(By Daniel C. Peterson latterdaysaintmag.com 12-21-23)
My first missionary companion in Switzerland, who unfortunately passed away (much too young) a few years ago, was a still relatively recent convert from Judaism, and he brought a great deal of his cultural and religious background with him. (He even sometimes wore a prayer shawl for companion study.) Once, we tracted out a Catholic emigrant family from eastern Europe—from Hungary, as I recall. Their apartment was very noticeably decorated with numerous religious images, especially both statues and paintings of the Virgin Mary, and they were strikingly, and vocally, devoted to the Mother of Jesus.
That devotion somewhat offended my companion, and the conversation didn’t go well. He actually made several comments that they took as critical of Mary and dismissive of their veneration of her. (I couldn’t help much. At that point, I had been out only about a month, and my German was still a work in progress.) Now it was their turn to be offended. So, unsurprisingly, we soon found ourselves back out on their porch and headed for the street. “They practically worship her!” my companion said to me, seeking to explain what had happened.
I’ve thought about that experience many times over the years. It’s certainly true that, from a Latter-day Saint point of view no less than from a Jewish one, certain important segments of Christendom have elevated Mary to a centrality in their worship that seems exaggerated and that can sometimes even seem to go beyond monotheism. Further, it seems difficult to account for, especially based on the relatively sparse mention of her in the New Testament. Once, a few years ago, I found myself in a small chapel in the far south of France when the question suddenly occurred to me, “If I were an extraterrestrial visitor who had suddenly been dropped into this church without any knowledge of Christianity or Christian history, what would I make of it?” Surrounded by statues and paintings of the Virgin Mary and, sometimes, of the Madonna and Child, I would, I think, most naturally have concluded that the chapel was devoted to the worship of a beautiful young woman who, at some point, had borne—or at least somehow acquired—a baby.
But overreacting to an exaggeration can itself lead to unhelpful mistakes, in doctrinal understanding as in other areas. Discomfort with overdone teachings of “salvation by grace alone,” for example, can lead to the erroneous idea that, instead, we earn our way into heaven on the basis of our own unaided works or merits—a false notion that devalues Christ’s atonement. Likewise, an exaggerated rejection of “Marian devotion” can easily lead us to undervalue the central importance of Mary to the Restored Gospel.
Consider this obvious but perhaps sometimes neglected truth:
Among all of the women who have ever lived or who ever will live on Planet Earth, only one—the humble first-century peasant girl Mary of Nazareth—was selected to bear the Son of God and to raise him to maturity. Although neither an apostle nor a prophet, neither a sage nor a great leader of men, she surely ranks among the very foremost of those who have assisted in the process of human salvation.
Consider this, too: For every other role in the Gospel history of humankind, a back-up plan might have been possible. However, there was, by definition, only one “Only Begotten Son of God,” only a single “Firstborn of the Father.” Mary’s unique assigned task, shared only with her husband Joseph (of whom more later), was to raise the mortal Son of God in such a way as to prepare him “to walk upon his footstool and be like man, almost, in his exalted station, and die, or all was lost.” “There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin. He only could unlock the gate of heav’n and let us in.” There was no room for failure. Is it even possible that they could have failed? Perhaps not. We cannot know. But it seems odd and counterintuitive to suggest that their years spent raising Jesus were irrelevant, that any home at all—any parents at all—would have sufficed. And if Mary and Joseph had failed in their stewardship, what would have become of us?
Moreover, the role that Mary would play was prophesied many centuries before her birth: “Behold,” wrote the Israelite prophet Isaiah in the eighth century BC, in words that have now been applied to her by roughly eighty generations of Christians, “a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). “I beheld a virgin,” reported the ancient Book of Mormon prophet Nephi of a vision that was given to him nearly six centuries before the birth of Christ, “and she was exceedingly fair and white . . . most beautiful and fair above all other virgins.” And who was this beautiful young woman? “Behold,” Nephi’s angelic guide told him, “the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh” (1 Nephi 11:18). As Mosiah 3:8 and Alma 7:10 demonstrate, even her specific personal name was known to Nephite prophets of the second and first centuries before Christ.
She is rightly acclaimed, in heaven and on earth. “Hail, thou that art highly favoured,” the angel Gabriel said to her, “the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women” (Luke 1:28). “Blessed art thou among women,” said her cousin Elizabeth, addressing her, “and blessed is the fruit of thy womb” (Luke 1:42). “Behold,” said Mary herself, as she began to understand the significance of her assignment, “from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed” (Luke 1:48). Her purity and her humble submission to the will of the Lord are memorialized in the account of her calling that is given in the first chapter of the gospel of Luke; they have been celebrated in art, in song, and in innumerable prayers and acts of worship over many centuries, in scores of languages, on every inhabited continent. (A personal favorite of mine is Franz Biebl’s glorious setting of “Ave Maria,” as performed by the male vocal ensemble Chanticleer. I have provided the Latin original text, an English translation, and a link to the video of a good performance here:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2023/12/the-angel-of-the-lord-appeared-unto-mary.html.)
And yet, too, almost from the beginning and despite her exalted calling, it was prophesied that Mary would suffer the sharp pain of grief. For this reason, in western Christendom, she has often been known as “Mater Dolorosa” or “Our Lady of Sorrows.” When she and her husband, Joseph, took their newborn infant son to present him at the temple in compliance with the law of Moses, they were greeted there by Anna, a “prophetess,” and by Simeon, who also spoke to them by the power of the Holy Ghost. (See Luke 2:22-39.) In particular, Simeon spoke to Mary of the tumult and controversy that the brief earthly ministry of her son would provoke among the people. “Behold,” he said to her, “this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against.” But, he warned Mary rather ominously, “a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also.” (See Luke 2:34-35.)
And, indeed, Mary was obliged to witness the brutal and wholly undeserved death of her beloved son, something that no mother wishes to see. Born to a background of angelic announcements and heavenly music, he died the agonizingly cruel public death of a convicted criminal, amid mockery and jeers. And, whereas most of the Twelve were nowhere to be found at that scene, she was there:
“Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.” (John 19:25-27)
The love and respect that were publicly and specifically shown by Jesus to Mary at this moment of his own supreme pain and during the process of the all-important and eternally essential atonement are deeply significant. In Gethsemane and at Golgotha, he “suffered these things for all . . . which suffering,” he told Joseph Smith in 1829, “caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit.” And yet, even in his supreme agony, even while working out the universal atonement for all of humankind, the Second Person of the Godhead thought particularly of Mary.
Surely that fact alone should suffice to warn us against minimizing her worth or her role. Yes, of course, the focus of our Christmas celebrations as believing Christians is and should be on Jesus. But surely it is also appropriate, amidst our gifts and festivities, to spare a moment to reflect upon the life and the mission of his devoted mother.
We possess relatively little solid information about the life of Mary, whether from the period before Gabriel’s announcement of the holy birth or afterward. We know even less about her spouse, Joseph, who seems to have disappeared from the scene even before the opening of Christ’s adult ministry. But that humble and obedient man, too, deserves our consideration and our gratitude. He should not be overlooked. His assigned path was not an easy one; among other things, it involved periods of humiliation, social ostracism, and enforced foreign exile.
The role of rearing the incarnate Son of God to maturity was obviously unique in all of human history. And yet the lives of Mary and Joseph also offer instructive and enormously important commonalities with ordinary human experience. These, too, must not be missed. Mary and Joseph’s parenting of Jesus was accompanied by angelic appearances and celestial choirs, but it also involved the thousands of sacrifices and exertions that caring parenthood always does. Nothing necessarily heroic or epic, simply the routine tasks of earning a living, caring for a baby and then a toddler and then a growing boy. Of seeing to his emergence as a kind, respectful, morally earnest young man. Teaching him language and proper behavior. A myriad of evening prayers and nighttime lullabies, of treating scratched knees and teaching, always teaching.
Each year, millions of parents are entrusted with raising children of God here on the earth. On one level, such a task seems (and is) one of the most ordinary things in the world. It is the circle of life, as the saying goes. And yet, on the other hand, it is the most significant thing that we do or that we can do.
At Christmas, as at all times of the year, disciples of Jesus should commit themselves to providing homes for their children and grandchildren and the other children around them that come as close as they possibly can to the home provided by Mary and Joseph for the baby Jesus. Homes worthy of Jesus will surely be blessed by him, now and forever.
https://latterdaysaintmag.com/marys-unique-role-in-our-salvation/
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