Patronal Festival

In the Church of England we can often forget how important the Blessed Virgin Mary is in our Catholic Tradition. She has, by contrast, a much more elevated position in the Roman and Orthodox Churches. She is rightly regarded as the greatest of the saints and the first Christian. 

And it seems to me that we Anglicans struggle to get the balance right between the Protestant view of Mary, the mother of Jesus, the Roman Catholic view of her as the Blessed Virgin, and the Greek Orthodox who call her Mary, the God-bearer, the “Theotokos”. Perhaps this is because before the Reformation in England, Faith and Doctrine were the same as that of the rest of the Christian Church, and well over 2000 Churches were dedicated to Mary, including this one.

At the Reformation, all over Europe, including England, images of Mary, along with other saints, where destroyed, and the 39 Articles of Religion, setting out the Church of England, made it clear that ‘The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping and Adoration, as well of Images as of Reliques, and also invocation of Saints, is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God’. The worship of statues and so called relics had become big business and nothing really to do with true religion as seen by the Protestant Reformers, who were intent on removing such things from churches.

Even if the Church of England forbade the invocation, praying in other words, to saints, it didn’t abolish Feast Days, far from it, it retained all the principle Saints days, including the principal feasts of Mary, except the Assumption.  This slipped back in over the years, and is now a principal feast again.

Mary’s many titles both reflect her significance to Christians and our various perceptions about the impact her life and ministry have on our faith.   Part of our problem, if it is indeed a problem at all to the individual, is that with Mary fact, fiction and faith have become intertwined over the past 2000 years, and it can be difficult to separate the three.

So today we celebrate the Blessed Virgin Mary, what she means to us as a Church community that has been the centre of faith in this town for over 1000 years, and what this ordinary young girl, chosen for the most extraordinary role by God, means to us as individuals.

And that for me is the essence of Mary, an ordinary young woman who was prepared to obey the call of God. She was not a high born woman with the right connections, not part of a Royal dynasty or the ruling elite, or from a rich, influential family. In using Mary, in choosing her to be the human mother of his very own Son, to be the God-bearer, God blows away all our human expectations of who is worthy to serve God, to be chosen by God to do his will, our expectations of how God should work and how ‘things’ should be done. God turns the world upside down and makes the ordinary, extraordinary.

God in his graciousness teaches us again and again that His ways are not our ways; that he can create the extraordinary, such as the wonderful vision of astrological splendour seen this week in the skies above us, well some areas saw it, we didn’t the cloud base was too dense, but he can also work just as well through the ordinary, and in doing so His glory is shown all the more.

In our modern world, where equality is of paramount importance, and rightly so, God’s actions in choosing this young woman Mary, who was little more than a juvenile, cannot be overstated. God chose youth, at a time when youth was considered too immature to make a contribution; He chose a woman, when women were barley classed as second-class citizens; He chose a virgin, betrothed to be married, when motherhood was so important in ancient cultures, and bearing a child outside marriage was considered a grave sin; He chose an uneducated person, when uneducated people had no say in society; He chose poverty, when it was accepted that the rich controlled everything.

God took the ordinary young woman Mary, and from her obedience to Him, made something wonderful and extraordinary, that would change the world forever, and in doing so, not for the first time, God confounded the wisdom of this world.

God chose Moses, born of an ordinary family, and found in a wicker basket, to be the one to lead His people out of slavery towards the promised land.

Look at the Prophets in the Old Testament, how many were not people in authority, were poor people of little account, chosen by God to rail against the wrong doings of Israel. He took a shepherd boy, David, and made him King of Israel. He took a pathetic fisherman, and made him the rock on which he built His church. He took a tax collector, a sinner, and made him a disciple. He took Saul, a persecutor of Christians, and as Paul made him one of his most important missionaries. He took a poor peasant girl, and empowered her to become a modern saint, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta. He took a poor sinner and made him the Town Centre Chaplain. This is what God does, He took one woman and chose through her to bless all people by the birth of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.  Who could have known the revolution Jesus would bring, the redemption he brought for us all on the cross, the forgiveness he offered to everyone, and the love for us all, we will never be able to repay. The ordinary gave birth, quite literally, to the most extraordinary.

In saying that Mary was ordinary, is not to belittle her in any way at all, it’s to state the facts of her birth, position in life, her gender, just like the vast majority of people in those days, and also today, but it doesn’t describe her faith, which was clearly not the faith of a weak, subjugated female, it is the faith of a strong, courageous woman, who was prepared, for the sake of her God, to take risks in her life, to risk her personal reputation, prepared to have her most vulnerable and private moments at the birth of her son, shared with the most bizarre collection of strangers, prepared to make personal sacrifices on behalf of her son during his earthly ministry, prepared to be rebuked and almost disowned by her son, and then to stand and watch him die a terrible death in front of her. And in the Magnificat we find determination, godliness, joy, humility and obedience.  Mary is determined, it is an act of will, it is something she is choosing to do of her own accord, she puts God first in her life. This song is about God, not about Mary. She glorifies God, and rejoices in Him because He is her Saviour, because He has looked on her straightforward faith and chosen to bless her as the mother of the Messiah. ‘For the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is His name’. We can share that joy with Mary, because the Mighty One has done great things in our lives, and we should rejoice at that, even though our lives, like Mary’s is full of joy and sorrow.

Mary knows she is an ordinary young woman, chosen by God, He has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant’. And that is her gift to the world, which is extraordinary in itself.  She didn’t seek celebrity status because of what she had done for God, she didn’t try and lord it over the disciples and the followers, she was a humble servant of God and allowed her son to carry out the work His Father had sent him to do.

And she is joyful and happy that God is fulfilling His promise made to the Israelite people centuries before, to liberate them and all people, Jew and Gentile, believer and non-believer, and going to achieve all this through her. My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour’. What a truly joyful, thankful song.

We may question why God chose Mary, to be the God-bearer, when so many more important woman were around.  But we have to remember the Magnificat is very radical. It’s probably the first manifesto for ordinary people, it calls for a new world order, where Jesus set in motion a chain of events which would begin to make the world a better place, even if we don’t think so because of the sadness of the last century with its destructive wars, and today with so many areas of the world engulfed by war, conflict and famine, when so many countries and cultures still treat women as second class citizens, and even slaves. But it is our manifesto for the eventual change that will come about through the grace of God.

This new world order, heralded by the Magnificat, is counter cultural to what humans try and impose on the world, it seeks to turn the world upside down, so the meek can truly inherit the earth, the last can be first, and women can take their proper place in society, and not be treated as second class citizens. It was counter cultural 2000 years ago, and it is still so today, when we vainly cling to the old order for fear of losing our privileged place in society, when we still see so much injustice, inequality and prejudice.

When Jesus at the start of his ministry stood up in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth and told those listening that he had come to bring good news to the poor, release the captives, bring sight to the blind, and let the oppressed go free, there could be no doubt what sort of Kingdom was being heralded in.  Mary was at the start of all this, and allowed it to happen through her obedience to God.

We must not lose sight of the significance of Mary and the part she played in the incarnation through her role as God-bearer, her obedience to God, and her remarkable song, the Magnificat.  Mary was to ultimately experience her own sadness, the unique sadness of a mother when a child dies before you do.  But eventually she was to share with the disciples the overwhelming joy of Jesus’ resurrection.

Mary was not only honoured to be part of God’s great miracle in the life of Jesus, The Messiah, but was involved in the fulfilment of his life, when Our Lord showed the world that God had not been defeated by our sins, but had come to reclaim the world as his own, and give us everlasting life.

So, no matter how you view Mary, and her role in the foundation of our faith, all people can rejoice and say:

Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee.

blessed art thou amongst women,

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now

and at the hour of our death. Amen.