August/September 2007

The Reverend Philip Banks writes:

Thanking God for Mary

The Church of England calendar of Saints celebrates the Virgin Mary each year in August, as Christians thank God for the part Saint Mary played in our salvation history.

“On the 19^th January 1511, the young King Henry VIII came to the shrine of the Virgin at Walsingham, to give thanks for the birth on New Year’s Day, of a son. He was the latest and, as it turned out, the last, in a long line of English monarchs to come to the shrine.”¹

When the Royal Commissioners came to destroy the shrine 26 years on, they would find there a candle burning, which had been maintained by Henry, who had asked for constant prayers to be offered for the birth of another son and heir – Henry’s first son had died soon after birth. (Had he survived, the mediaeval holy house at Walsingham might still be standing, and the course of English history would no doubt have been unimaginably different!)

Henry’s earlier pilgrimage to Walsingham, however, was an absolutely normal devotional act of the time. People were captivated both by Mary’s joy at the birth of a son, but also by the power of Mary’s sorrow, the grief of the mother lamenting her dead child, which rang so many bells with rich and poor, young and old, men and women – for whom such bereavements were very common indeed. Images of the pietà (Our Lady of Pity), caught the imagination of so many people, and a popular location for burials was often near the statue of the pietà. 

What about us, today? Is Mary still relevant to our faith, our prayers or our devotion? Some people worry that any devotion to Mary might rob ‘the Virgin’s Son his due honour’. Certainly it is wrong to confuse devotion to Mary with the worship that is due to God alone. The point about Mary, however, is that she was an ordinary person – but an ordinary person chosen by God to do the most extraordinary thing – to bring Jesus to birth into our time and space – literally to be the ‘mother’ of God incarnate.  Her “Yes” to God is one which we are called to ponder and to imitate as we grow in our relationship with God and our awareness of his will for us.

Mary is therefore a hugely important influence in our Christian history and formation, for she symbolises so many things about our faith as we seek, ourselves, to “bring Jesus to birth” in our world today. Think of the words of the ‘Magnificat’, which fall from Mary’s lips when the angel tells her that she is to give birth: God will scatter the proud in their arrogance; God will put down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the humble and weak; God will fill the starving with good things and send the rich away empty. Thus, for Christians down the ages, Mary has been the symbol of God’s care for the poor, and his promise of justice and peace – and we are called, like her, to ‘bring to birth’ in our world and lives the same values of God’s kingdom.

In a religion which had been dominated by men, devotion to Mary fostered gentleness and tenderness, and made a place for homely things which ordinary people could relate to – the mysteries of birth and nurture, hopes and tears. The same is true today, and we can honour Mary, with all the Saints, as an inspiration and model for Christian humility, service and devotion.