not make her glide above us. It is just the opposite. It is precisely Mary’s freedom from sin that makes her most approachable, most ordinary, most one-of-us. Holiness does not lift one above normal human life, but makes one more richly engaged in the ordinary world. Indeed, to be sinless is not to be inhuman, but to be most human. More than that, her holiness made her most able to endure and engage the harshest turns life can take ― she was a refugee; she endured the public crucifixion of her son. Indeed, this is precisely what makes her able to sympathize with the harshness of your own life. You can talk to her about it. She’s been through it too. 

Mary was a woman, a real woman. She was a mother ― a real mother ― who loved her real son, not in some ethereal and untouchable way that has no meaning at all, but in the same gritty way that all mothers love their children. In my experience, there is nothing delicate about mothers. Mothers are not to be messed with. She wiped Jesus up, fed him, searched frantically for him when he snuck off (Lk 2:41-52). It’s all very ordinary; it’s just like any other mother. Indeed, what makes it extraordinary ― what makes her immaculate ― is that all this ordinariness is directed toward and oriented around the most extraordinary of children. She was willing to give the entirety of her ordinary human existence to the flourishing of her Son. For this “all generations will call her blessed” (Lk 1:48).

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