Recently in Mary Category

Jesus said to them "Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"

When Jesus was about twelve years old, after He and His family had journeyed to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, His mother and father lost Him.

I'm the kind of guy who sometimes gets preoccupied with details, so I am inclined to wonder: How did it happen?

The best explanation I've heard has to do with the culture of the Jews. Their extended families lived close together and traveled likewise, to a point that it was not necessarily uncommon, while traveling, for the children to be in the company of their aunts and uncles, and thus for immediate parents to not see their children for a prolonged period. Mary and Joseph assumed, as they had on previous road trips and other occasions, that Jesus was off with this or that aunt or uncle.

But this time, He was not.

It took them three days to rediscover Him.

Three days. Again, with the foreshadowing. Approximately twenty-one years later, Mary would lose Jesus again, for three days.

But at that time it would be because He went somewhere without her. In his childhood, it would be because He stayed behind in His Father's house. Think of the anxiety with which she and Joseph searched must have searched for Him. All the places they looked for Him but did not find Him. After His three days of absence twenty-one years later, those close to Him would search for Him again.

We may be reminded of how frantically we search for -- happiness, redemption, success, whatever will fulfill us. Especially when we have been blessed with it before. If we know the fulfillment of a blessed life, we will be stricken with a kind of panic when we realize we have lost it. Like Mary, we will search frantically for it in countless places, with heightening anxiety at each new failure.

Unlike Mary, who at least knew what she was looking for, if not where to look, we often don't even realize that what we are looking for is Jesus. That He alone can conquer the anxiety and the hunger that we have inside. And that He is in the last place we would normally think to look, the house of His Father.

The Christian tradition has been accused in some secular circles over the centuries of subjugating and oppressing women, giving them a lower place of dignity than men in Creation.

But it is worth noting that the first ever Christian was a woman -- Mary.

She knew before He was conceived that He was the Son of God, Luke's account shows.

But knowing His identity is just the beginning. Mary is made aware of His identity and then presented with the decision, as we all are, of whether or not to welcome Him in, to allow Him to take residence within her very being, so that she could then bear Him to the world.

And she said yes. Or to be more specific, "May it be done to me according to your word."

With that utterance, she encapsulated what it means to be a follower of Christ. It means to place oneself at the disposal of God, to be used for His purposes, to reflect His goodness to the world. Mother Teresa of Calcutta once decribed herself as a pencil that God uses to write a love letter to the world. Mary was that par excellence. She received the entirety of what God wanted to give her, which was Christ Himself. And by receiving Him openly and entirely, she was able to share Him openly and entirely with the world.

Compare that with the world on the night of Jesus' birth. He was not allowed in, because the inn was too crowded, and no room could be made for Him. Humanity, on the night its Savior was born, banished Him to a stable full of animals, where He would be born into a feeding trough. Whereas Mary allowed herself to be "overshadowed" by the Holy Spirit, the cold world, as we tragically sometimes imitate, considered that it had more important things to make room for and treated Christ as an afterthought, not worthy of real priority or dignity.

And Mary, bearing Christ within her, exemplified, by the very nature of her role in God's plan, what each Christian is called to do, which is to share in the suffering of Christ. His banishment from all places of shelter and comfort became her banishment from all places of shelter and comfort. Where Christ went, she went. That connection would not wane as Jesus' life and ministry continued.

Mary made herself small before God, placing herself at the disposal of His plan. By doing so, God made her the portal through which salvation itself entered the world.

I know it's the season of Lent, not Advent. But I think we would all do well to examine, as Lent continues, what priority we give to Christ in our lives, whether there is room for Him inside of ourselves, and whether we are truly receptive in our hearts to everything that He wishes to give us, as was the first Christian.

After Jesus of Nazareth, Mary of Nazareth played perhaps the most integral role of any human in the redemption, salvation, and sanctification of mankind. She was not God, of course, nor is she to be worshipped as God. But she was the Mother of God, since Jesus was God. She did literally and biologically what we are all called to do in a figurative but no less real way. She allowed Christ to take root in her very being and then she bore Him to the world, letting Him loose on it.

Mary of Nazareth, a teenager, was offered an enormously difficult mission by God, one which carried with it perils and sufferings and did not make a great deal of sense to her at the time. God has a habit of offering his children such missions.

Yet she had the courage to say yes to God, and so provides an enormously important model to a world that more and more needs to be reminded of how simply saying yes to God can change it for the better.

We may be inclined to think that Mary's mission to be the Mother of God was easy compared to being the mother of an imperfect child. I would venture to say it was probably more challenging. Raising up the King of Kings who will go on to save mankin

I will be taking a closer look at Mary, whom Catholics consider the Mother of God and the Mother of all who believe in Christ, in the coming days. For now what we can learn from Mary is that the mission, even when it is extraordinarily difficult, especially when it is extraordinarily difficult, can actually turn out to be a great gift.