She is always beautiful. She is not old, or overweight. There’s no reumy eye or uncertain gait. She is, as we might understand the term, immaculate. But that’s because I think we often misunderstand what that word means. This is partly because it’s a rather undhandy word in English, it doesn’t trip off the tongue, and in common use it implies an difficult to attain, and easily lost, perfection in appearance. Something good, but also something static.
But she is not like that. In scripture she is constantly changing, beginning in frank puzzlement, But how could this be.. and moving on through worry and reproach, and a desire to save her son from himself. Her knowledge is imperfect, but it changes and grows; her understanding is limited, but it is not closed. All this is because her immaculateness is not of anything external, but of what she desires, and how she chooses. I, by contrast, can and knowingly choose to do and say things that will, sooner or later, make things worse, for me and for others. It’s the choosing that matters. People frequently want to confess things which aren’t sins, while swiftly moving past things that are. It isn’t a sin to be distracted at Mass, it isn’t a sin to be angry, but it can certainly be one to choose distraction over what should have our attention, to indulge our anger and seek justification in our resentment. It depends on what we choose. Her choices help her, that is her grace. Mine often don’t help me.
So I’d like to think of an elderly, wizened Mary, whose choices, because they were not made from rancour or greed, even if they didn’t turn out the way she might or could have expected, have led to wisdom, blessedness in action, or as St John Henry Newman put it; Above it is otherwise, but here below, to live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.
Holy Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us!
Abbot Martin
