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queenlucythevaliant · 2 years

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PERHAPS Mary was not, as some would later assume, particularly gentle or serene. Perhaps she tried to be sweet and patient, but failed nearly as often as she succeeded. Mary had a personality, after all: her own set of quirks and failings, for all that the annals of time and church history would try to cleanse her of it.

So, for lack of more definitive information, allow us to imagine a spitfire Mary who struggled with a temper all her life. Not a doe-eyed, pleasant woman who mutely moves through the motions of the Christmas story, nor a perpetually-grieving marble statue; a Mary who was human.

This Mary gave her parents fits as a little girl. She answered back to her elders and got in fierce arguments with her siblings until she was old enough to know better. As she grew up, she learned courtesy and responsibility, but she never quite managed to live up to the ideal her own mother set.

Yet one day when Mary was fifteen and recently engaged, she turned and suddenly saw what could only be an angel of the Lord standing a few paces away. His clothes were lightning-white and his tawney wings jutted up from his back in vaulted arches. It was difficult to look at his face straight on, yet she could not look away. When she blinked, Mary thought for an instant that she saw many eyes looking back at her.

“Greetings, favored one, the Lord is with you!” the angel said. His voice echoed like nothing else, like a thunderclap or a crashing wave. Mary squeezed her eyes shut and took a step back.

“Do not be afraid,” the angel said in a softer voice. Then, smiling, “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

“How?” Mary demanded at once. She was overwhelmed, and perhaps it was this feeling alone which prevented her from voicing any of the objections which coursed through her mind in that instant, save for the most obvious: “I am a virgin.”

The angel—“Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God”—gave her answers equal parts lofty and lovely. Mary had not quite made up her mind how she ought to respond until the angel declared in a voice fierce with joy, “nothing is impossible with God.”

When she heard those words, it felt to Mary like a challenge. She was hungry to see God do something really impossible, wanted to be party to whatever miracle He was finally going to do after so long. “Let it be to me according to your word,” she said, dimly aware that they were the most dangerous words she would ever utter.

IT was not fear of what people would think that drove her haste to visit Elizabeth, she told herself, nor was it anger at her family’s incredulity when she told him about the angel’s visit. No, the urgency with which she made her preparations to visit her cousin was driven only by a desire to share her joy—and, indeed, the rational part of her mind asserted, it would not hurt to confirm the angel’s words.

She was not intent on leaving Nazareth because of her father’s reaction the night she finally tried to explain things. His hard glare had made her want to run off and earn the epithet that he couldn’t quite manage to spit at her, but instead she had merely stood there, silent in her righteous rage. She did not want to see him again for a long time, but this alone would not have driven Mary to Elizabeth.

Likewise, her mother’s conviction that Elizabeth’s influence would be good for her made things easier, but it was not the reason. Mary did want to visit Elizabeth in order to experience the proof of Gabriel’s word, God’s promise; she did. But, as she ventured off into the hill country, she admitted to herself that the other things might have been factors in the decision too.

“My soul magnifies the Lord! He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty,” she proclaimed to her cousin. There was power in her voice which Elizabeth said reminded her of another Miriam singing prophecy on the shore of the Red Sea.

Yet to Mary, it felt not like prophecy but like catharsis. Her prayer was an expression of all of the good things that had been brimming up in her soul since the angel had visited her and a cleansing of all the bad. Her soul magnified the Lord. It was the right response, the outpouring of her heart; it was all she could do.

WHEN she returned to Nazareth, nearly halfway through her pregnancy now and the shape of her figure impossible to overlook, most people greeted her with awkwardness. “Oh,” most of them would say when they saw her, eyes and mouths going wide. Not, “Hello, Mary, it’s good to see you” or “How did you find the hill country?” Then, once she had gone, the whispers would begin. Nazareth was a small town, after all, and thus rife with gossip. Occasionally, childhood friends made pointed comments in Mary's presence and angry words scalded her throat, but at least—at least it was better than the blatant staring and the whispers. How dare they? Mary thought. This is God’s child!

Joseph spoke to her father about plans to break their engagement privately (kindly) and Mary was less angry at him than anyone. Joseph was a good man; this proved it, and wasn’t that ironic? The thing that gave her the most insight into her fiancé’s character was the way he broke their engagement.

Yet Joseph appeared outside her father’s house early one morning, quiet but animated with dreams of angels. “I will take Mary as my wife,” he was saying, and Mary was so relieved that she nearly wept there on his shoulder.

IT was no easy thing, to be so heavily pregnant and travelling amidst so many men with only Joseph at her side. At night, she loudly enumerated each of her aches and pains to her poor young husband, who could do little but nod sympathetically to ease them. Her sleep was restless and she could not remember the last time she was cool and comfortable. Even the nighttime breezes did not make her feel any less sticky.

In the day, travel was painful and strenuous. She was exhausted and irritated and tired of the winces Joseph involuntarily made when she cursed under her breath. Joseph was patient, though, and his carpentry-rough hands were good to grip when the pain became too much to bear alone.

The long days of travel also left Mary too with too much time to think. She didn’t know what she’d done to deserve such a precious honor from her God, fifteen and frightened and frail as she was. Yet in her best moments, Mary rested her hands over the places where she could feel God’s son kicking and she sang for joy.

MARY started snapping at Joseph well before they arrived in Bethlehem, as soon as she saw the sheer mass of people who had arrived there ahead of them. She had a throbbing headache and hadn’t yet had supper, and the city was far busier than either of them had expected. When the innkeeper gave them use of his stable, it was not so much out of sympathy for an expectant mother as fear of a couple who both seemed dangerously close to devolving into an open shouting match in his doorway.

Not long after arriving in the innkeeper’s little stable, Mary’s contractions began, hard and fast. Joseph was saying something about going to find a midwife, and Mary bellowed, “Don’t you dare leave me!” But he only squeezed her hand and took off running, leaving her alone with the cattle. Mary panted and screamed and cursed until at last someone was at last behind her— “push,” the woman murmured, “and breathe. That’s the way of it. I’ve had four myself, you’re doing fine. Don’t be afraid."

"Don't be afraid! Like hell." Mary was terrified down to her very marrow.

Yet when all was over, the child was dearer and lovelier and tinier than she had ever imagined him. His fingers were impossibly little, barely enough to grip one of her fingers, and his soft head fit in the palm of one hand. Her lips lightly glanced over his soft tufts of hair and Mary did not think much about the fact that she was kissing the face of God. He was only her baby; she had carried him nine months, had delivered him there on the hay, and saw her own nose there in the middle of his little, scrunched-up face. He would save her from her sins one day, but first she would be mother to this little seven-pound bundle that cried and blinked in her arms.

WHEN she saw the shepherds making their way towards their stable in a stinking, noisy crowd, Mary turned to Joseph and moaned "make them go away." Exhaustion made her bones heavy and the baby had finally, finally nodded off to sleep in his makeshift crib. Yet before Joseph could respond, they heard the word angels and froze.

The shepherds were a rowdy bunch, but their voices glittered with joy as they tripped over the story of what they had seen. It was not a very well-told story; no one was able to get through more than a few sentences before another voice cut in with more detail, another perspective, or even simply to add emphasis. Their voices woke the baby soon enough and Mary rocked him in her arms until he quieted. Yet then one of the older shepherds asked tentatively if he might be allowed to hold the child and within minutes, they were passing the Son of God around the tiny stall between eager pairs of sun-worn arms.

By the time the shepherds departed, Mary was overjoyed into silence. Everything, every word and moment and gesture of the evening, was tangled together to form a beautiful, messy knot of wonder in her chest. “Later,” she thought, “I’ll think about it later. Maybe tomorrow I can make sense of it.” So, she did not speak as she finally drifted off to sleep.

MARY and Joseph took their child to Jerusalem, of course, to the temple and, although she did not know it then, to Simeon. Mary marveled at the words that Simeon spoke over her child, peppered him with the questions that she had been wanting to ask someone, anyone since Jesus’ birth. Simeon quoted the law and the prophets and told Mary about the promise that God had made to him so many years ago.

Mary opened her mouth to ask another question, but Simeon was not finished speaking. “This child,” he said, one wrinkled hand resting on her shoulder, “is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”

“But what does that mean?” Mary cried in frustration. Angels notwithstanding, no one had given Mary any information for bringing up God’s Son. Simeon did not really understand it either, for all his years of study, but Mary felt somehow as though she had a right to know what God had planned for her child. It is frustrating to have the son of God dropped into one’s arms and then for the angels to disappear.

IT was said that nothing good can come out of Galilee, but Mary’s family did. (Her family! Even as time passed, sometimes she still felt like a stranger to the word.) Her family was good, and their home was in Galilee, and that was all there was to it.

Joseph worked hard in his workshop and came in to meals with wood shavings caught in his beard. Her boys took turns learning the trade while her girls cleaned house and baked the bread and answered back when they felt contrary. Mary did her best to corral all six of her unruly children, including one Messiah. She would have liked to say that she ran her household with good humor and patience, but she snapped at everyone when she was cross, forgot important things that they told her, and called Jesus ‘James’ and Jude ‘Simon’ more often than not.

Her other children resented their oldest brother before they were very old and it felt like Mary’s failure. They accused her of favoring him, of always siding with Jesus in disagreements, and she could not dispute it. Sometimes, when Mary was alone, she thought that she could have been a better mother to her other children if Jesus had never been born. It was a horrible thought and ordinarily she kept it in a secret corner buried deep in her chest. On her best days, she would open herself up and offer the thought up to God with a song and a prayer. Most days were not her best days.

Yet Mary raised her children (all of them) on stories of their forebearers: David and Hezekiah, Ruth and Rehab, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah. They all went to the local synagogue for Sabbath and to the temple in Jerusalem for holidays, sat quietly in their seats, and once, memorably, even lost track of Jesus for a few hours. But when all the children were young, Mary told them the stories of Scripture in her own words. You come from a chosen lineage, she would say. God has already used this family mightily. And yet I think the best is still to come.

Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and began explaining the Scriptures back to his mother before very long. As he grew, Mary was mildly disappointed to discover that he never really grew into his looks. Her other sons were handsome, but Jesus was unfortunately rather plain.

But let it never be said that Jesus was ugly. Smiles and laughter came over his face like rain in summer, and that made all the difference. He was like his mother in that way; they were both of them so rarely expressionless, always laughing or thoughtful, furious or incandescent. Yet where Mary could be mercurial, Jesus was simply honest and open.

Mary had known the mother of the bridegroom all their lives; they had played with dolls together and gossiped about boys and gone to the synagogue and commiserated about their children as they grew. As a result, when the wine ran tragically short before the celebration was over, Mary felt a certain responsibility to do something about it. So it was that Mary found herself marching up to her oldest boy, who also happened to be the Son of God, and rather pointedly telling him, “Jesus, they have no wine.”

HE gathered followers gradually at first. Mary noticed new faces appearing in her son's orbit: young men who believed him when he spoke without the benefit of angels as proof. Mary wondered sometimes whether she would have had faith enough to take Jesus at his word if she had only seen him in the temple or spoken to him on the shores of the sea. Some days she imagined that she would, could, might; others, she sincerely doubted it.

Then, at the wedding of a family friend, Jesus performed his first miracle.

“Woman, what does this have to do with me?” he asked.

Mary raised an eyebrow at her impudent, holy son. “Oh?” she replied. “Are you sure that’s how you want to address your mother, boy?”

Jesus laughed, a full-bodied, warm sound, and said in a softer voice, “Mother, my hour has not yet come.” It was exactly the response he had given the last half-dozen times Mary had insinuated, half-joking and half in frustration, that she wanted her son’s supernatural help solving an impossible, if rather mundane problem. She gave him a nod of understanding, though, and, still within his earshot, instructed the servants to do whatever Jesus asked of them.

Much to her astonishment, Jesus decided to humor her that day and turned pitchers of water into the best wine she had ever tasted. As they left the celebration that night, Mary reached up to fondly ruffle her son’s hair and said, “I suppose your time has come at last.”

A FEW months later, Jesus returned from the cliff where the people of Nazareth had wanted to kill him and found Mary back at home, preparing to excise several long-time friends from her life with a vengeance. When she turned and saw him, her jaw was set dangerously, eyes flashing and back straight. She did not want to listen as her son patiently explained to her exactly which Scriptures were being fulfilled in their scorn; she knew only How dare these people hurt her child? How dare they threaten Jesus when he came before them with God’s truth? How dare they?

She had been there, of course, in that lovely old synagogue which had been more constant in her life than any other place she could think of. She had watched, giddy with pride and anticipation, as Jesus unfurled the scroll of Isaiah and proclaimed himself the fulfillment of God’s promises. “He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” he had said, “Today the Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” and they had laughingly called him Joseph’s son and refused to listen, those foolish, hateful people.

They had driven him from the village where she had raised him—friends who had doted on him as a baby, who had passed him in the streets and commented on a recent growth spurt, whose tables he had sanded and whose children who had played with—and they had actually tried to kill him. Never acknowledging those people again was too kind, Mary thought.

But Jesus was still speaking, and the words were registering in her mind somewhere now, even if she wished that they wouldn’t. Mother. Oh, mother. I am sorry for your pain. This will not be the last time. It is written that the Son of Man must be despised and rejected by man in order to save his people. He was looking at her and speaking so gently, and Mary only barely met his eyes.

MARY sobbed hot, angry tears at the foot of the cross. She was furious all that night while they waited for her baby’s broken corpse to be taken down off the cross, furious the next day as there were Sabbath rituals to carry out, and the next as funeral preparations were made. What an awful price must be paid for those foolish, dangerous words she spoke to the angel so long ago. It was appalling that such a price must be paid for loving her son, the way a mother does. How could God think to demand it of her, to demand it of him? Wasn’t God supposed to be her son's Father? How dare He?

She stubbornly refused to speak the words of the Sabbath liturgy aloud. She moved her lips in pantomime and tried to stuff down her anger at God for ever giving her Jesus, for daring to call it a blessing. She dug her fingernails deep into the heels of her hands.

The disciples tried to give her kind words and gentle touches, but Mary was angry at them too. She knew the name and face of every one of them who had fled from the insinuation that they might know Jesus. So many of them had not stayed till the last, and all she had left was how dare they?

Jesus had given her to John, and the boy made good. Mary went back to stay with him and his brother James with no notion at all of what she ought to say or do. She was mostly drowning in her own thoughts, and so were they.

In the still of the second night, John sat beside her, gazing into a dying fire. “If you could go back—I mean—knowing how it ends—do you regret—” He wasn’t looking at her, and Mary was glad of that.

“I don’t know,” she replied. The corners of her chest felt like open wounds. “I don’t regret loving him. But I—I think I might have said something different to the angel.”

WHEN she first saw Jesus again, Mary didn’t think Messiah or Savior first. All that would come later, sitting among the disciples and pulling apart all the things he had said and done in their midst. But when Mary first saw him, the first thing she thought was my baby.

She hugged him and kissed him and held him, all the while certain that his body was different than she remembered—somehow brighter and truer than before—yet not caring a whit. Mary knew every line of her son’s face and they were all precious to her. Somehow, in spite of the differences, his nose still looked like her own.

After that, it was all Mary could do not to start yelling at Jesus. There was a monumental need in her chest to demand answers of her son and to scold him for upsetting her so. In the end, though, she managed to tamp it down. All she said was, “don’t you dare do that to me again. Do you understand? Not ever.” She said it in her don’t-cross-me voice to show that she meant it.

Jesus laughed, and Mary fairly vibrated with the joy of it.

#this was the first of the various Biblical pieces that I started work on #something like five or six Christmases ago #i was listening to a sermon on the Magnificat and the pastor was discussing Mary's sense of justice and sort of as an aside he was like #'we don't really get much about Mary's personality in the text. maybe she had a really keen sense of righteous anger'#and then discussing in the car my family was like '#'she could have been a total spitfire. wouldn't that be a change from how she's usually viewed!'#i started writing this piece that day and I've returned to it and revised and added things every Christmas since #and now it's sharing time #Bible humans #pontifications and creations #Leah stories #unto us a child is born

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