The Enduring Mystery of Mary
Over the centuries Mother Mary has played a leading role in religious devotion. But why?
By Susan McClelland

Reader's Digest
May 2006



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The year was 626 AD. Byzantine emperor Heracluis and his troops had left the capital, Constantinople, to fight the Persians in Asia Minor. The Avars, nomads from the Volga River area, took advantage of Heracluis's absence and attacked.

But the Avars didn't defeat the capital. By some accounts, military maneuvers by Heracluis abroad forced the Avars to retreat. Others point to a more mystical intervention involving Mary, Jesus' mother. In this version of history, a top-ranking Byzantine church official circled Constantinople hoisting a painting of Mary. When he dipped a gown she purportedly had worn into the sea, a storm arose and engulfed the enemy's ships.

Mary was credited with saving Constantinople on other occasions, too. Churches were built in her honour. Marian icons, including figurines and paintings, were circulated widely. And while Byzantium may have been the first civilization to view Mary as the heavenly figure who would protect them, it certainly wasn't the last. Russia, Poland, Italy and Mexico followed. Since the fifth century, in fact, Mary has been a figure of great power and devotion around the world. "She has even been a patroness of war, and opposing armies fought each other under separate banners of Our Lady," says Jessy Pagliaroli of the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto.

Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown might have made Mary Magdalene the most talked-about woman in the Bible in recent years, but Mary, Christ's mum, has been the most exalted woman in Christianity for 2,000 years. Says Beverley Roberts Gaventa, author of Mary, Glimpses of the Mother of Jesus, "If you think of the most famous women in history, no one comes close to having the stature of Mary."

Indeed, despite the fact she's mentioned in the Bible only a handful of times-and usually in passing-Mary is the subject of some of humankind's greatest pieces of art, literature and music, including Franz Schubert's Ave Maria. Millions flock to Marian shrines dotting the world from Japan to Venezuela. Leading up to the year 2000, major publishing houses flaunted books about Mary, while top newsmagazines and major newspapers featured articles about the Virgin. She was one of the causes of the split of the Catholic church that led to the creation of Protestantism back in the 16th century, and even figures in the Muslim faith. "There is a verse in the Qur'an that ranks Mary among the most honoured of women," says Jane McAuliffe, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and a senior fellow at the Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding. "Mary (or Maryam) is right up there with Mohammed's wife Khadija and his daughter Fatima. In many places in the Muslim world, Mary is venerated and also revered."

So just who was this Mary who has fascinated humankind since she walked Earth with her son Jesus 2,000 years ago? How did she become the most exalted woman in history, and how has her mystery managed to
endure?

Here's what little is written of Mary's life. The Protoevangelium of James, a second-century apocryphal text, opens, In the "Histories of the Twelve Tribes of Israel," Joachim was a very rich man.... He and his wife, Anna, are elderly and childless. Joachim, a descendent of the House of David, is ridiculed by his peers for his lack of offspring. While away on a 40-day fast, an angel visits Anna and tells her, You shall conceive and bear, and your offspring shall be spoken of in all the whole world.

When Mary is born, she's treated differently from any other child. Anna makes a sanctuary for the baby in her bedchamber. On the girl's first birthday, Joachim hosts a feast and invites the highest priests in Israel to attend. The priests bless Mary and say she will be "renowned for ever among all generations."
Prior to the Protoevangelium, there was very little written about this Jewish girl. Historical information, including the New Testament Gospels, is vague or contradictory. It's uncertain, for instance, where Mary was born. Some place her in Nazareth, others in Jerusalem. After her son's crucifixion, it's unknown whether she remained in Roman-occupied Palestine or headed north to Ephesus, Asia Minor (now Turkey). "The Gospels are concerned with telling us about Jesus," says Gaventa. "When it came to Mary, they gave us more questions than answers."

The Protoevangelium is a departure from previous texts in that the focus is Mary, not Jesus-and Mary's virginity. "Luke mentions it, but the gospels generally had no interest in this subject," says Gaventa. "In the Protoevangelium, though, we now meet a Mary who is identified in terms of super purity. James takes on the Hebrew scripture story of the barren woman and multiplies it exponentially. Instead of the older woman who can't conceive, Mary becomes this woman too young to conceive."

At age three, Mary is taken to the Jerusalem temple where she begins a life in the service of God. The girl is expected to remain a virgin her entire life. When puberty hits, though, she's no longer allowed to stay in the temple and through a divine sign, a reluctant Joseph, a widower with adult sons, is chosen to take Mary as his wife. But according to the Protoevangelium, Joseph refuses, saying, "I have sons and am old, but she is a girl. I fear lest I should become a laughing-stock to the sons of Israel."

But Joseph can't decline; there's the will of God to contend with. So Mary goes to live with the middle-aged housebuilder. It's when Joseph is away at work that the angel Gabriel makes his famous visit to Mary, telling her, "the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women." Known as the Annunciation, Gabriel tells Mary that she has been chosen above all women to give birth to the Son of God. Mary, agrees. The Protoevangelium says she is 16 when she gives birth to Jesus in a cave, and the text ends when she hides him from Herod in a manger.

After the Protoevangelium, Mary disappears again. The Eastern Orthodox Church established a feast for Mary sometime in the beginning of the fifth century. But in 431, a growing debate about Jesus brought Mary to the forefront of religious conversation. The dispute was whether Jesus was born both the Son of God and a man, or did the word of God come to rest in Jesus after his birth.

The Third Ecumenical Council in Ephesus settled the issue by giving Mary the behemoth title of "Theotokos," or Mother of God. Theotokos meant that Mary gave birth to God in human form. "This proved that Jesus was both divine and human," says U. of T.'s Pagliaroli. "It made Mary a celebrity."

A few years after Ephesus, the first church to be dedicated to Mary in Rome was built. Then, a Marian shrine appeared in a sanctuary near Constantinople. The sanctuary also housed the veil of the Virgin, a scarf she allegedly had worn and which was venerated for many centuries.

At first, churches in the east embraced Mary more than those in the west. Hymns were composed in her honour and Marian icons became common beginning in the sixth century. People believed that Mary watched over them and that if they prayed to her, she would answer as she had for Constantinople when it was attacked by the Avars. Then, in the 11th Century, Mary headed west in a big way. Europe was modernizing; universities, churches and monastic orders were founded. The golden age of Marian devotion in the west began and, by the 12th century, cathedrals, including the Chartres, were built in her honour.

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Mary was appealing to western Christians in a way the church wasn't; the leadership of the medieval Catholic Church had been formal and rigid and didn't pay much attention to Mary, let alone to what laypeople thought or felt. This all changed when Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a French abbot of the early 1100s, preached that the Virgin was the Intercessor, that all the graces Jesus gives to humanity come through her. Like Ephesus, Clairvaux's proclamation raised Mary's stature yet again.

Mary's new role didn't sit well with some Catholics, who disagreed she should be exalted to a position that wasn't based on scripture. Discontent had been brewing over several issues, including devotion to artifacts said to have belonged to the Virgin, including her breast milk. In 1517, Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk and professor, called for a debate on the sale of indulgences, in which the wealthy could buy the right to sin, and with the advent of the printing press, his 95 Theses was distributed around Europe. Luther preached that mankind could be saved through faith alone. Intercessors, like Mary, were not necessary.

Luther had no intention of starting a new religion, but the momentum couldn't be stopped, and the Protestants were soon born. "As a teenager tries to separate itself from a parent, the Protestants rejected a lot of what their parents stood for to form their own identity," says Presbyterian minister Dorkas Gordon, professor of biblical interpretation and principal of Knox College at the University of Toronto. "Mary was part of that."

The Catholics, on the other hand, didn't let go of their Madonna. In 1531 the Blessed Virgin is said to have appeared to an Aztec named Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin in Guadalupe, Mexico, and instructed him to build a church on the site where she appeared. Word of the apparition spread and, some say, helped to convert a million indigenous people to Catholicism. Mary became known in many parts of Latin America as Our Lady of Guadalupe and in 1737, Mexicans made her their patron saint.

Over the past century, sociologists, feminists and psychologists have all theorized on why Mary has endured; after all, thousands of apparitions have been reported since the third century, almost all of them between the year 1500 and the present (including, of course, those infamous appearances in weeping statues, office building windows and grilled-cheese sandwiches). There's the Jungian view that Mary is an archetype of the Goddess; she replaces Isis, Inanna and Demeter, for example, in the collective conscious. Michael P. Carroll, a University of Western Ontario sociologist, points to a Freudian explanation in his book, The Cult of the Virgin Mary. Mary, he argues, is prominent in societies in which fathers are frequently absent from home. Mum rules the house and the upbringing of her children; devotion to the Virgin Mary allows individuals brought up in such societies to satisfy unconscious childhood desires toward their own mothers.

Whatever the roots behind Marian devotion, Mary's star continued to rise unfettered until the 1962-1965 Catholic Council known as Vatican II. While a document released from this Council didn't denounce Mary's role as an intercessor, it said veneration of Mary or other saints should not diminish worship of God. "Vatican II emphasized that Mary was a human being," says Mary E. Hines, a professor of theology at Emmanuel College in Boston and author of Whatever Happened to Mary, an overview of Mary post-Vatican II. "For the first time, Catholics displayed sensitivity to Protestant criticisms that devotion to Mary seemed to make her nearly divine."

Some feminist Catholic theologians charge that the church dropped the ball after Vatican II. Pope John Paul II held a very conservative view of Mary, and credited her with saving him from an assassination attempt. Meanwhile, the Protestants have been evaluating what they may have lost in giving up Mary. For instance, she's a powerful symbol of strength for women in developing countries because her life of poverty and discrimination is reflected in their own. "Mary has inspired real change in places in Latin America," says Dorkas Gordon of Knox
College. "Protestants haven't accessed her to that degree."

Protestants do not accept the Catholic dogmas of Mary's Immaculate Conception (Mary was born without original sin) and the Assumption (Mary's body and soul were taken to heaven). Yet Catholics and Protestants have recently made progress toward common ground when it comes to Mary. Last spring, the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission issued a 43-page joint statement. It highlights, among other things, aspects of Mary's life that both churches agree on-for example, that she was the handmaid of the Lord and a suffering mother. "You put aside the thorny issues like the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption," says Hines, "then Mary is a very important figure of faith." The explanation for Mary's staying power in the human consciousness may simply be that as God, over the centuries, became the figure of a powerful older man in the sky, people have sought the feminine through her. That's the view of Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson, a professor at Fordham University and author of Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints. "Maternal characteristics of God like compassion and forgiveness had to go somewhere, so they migrated to Mary, and she absorbed them."

Arnoldo Carlevaris sees it that way. On a dull, rainy day last April, a dozen or so prostitutes met Carlevaris at an historic west-end Toronto building for a meeting as part of a program to help them leave their profession. Carlevaris handed them pictures of the Virgin Mary. Most of the women tucked them into their purses. One began to cry. "Thank you," she said. "I feel Mary is beside me, helping me."
Carlevaris smiled. "Mary has such compassion," he said to the shaking woman. "She's guided me through the darkest of days."

When Carlevaris' 27-year-old son died in a car accident in 1992, he was consumed with grief. The now 70-year-old, who had only started to attend church in his 50s, dealt with his sorrow by joining a small prayer group that meets in a Scarborough home. Soon, something started happening that he didn't understand: he noticed detailed images of religious figures in red roses at the foot of an alabaster statue of the Virgin Mary. At first he was skeptical, but whenever he went to the home, where flowers arrived weekly, there were new images in the petals. Eventually, he interpreted it as a sign that he was being watched over by Mary. Carlevaris says quietly: "If I pray to Mary to intercede for me, Jesus is happy, not jealous." He adds, "She may be his mother. But she is our mother, too.