Sometimes I come across people urging Marian piety because “she was Christ’s mother!” with no further argument required. And it’s never been very convincing because mothers tend to be a mixed bag. It reminds me of the Delaney sisters, who voted for Ted Kennedy even though they disapproved of his politics and morals. What was more important for a politician than politics and morals? His devotion to his mother. Their own undifferentiated respect for motherhood led them to vote for an all-around scoundrel because of a supposed regard for the woman who raised him to be what he is.
Consider the mother in Edith Wharton’s Twilight Sleep. She is an avid member of both a society for mothers advocating widespread use of birth control and another society for mothers in favor of unlimited motherhood. She sees no problem with this—it’s all motherhood. There’s a great moment when, unsettled by her daughter’s waywardness, she accidentally begins reading the unlimited mothers a speech prepared for the eugenics mothers and nearly gets lynched.
And in general, mothers can be remarkably callous toward other women’s children. Addie Bundren (of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying) seems to have hated her own children about as much as she hated other women’s, but hatred was something precious to her. The norm is what stepchildren often suffer—their father’s new wife is a basically good woman, not a psychopath, but she just doesn’t have the interest in the children living in her house that didn’t come from her own body. Usually it just means that she is not quite as patient with them, doesn’t get them as nice of food when her children aren’t around, is more likely to blame them for things that go wrong, and so on. Their motherhood is strictly biological and does not extend to other children. (I’m not going to talk about what stepfathers do here, but it can be far worse.) Then there are the mothers who kill or wound their daughters’ rivals on the cheerleading squad in a twisted version of the maternal desire for the good of their children. In the end it seems like you have to say that mothers are human, and as such sometimes Lana Lee is right—“Mothers are full of s***.”
But where does that leave Marian piety?
Look at Luke 11:27-8. A woman in the crowd shouts out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and blessed the breasts that you sucked!” She is the archetypical proponent of Marian piety as given above. Jesus’s reply at first seems to be a rebuke at her focus on Mary: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” But as M.M. said at a recent Bible study, think about what he said. Mary keeps the word of God when she says “Let it be to me according to your word,” which results in her keeping the Word of God within her in the full sense of biological motherhood. Her motherhood, in fulfillment of her whole life, is entirely focused on the will of God. It is not directed towards her own glory or preference, so much so that she accepts the death of her son for the sake of other women’s children. Christ is not saying that we shouldn’t honor his mother, but that we should honor her for the right reason, a reason that will actually lead to honoring the womb whose fruit was Jesus.
And it is a fruitful honor. On the spiritual level we are given the example of complete surrender to God which we all need to strive for. On the physical level, the reality of childbearing has been changed since it brought salvation to the children of Eve, and should never again be seen as a punishment or an illness. In her fiat, the Theotokos participated in the Divine reversal of sin: In pain she brought forth a child who crushed the head of the serpent who had brought her the pain. And most importantly, Christian mothers are invited to give their own children the same freedom to do God’s will that Mary gave Christ.
The mothers in the first examples are focused on themselves, and on children only as an extension of themselves whose life and character they have a right to. The mother in Twilight Sleep is defeated when her daughter refuses to follow in her footsteps. Addie Bundren imposes her will on her children even in death in the gruesome pilgrimage she forces upon them. Their motherhood is an ugly thing.
But this is not the way it has to be, and it is not what motherhood really means. In a truly beautiful post, Mrs. Bear compares motherhood to contemplative monasticism, and it is clear that for her motherhood is like Mary’s motherhood: the contemplation of God.
