To get right on to the topic of today's post, (and my very first ever!!) let's talk about the woman in Jesus' life. Don't freak out! I'm not trying to be a heretic, and am most certainly NOT pulling a 'Davinci Code' on you and claiming that Jesus had a wife! No, I'm simply speaking of the woman that would have been most near and dear to him, his mother. Mary.
I sometimes imagine what Mary would look like in today's age. Not physically, but in her manner. How she would hold herself, where she would go to school, how she would interact with others, what she would do in her spare time, what team would she be rooting for, would she like sports at all, et cetera. In all honesty I can't even fathom it. Maybe it's the fact that these "biblical characters" we try to identify with in our own lives lived so long ago, in a world so different from our own. Do we tend to forget that those little statues in our nativity scenes, or the people in the stained glass windows were actual living breathing human beings?! They had lives, jobs, tasks, and families, they had responsibilities.
It is for this reason that I will say that I don't know what "Modern Day Blessed Virgin" would be like exactly. Or, maybe it's the fact that there hasn't been anyone quite like her ever since she walked this green earth. I will, however, say that I know from what God has revealed to us about his blessed Mary, that she would posses these qualities:
- Profoundly humble
- Enthusiastically faithful
- Blindly obedient
- Constantly in mental prayer
- Mortification/sacrifice in all things
- Surpassingly Pure
- Ardently charitable
- Heroically patient
- Angelically sweet
- Divinely wise
Ooooofda! (That my friends is what we like to say up here in the North woods!) What a list. If Mary is "Blessed among women" (Luke 1:42) and "Full of grace" (Luke 1:28) then that makes Mary the ideal woman by the grace of God. This being said, who better to have for a role model than the very woman that Jesus would have looked up to in his childhood, and honored and respected with his entire life?
It's almost so simple it's silly; If I do not find the qualities that Mary possessed to be attractive, ideal, and worthy of imitation, then I need to change how I view myself as a woman. The same would apply to men. If you don't look at this list and think of the ideal wife, mother, sister, or friend, then something isn't quite right, and why would it be with the world fooling us into thinking that these 10 virtues are actually some form of weakness!
Now, as Shakespeare's famous young maiden Juliet once said;
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
The Catholic Maiden. It almost sounds barf-worthy doesn't it? Like a horrible little romance novel that your grandmother gave you for a long flight or something! But hear my intention. It is my hope that the name of this blog will remind all of us, (guys, you too! Please read!), of what beauty in it's truest form has looked like on this earth, and continues to when we live like Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did as the holy family.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't strictly a Marian blog, there will be some sickly awesome crazy theology dynamite that won't be centered around Mary. Let's just say that I love Mary my mother, God's very maiden, and loving Jesus' mother helps me to love Jesus more, and I'm not ashamed to say it.
So, without further ado, Mary, mother of God, pray for us and bless this blog!
Bridget Ann
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