Q&A: How can we reconcile the term “Slave” of Mary with Christ’s words on The Cross: “Behold, thy son”?
Father Roger Charest, SMM
If a person’s idea of a slave is the museum piece handed down from Roman galleys, then a reconciliation between slave of Mary and son of Mary is practically impossible. We too often forget that Christianity remodeled our vocabulary. It transformed a word which once stood for extreme degradation into a title of the highest nobility. To some people slave means not only total dependence but degradation at its lowest.
When St. Paul or St. Agatha called themselves slaves of Christ, when Pope John VII and St. Pius X referred to themselves as slaves of the Mother of God, its pagan meaning of utter degradation had been pruned away. For them, slave meant belonging, total dependence.
Thus the term slave is not used in competition with the term son. It is for different reasons that we are both sons and slaves. For our spiritual birth and for our spiritual growth we depend completely at all times upon Mary. As far as spiritual life is concerned we never reach our majority. Our dependence upon her is like that of a child in its mother’s womb. The word that best expresses such complete dependence is not son but slave.
