Q&A: With all the lavish praises heaped on Mary, it is impossible for me to identify with her. She is the Immaculate Conception, the sinless one, the Mother of God, etc. I’m a simple homemaker. She doesn’t say anything to me.
Father J. Patrick Gaffney, SMM
JB from Toronto, Ontario
Too Many Titles?
Your question doesn’t concern Mary directly. Rather, your communication indicates confusion about the meaning of holiness.
You’re equating sanctity with distance, coldness. Many believe that if a person is holy, they are withdrawn, judgmental ascetics with long somber faces. Worse still, they are thought to be floating above the ordinary trials and temptations of this valley of tears with hardly a clue about the realities of life.
They’re just plain “out of it.” The description is more of a sinner than a saint!
Holiness – loving union with our God – perfects us in what we are. We are human. Therefore, there is no one more human – in the best sense of the term – than a saint. To be human surely means to be sensitive, vulnerable, approachable, loving, simple, yearning to be loved, trusting, honest, serving, in harmony with Infinite Love. Jesus summarizes it by using the expression; like a little child. Now if Mary is so holy, that means that she is so loving, so understanding, so approachable, so simple, so yearning to be loved, so willing to serve, so beautifully in harmony with herself, with creation, with others, because she is staunchly in harmony with Love itself.
Precisely because Mary is the Immaculate Conception, the Mother of God, she is so human, so tender, so close. Divinization – holiness – means that God actually shares Life with us. God’s Life is Love. Mary distant, cold? Then she would not be holy. And the faith-filled Mother of God is definitely holy.
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