As I have started to walk the path of Christianity I am learning a lot of the differences between the Christian variations in the world. I have also learned how the different sects of Christianity deal with each other and see each other. I was raised Catholic. Growing up, I never quite understood the role of the Blessed Virgin. Recently I have spent time with some other Christians who saw Mary's role in the Catholic Church as pure idolatry. I could understand and respect that position. However, the judgment and anger behind the position left me with more questions about how we as Christians should respond to these issues.
I took my questions to our church administrator. She has been such an amazing blessing in my life on this journey. She is a Catholic, but above all she believes in the Bible, the teachings of Jesus, and God's love and grace. I will never be able to thank her enough for the love, grace, and peace she has brought into my life. I admire her strength, wisdom, and faith more than I can express. She and I sat down a couple of weeks ago and spoke about the role of the Blessed Virgin in the church. She basically left me with the wisdom that it isn't that she worships the Blessed Virgin, but that she asks for help from one mother's heart to another.
I'm going to be 100% honest here and say that I really had NO idea what she meant. I understood the words, but not the magnitude..... until today.
I went to my friend's church this morning for a daily mass. I really felt the need to go to a mass today for Jimmy, and decided to try her church. My friend met me there and held my hand throughout, giving me strength. In the chapel behind the alter, there were big windows that overlooked a small garden with a statue of Mary and Jesus. It was a hot day; the sun was shining brightly through the clear windows. The lush greenery and brightly colored pink and purple flowers seemed to be rising around, protecting, a white stone statue of the Blessed Virgin holding her young son, Jesus, in her arms.
It was there, looking at this statue that I finally understood!! And I realized sitting there in that chapel, that I don't know the true pain of loss, and God willing, I never will. But, the Blessed Virgin did, and my mother does, and most mothers probably have some sort of a clue about what real pain is.
The Lord blesses us with children to raise. They are not our children, they are God's children. He entrusts us with the responsibility to raise them, just as he entrusted Mary over 2000 years ago. Mary raised Jesus the best she could, which is all any mother today can do. Jesus chose to follow his father, to love those around him, and to spread his father's love throughout the world, just as most parents would want their child to do today (just as Jimmy did). Jesus went to the cross freely, he knew that the Lord had a plan for him, and he wanted to fulfill the plan. Jimmy's great line was always "the Lord has a plan for me, it isn't my job to know the plan, and it is just my job to live the plan".
Jesus took the sin of the world upon himself and he suffered with our sins as he hung on the cross. And as he suffered, his mother watched. The mother who nursed him, who watched him grow, who loved and protected him, watched as he hung on the cross. She watched as he took up the crosses of the world, and suffered all the way to his death. I can't begin to imagine the pain that this must have caused Mary. To stand back and watch the son she loved suffer without being about to do anything to take away his pain must have been unbearable for her.
Mary really does have a mother's heart. She knows a mother's pain and suffering. I know that The Lord's has freely blessed me with his love and grace. I know that Jesus Christ sacrificed his life to save mine, and to give me the gift of the new covenant. I also know that a mother who asks for the Lord's help through the strength of the Blessed Virgin will still be blessed with love, grace, and renewed life through the new covenant.
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