MARY speaks for all those who have been lowly, on the
outside, at the bottom, colonized, suppressed, and totally outside of the halls
of the princes and power wielders. If she has been favored and blessed, if she
is a sign of the ultimate and greatest power, then the lowly who follow her can
believe themselves favored and backed up by the universe. They may make their
demands and unite against the princes who oppress them. If the hidden is real,
if it is true that spiritual power is greater than the power of guns and bombs,
then the lowly and the oppressed have hope. If the Almighty sides with justice,
hopes can be fulfilled and all can win equality.
It is no accident that almost always the cult of Mary has
been a cult of the people. Everywhere "folk Catholicism" has maintained
a devotion to Mary in the face of opposition and disparagement from
theologians and leaders of church and state. True the major central doctrines
of Christianity were frequently obscured by crude superstitions and by
importation of pagan myths and rites into the cult of Mary. But as at the
beginning of the devotion of Mary and in the first developments of understanding
of her, perhaps it has been something more subtle which has fired this
devotion. Perhaps it has been the realization in Marian cultic practice of the
importance of the lowly and humble and outcast and oppressed who will triumph
in the end. If Mary, the young unmarried pregnant girl, can believe in the
incredible happening that she is a part of, if she can trust herself and
believe in her role in the great story, then the most ordinary people can
believe in their parts in the drama. Her exaltation is their exaltation. She
carries the banner for all those powerless ones whom the princes have ignored
as they go to and fro on the earth making policy, making war, making fortunes,
and bringing destruction everywhere. Mary is the champion for all the obscure,
peaceful ones who live in the corners of the world, who work, who help each
other, who bear children and hope to see them live and prosper—those who do
not aspire to the thrones and the vanities of princes.
The poor may have seen a defender of their cause in the
woman and mother. She is beloved in an infinite variety of feminine forms, from
young virgin to older mother. By exalting Mary as queen of mercy, queen of
peace, a mother most gracious, a mother most wise, in all of the traditional
devotions, there has been a hope that the feminine qualities which have been
demeaned for so long in our society could have their day and could be
influential in ordinary life. The high, cool exercise of power and judgment was
never seen as part of Mary's role. She never rejected the poor and the lowly or
those who tried and met failure time after time. While Christ's mercy and tenderness
and feminine qualities were often obscured by the male princes and powers who
fought in his name and killed in his honor and taxed for his representatives,
still Mary as mother could guard that aspect of the Christian message which her
son's followers hid so successfully.
Sidney Callahan
The Magnificat
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