Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 42, No.

2, Summer 2003 (䉷 2003)

A Meditation on Mary,
Mother of God
CHLOE BREYER

ABSTRACT: Christians tend to think of themselves as the recipients of God’s nurturing. Mary
helps us to remember that we are all potential nurturers—even of God.

KEY WORDS: Virgin Mary; Advent; motherhood.

And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with
God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will
name him Jesus.” (Luke 1:30,31)

Greetings, on this Fourth Sunday in Advent. This is my first Sunday back

from a wonderful three months of maternity leave. It is always good to have
the opportunity to jump in on the deep end, but I’m particularly glad my re-
entry falls on the traditional day for honoring Mary, the mother of Jesus. I
confess to a new interest in Mary—a heightened sense of intrigue about her
and her role in God’s unfolding plan for the world.
The dazzling and glorious titles Mary, Mother of Jesus, has received over
the course of the 2,000 years we’ve known her read in bright lights: “Queen of
the Angels,” “Virgin of Virgins,” “Gate of Heaven,” “Star of the Seas” . . . “Me-
diatrix of all Graces.” The Blessed Virgin Mary, known in some circles as the
“BVM,” was honored early on by Clement of Alexandria as “perpetual virgin.”
Later her fans at the Council of Ephesus celebrated her as “Theotokos” or
God-bearer. Come the Reformation, Luther knocked her off her too-glorious
throne and placed her on another pedestal where she could be honored as
humble maid—still presumably with a capital “H” and capital “M”. Depicted
in art and theology as the “anti-dote to Eve”—mostly by male artists and
male theologians—the Virgin Mary has been heralded, worshipped, and psy-
chologized. Human hearts have poured themselves out to her. All this in a
brief period of two millennia.

The Rev. Chloe Breyer is an Episcopal priest at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New
York City. She is the author of The Close: A Young Woman’s First year at Seminary (New York:
Basic Books, 2001). This original meditation on Mary was delivered at the Cathedral on Decem-
ber 22, 2002.

139 䉷 2003 Blanton-Peale Institute

140 Journal of Religion and Health

Her illustriousness should come as no surprise to us. After all, like all good
mothers, she does so much for us.

“Hail Mary full of Grace,

Blessed are you among women,
Blessed the fruit of your womb, Jesus . . .
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death,” we say.

Intercede for us, O mother of God. For the more Catholic of us, she is
viewed as having special influence with God. Located up there between the
saints and Christ himself in the chain of ascendance toward God, if anyone
can put in a good word for us, it is Mary.
Over the ages, Mary has also been a special inspiration to the downtrod-
den, oppressed, and discriminated against. She offers an example of the cre-
ative power of women and is a hope to all those living at the margins of
society. (Who can forget Sojourner Truth’s response to a group of male clerics
who reprimanded her for speaking in public. I paraphrase: “Where does your
Christ come from? Where is he from? He came from God and a woman. Man
ain’t had nothing to do with it.”)
And finally, and most importantly for this fourth Sunday of Advent, Mary
is a model for us all—a model of motherhood and a model of discipleship in
her own right.
Of all the Gospel writers, Luke, in his story of the Annunciation, is perhaps
the greatest proponent of Mary as model disciple. When Mary, a young Jew-
ish girl, encounters the Archangel Gabriel, Luke’s divine messenger hails her
with the words “Most favored one” Like Hannah and Sarah, recipients of
similar Old Testament birth announcements, this young teenager receives
the angel’s news that she will bear a special child—in this instance, God’s
own son—as a sign of God’s grace upon her. Mary, responds to this startling
revelation as every one of us would hope to respond upon hearing God’s call:
“Be it done unto me according to thy word.” She then goes on to rejoice in the
blessing that has come upon her—offering back to God the glory she has
received. “My soul doth magnify the Lord,” she sings a little while later, “and
my spirit hath rejoiced in God my savior. For he hath regarded the lowliness
of his handmaiden, for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me
blessed.”
In Luke, Mary keeps on showing up—another sign of a good disciple. After
the annunciation and nativity, she appears again as the distraught but reflec-
tive mother of an impossible teen-ager who has run off to teach in the temple,
where he is “going about his father’s business.” She is later shunned by
Jesus. Summoned by his family, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he
asks a crowd he is teaching. But Mary continues to believe in her son, even
though, as in this instance, he doesn’t always appear to return the favor. And
Chloe Breyer 141

there she is standing at the foot of the cross when his other followers have
run for the hills. What more poignant image than that of Mary holding her
crucified child? And what more powerful testament of faith than her presence
with the other disciples in the upper Room (Acts 1:14) as the Holy Spirit
descends in tongues of flame giving birth to the church. Yes, we as people of
“faith” have a lot to learn from Mary who is perhaps the preeminent example
of that word.
Though Mary is the only one to have given birth to Jesus—God at God’s
most vulnerable—she is accessible to all of us. She is available to us because
she said yes to God when God called her—something all of us can do—and
because she is the mother of God.
Accessible to all because she is the mother of God? Now, here’s the trick. If
we are invited to imitate Mary’s faith why not her motherhood as well? What
would happen if, as my favorite mystic, Meister Echardt claims, we really are
ALL mothers of God? What would happen if instead of envisioning ourselves
as children of God, we imagined ourselves in this fleeting Advent and Mary-
moment, as the mothers of God instead? Or, to use more inclusive language—
it is important here to make the men feel included—as God’s Primary Care
takers? How might our relationship with God and other people change were
we to envision ourselves in this brief time in the liturgical calendar less as
God’s dependents and more as God’s care givers?
Well, for one thing, as God’s primary caretakers we’d spend a lot more time
thinking about God.

“Where is God? Is God all right?

I just checked in five minutes ago, but do you think God is still ok?
God doesn’t seem to be moving much—how do I know that God is not dead?
I’m really concerned that I haven’t been giving God enough attention lately. Do
you think he/she will resent me later in life?”

No more turning our eyes heavenward at Christmas and Easter only, or

when we’re in a tight spot. Speaking as a new mother myself, I’ve discovered
it IS true that there is a certain portion of the brain dedicated to the aware-
ness of one’s dependent, morning, noon, and night, no matter what the other
functions might be required of it. Talk about praying constantly . . .
If we envisioned ourselves as God’s primary caretakers, we might be less
quick to blame God when we find ourselves or our communities in a mess,
less quick also to assume that our good fortune is necessarily a sign of our in
status with the Exalted One. When tragedy strikes—a loved-one is lost too
soon or untimely death cuts down the innocent—those of us who are religious
often rail against God. How could God do this to us? we ask, as if our faith
vaccinated us against all harm or wrong. Conversely, when we experience a
lucky career break or win a contest, we are quick to ascribe these events to
our favored status with the divine. But does God actually dole out good and
142 Journal of Religion and Health

bad fortune based on merits and demerits? Is fate calibrated in this way?
When an infant shrieks until four AM and causes great grief and disturbance
we do not usually blame the child for the trouble she is causing us. Rather we
say that she is going through a stage. A baby’s screaming is normally part of
her (and our) growth and development.
Without impugning the power of God who “alone stretches out heaven and
spreads out the earth,” if we imagine ourselves as God’s primary care-givers
we are less likely to take our fortunes, good or bad, as signs of God’s favor or
displeasure. The Prophet Isaiah’s radical message was that the Israelites
should still worship Yahweh even though they had been defeated in battle,
cast out from their homes and land. They were called, as we are, to worship
God in good times and in bad and for no other reason than that God is God.
Imagining ourselves as God’s nurturers helps us avoid the pitfall of a theol-
ogy that would place our fate in the hands of a great-puppet master in the
sky.
And finally, If we were God’s primary caretakers, we would be much better
stewards of the world in which we know God “lives and moves and has his
being,” in all places at all times.
The divine presence being what it is, there would be no guarantee of God
residing exclusively in a white family with means, say, in a country in the
northern hemisphere where the water for mixing the baby’s formula is clean;
where cars and trucks rather than gunfire keep the baby up at night, where
her hunger can always be satisfied and her thirst quenched. Since God dwells
in the whole world rather than one small part of it, we would want to make
certain that life’s basic necessities were available in more parts of our world
than they are now.
As God’s primary caretakers we would have a vital and personal rather
than an abstract commitment to making the whole world a safer and more
humane place. As God’s care-givers, we would have more at stake in ensuring
clean water, fresh air, food, housing, and peace between countries and fami-
lies. We would be less quick to say that war is inevitable and instead would
put more effort into preventing war. As nurturers of God, we would be less
willing to “balance” the health of our planet and atmosphere with our so-
called “rights” to consume whatever we want, whenever we like.
“What are you doing?” a man asked a group of nuns kneeling in the shell-
scarred wreckage of a French city during World War Two. His question was
full of bitter irony, the story goes, standing as he was in such a God-forsaken
time and place.
“Praying” replied one of the nuns. “We are praying that God will be com-
forted.”
On this final Sunday in Advent, as we await the coming of The Divine
Presence in vulnerability this Christmastide, let us pray that we all will be
Comforters of God.