Mary, the Beautiful Lady.



It was St Bernadette who first protested against the images of Mary.  On being shown the statue at Lourdes she cried.  "But Mary is nothing like that, she is alive she moves"    I knew what she meant when I visited Lourdes and saw a grim faced Mary being carried in procession.  As she was carried in the torn light  procession she swayed from side to side and she looked like a person scared stiff of being dropped to the ground.    There seems to be a fear of making Mary look like an ordinary woman with a smile on her face.  Is it some kind of sin I wonder to make her look like a young girl happy with a baby like any other young girl.     Are we afraid to make her look 'ordinary'.    Are we afraid she might have laughed and giggled with the other girls in Nazareth instead of remaining in her room in prayer?   Now let us settle one point, Mary did not know she was going to be the Mother of Jesus.    She therefore had no reason not to mix with the people of Nazareth    She was an ordinary girl growing up to want the things that other girls wanted.    The thought of that shocks some people and I will be no doubt criticised for daring to say Mary was ordinary.    Yet that is the wonder of Mary.   Yes, she was just a woman, but one whom God would bless in a wonderful way and all generations would call her blessed.   If we lose sight of the fat she was just an ordinary woman how can we believe she can help us and accept her as a Mother.

The painting above I really love.   We know how a baby needs to see his or her mother's face and if that face is happy the child finds peace.   If the face is worried than the baby becomes anxious.   IN some paintings of the Nativity I have seen I an sure if the face of Mary was as depicted then Jesus would have grow up with deep psychological problems.  

No the above is the true Mary who loved and enjoyed her baby Jesus as other mothers love and enjoy their babies.    She is human and we can relate to her.     Too many paintings try to make her 'high and mighty' .   But it was the humble that God exalted..   Bernadette remember met 'a beautiful lady'   The young lady above is certainly more like the lady Bernadette met that the statue at Lourdes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Translation of Luke 1: 28 in the Latin Vulgate by St Jerome.

.......et ingressus angelus ad eam dixit have gratia plena Dominus tecum benedicta tu in mulieribus..... If indeed we are to have a Year of the Bible and indeed praise St Jerome, as indeed he deserves to be praised, for translating the texts approved by the Church into Latin, the language of the Mass, then surely we should check what the Latin says according to St Jerome before we rush into translating into other languages.    In this case translating  from the Gospel of Luke, St Jerome wrote the above, which translates  "..and entering the angel said to her 'Hail full of grace the Lord is with you and blessed are you among women".   Now you do not have to be a scholar to realise that this means much more than 'highly favoured'.   So why I ask myself does the translation we read in our Catholic Church at the gospel read 'highly favoured' rather than 'full of grace'  Why is this important?   Because if she was born 'full of grace' t
Read more

FAIR AS THE MOON, BRIGHT AS THE SUN, TERRIBLE AS AN ARMY SET IN BATTLE ARRAY

'Who is she that comes forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in battle array'. The above quote will be familiar to only a few Catholics today,   It was once on the lips of members of the Legion of Mary which was present in many parishes.    Fair as the moon and bright as the sun certainly describes Our Lady of Fatima but who exactly is meant by 'terrible as an army set in battle array?'   Certainly Our Lady appeared to ask us to pray for the conversion of sinners many of who were going to Hell for their sins as forewarned by her Son Jesus when he preachedHis Gospel.  Often we are trying and feel we are succeeding in living good lives when suddenly everything goes wrong  Like St Paul we often do the things we do not want to do rather than those that we want to do.   It is because we are involved in a war between Good and Evil and we are the children of Mary that the red Dragon wishes to devour in Revelations 12    We
Read more

The meaning of 'virgo Immaculata'

Image
As you will see from the stained glass window the name given to the image is Virgo Immaculata.   Mary was the virgin who remained sinless and spotless.  Yes she would have been tempted by Satan, but as the image shows she kept close to God in prayer and all the wiles of Satan, the forbidden fruit he offered, depictdd by the apple, ended up stuck in his throat while the right foot of Mary crushed his head. "I will put enmity between Thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed", God tole the serpent in Genesis   Satan was no match for Jesus who was God made Man but he had overcome a mere mortal before in Eve, What a triumph it would have been to destroy she whom Jesus loved above al others - his mother.   But Mary kept close to Jesus and to God, the new Eve, and mother of the new children that the death of Jesus brought into being.    And as Revelations 12 tells us having failed to destroy the birth of Jesus Satan  went after her other children - us.       When
Read more