Mary for Millennials - Who is this Woman?

I was surprised the first time I was asked to talk to a young adult women's group about Mary, not in terms of theology, but prompted by the plea: I don't know anything about Mary, can you explain? At first I admit, I was surprised, but I began to see that we have come far from knowing this woman who is "our sweetness and our hope." And I was certain of one thing. The porcelain baby blue painted statue in the corner was not bringing hope to the women of the milennium.

Who is this Virgin Mother who is so often painted as soft and sweet, in flowing robes and golden locks? How does she fit into a postmodern, post-second-wave feminist, generation Y perspective? Is she in fact outmoded and archaic?

One thing is certain. We all need hope, and we as women need strong role models. Mary fits the bill. She is not a simpering blonde teenager, and actually never was. Rather, she is the mother who travelled long, rough miles on a donkey to give birth despite miserable conditions, the woman who prompted her son to action at the wedding at Cana, and the one who experienced the Holy Spirit with intimacy and even familiarity at Pentecost.

While Scripture touches on these aspects of her life, we learn more about her through Tradition. And what is a wonderful opportunity for us women are the hundreds of aspects of Mary and devotions to her that allow our own individuality to make sense. We find a kindred spirit to our own womanhood in the dark, mysterious icon at Czestochowa, the vigourous, realist portrait of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, and the simple dark haired Madonna of the Streets.

Mary, however, is not a sum of the art which portrays her. She is the model for us as "woman," as Christ refers to her throughout the Gospel of John. This title is perhaps the most telling for us all. As woman, she could see the hearts of those around her, serve in a true gift of self, say yes to the Holy Spirit, step out in real and tangible courage again and again. She was the first tabernacle, carrying Christ inside her physically, as we all do in the gift of Eucharist. She has the first place of all creatures in Heaven, above all the kings and emperors, scholars and leaders, wealthy and elite. This Woman is strong and vital, influential and inspired.

And so allow me to introduce our Millennials to the Woman of the Millennium. Give her a chance. Get to know her. Find your womanhood in her femininity, action, and strength and you will find that you are just that much more in touch with who you are created to be.

Heretics, Modesty, and Other Irritants

There seems to be a trend among a few perhaps well-meaning but decidedly wrong-minded people which borders on the heretical. You might be surprised how many of these people are religious leaders, women in habits, people of prayer and faith and- a little bit- of knowledge.

A little knowledge can be dangerous.

This trend is to count the body as something -the female body anyway- that incites temptation and arouses lust. By its nature.
The trend insists that a woman's shape should be hidden out of deference to a man's passions ...well, to keep his passions under wraps, anyway... and that her body, while good enough to bear children or kneel in prayer, is otherwise a vessel of evil.

And these people, mostly women it seems, have such a skewed understanding of the body, have bought so far into the philosophy of Puritanism, that they feel free in their leadership to toss around the word modesty as if they own it, as sole judge and jury on the subject.

The problem is modesty, a virtue of love and purity, is getting a bad rap. It is being twisted to mean covered, wrapped up, encased, denied, and rejected.
As newly (or oldly) interpreted, modesty means covering up a woman's shape. It embraces long flowing skirts which reject shape. It means doing everything possible to hide breasts, especially larger ones. And it invites people to make judgments about others because of what they are wearing!

But modesty is NOT about judging others, rejecting woman's choice of clothing or denying the good, very GOOD body God gifted us with. That is a WRONG interpretation, and borders on Manichaeism - a heresy that denounces the body.

Modesty is about "protecting the intimate center of the person" (CCC2533) AND "the forms taken by modesty vary from one culture to another" (CCC 2524). The Church says modesty of dress functions within the structure of the culture. In our culture, for example, swimming in a bathing suit is appropriate. Swimming naked at the public beach is not. But there is no stipulation of what size, shape and color the swim suit should be. So before you put on a bathing suit, ask yourself this: does this protect the intimate center of who I am? Does this fit the function appropriately?

If you are naked in the shower, for example, there is nothing immodest about that.

If you are at prayer and dressed like a hootchie mama with a thong string showing and breasts about to burst out of a halter top, what do you think? For that matter, is there ever any place that's appropriate to dress like a five dollar hooker? It doesn't protect your body and heart.

Let's be honest. As women, the center of our being is our heart, and our intellect, and our sexuality. I urge all of us not to allow these precious things to be exploited. Dress to honor these things. If you don't even know where to start, I'd love to suggest TLC's What Not to Wear. The hosts are all about the goodness of the individual body and taking joy in being wonderfully made, as the Scriptures say.

Honor your body. And honor your mind and heart. Dress well. And don't let the heretics push you around.

Sorrows and marble

My favorite chapel in the national shrine in Washington, DC has always been Our Lady of Sorrows. Other chapels are bright, gilded, and adorned with pews and kneelers, but the dark green marble and intimate size of this chapel makes it nearly tomb-like. Breaking into the somber space is a white marble pieta that touches my soul. I am drawn, every single time I visit, for countless years, to join her there.

I'm not sure why, of all the pretty and hopeful options, this chapel has always called to my heart. Perhaps it is because as a woman my heart has been broken, and breaks easily.

One might think a room of cold marble unfitting to express the passion and pain Mary felt at her Son's death. But somehow, the sorrow resonates in the veins of the stone, through my knees, and makes my pain one with hers.

Our Lady of Sorrows, you who know a mother's heart and a woman's pain, pray for us.

Sweetness and Hope

There's a rather annoying refrain of a song whirling through my grey matter at the moment, with the repetitive phrase "Mary's got my back." The sentiment is postmodern at best, clumsy at worst. Honestly the issue I have is more with the whiny nasally voice of the young woman who recorded the song than with the lyrics. Despite the Ariel the Mermaid/Hannah Montana brightness of the voice, the words are comforting. I am not alone. There is a Woman who gets this. There is a Woman who lived a human life and made it through - amazingly well.

This Woman is the object of a prayer we often recite at the end of a rosary, the Hail Holy Queen. Of late, I have been praying these words sans beads. It is a beautiful prayer unto itself.

So today when I ran to Mary (or as the Memorare suggests - flew) and threw a pile of Hail Marys at her in hope that she'd pay attention, I finally focused on the words of this prayer. Our sweetness and our hope.

Once upon a time, my mother-in-law said something to me like: you are such a sweet girl. My stomach churned. Sweet? No, I'm not. Strong? Intelligent? Creative? ok. Sweet? urgh. It seemed so "fifties," so chiffon-and-lace.

So it made me think. Is devotion to Mary a saccharine thing? Is it crystalline, pink, and quickly fading? Isn't sweetness- our sweetness, a noun, much deeper?

But our sweetness. Imagine it like a greeting. Good morning, your Sweetness. Can we get past the cotton candy image?
And then I think of the psalmist... Your words are sweet to my lips, sweeter than honey to my mouth... and in Song of Songs... his mouth is sweetness...

When we were kids, we had learned that if you were sick, you had to take medicine, and medicine always tasted nasty. Mom would reach for the bottle of yellow triaminic, and we'd run away. After a while I learned it was better not to complain of a sore throat, because the cure was so awful. On the other hand, we used to sneak St. Joseph's children's aspirin from the hall closet. My mom had no idea, (though we've told her since) and I'm not really proud of it. We weren't sick or injured. We liked the sticky-sweet orange taste of the small coral colored tablets. The drug company had figured out a way to get kids to take the dose that would heal them by adding sweetness.

The grace of having a Mother to help us heal without all the "yuck" factor helps us ask for help. I am not stuck with bitterness, with the sour outcomes in life. With Mary, I can find a taste that is pleasing to my sense of right and truth and beauty. Sweet is a gift, like honey from the bees, a way to remedy the sorrow, to be joined in suffering, and nurtured in healing.

Not only our sweetness...but our hope as well? What hope can be found? On the Feast of the Assumption this year, Pope Benedict reminded us: [Mary] gives us the hope we need: the hope that we can win, that God has won and that, with Baptism we entered into this victory.

By her life - her redeemed humanity - Mary is our hope. By her motherhood- the way we become nurtured into strength - she is our sweetness. And so we pray with full hearts to our Sweetness and our Hope - Mary...please get my back.