Saturday in the Nineteeth Week after Pentecost | By Kayleigh Stewart
Of all the Gospel passages to be asked to preach at the convent of St. Mary, this is one of the most intimidating I can think of. When Sister Egeria sent me the lessons for today, I very nearly sent an email back with a fabricated excuse for why I simply could not preach this particular day anymore.
But, the deeper I looked into this pair of verses, the more grateful I was that I did not take this course of action. While it looks at first that Jesus is dissing his—and our!— beloved Mom, this turns out not to be the case at all.
The woman who yells out to Jesus is talking about Mary only terms of her body and how it served God. This is not necessarily a bad thing on its own. A woman’s body goes through so much to have a baby and to give it life. It’s an enormous sacrifice and an act of pure love. My first thought reading this passage was of a print that my priest had in her child’s nursery above the rocking chair: an image of Mary nursing Jesus, with the words “This is My Body, Given for You.” The idea of Mary nursing baby Jesus from her own body is very important to me.
But in Jesus’s day, a woman was viewed primarily in terms of motherhood, and especially whether they could have sons. They were limited to their roles as wives and child bearers, unable to reach independent status without a man.
Jesus is unwilling to let Our Lady be reduced to the biological functions her body performed. He highlights instead her hearing and obeying of the Word—the fact that she heard Gabriel’s words in the Annunciation and agreed to this earthshaking, risky task of carrying her Savior as a baby, at a time when maternal healthcare outcomes are even worse than they are now and in a situation where she would face much judgement and shame. Mary gave an unconditional yes to God’s promise and thus became the handmaid of the Lord, allowing Christ to become human and walk among us.
St. Augustine wrote of this passage: “Therefore Mary is blessed because she heard the word of God and kept it. Her mind was filled more fully with the Truth, than her womb by his flesh: Christ the truth is in Mary’s mind, Christ made flesh is in her womb. Greater is that which is in her mind than that which she carried in her womb.”
Jesus’s words focus Mary’s blessedness on her obedience of faith. In doing so, he reminds the well-meaning woman who shouted from the crowd, and all of us, that women are all called to be faithful disciples of God, regardless of whether or not we have children. We are fulfilled by obeying god’s call to us, whether that be through motherhood, the consecrated life, priesthood, farmer—there are so many vocations God calls us into.
Jesus’s call transcends societal boundaries. The letter to the Galatians reminds us too that in Christ, there is no longer male or female. Our Lord does not limit vocation by gender, sexuality, ability, language, or any other barrier that humans have invented. Our call is unbound by societal restrictions.
The beauty of this passage is not just that Mary is blessed, but that we all have the opportunity to be so blessed. Christ the Truth is in our minds too. In Christ we have freedom. We need only to hear his word and obey.
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