Immaculate perceptions: the one woman who stands above the rest in Catholic tradition has many sides and many graces--but Mary also stands with us in our quest to be disciples of Christ.

When I was in first grade, I remember asking my teacher, "What does it mean to say Mary is a virgin?" The sister, not wishing to get into a complicated subject with a 6-year-old, wisely replied, "It means she is beautiful in the eyes of God." Though I have heard many complex and theological descriptions of the significance of

Mary's virginity since that time, this is the one I find most appealing. Mary is many things to many people, but among them the woman encased in dogma is rarely the one who is dearest to us. Mary's beauty is what attracts us: the elegant simplicity with which she delivers her yes to God and to the grace that comes into her life. If Mary finds a place in our hearts it is because we, too, want to be "full of grace" and to express it with as much passion as she does.

In the Catholic world, only God is more omnipresent than the woman we call God's mother. It would be difficult--let's just say impossible--to enter a Catholic church anywhere in the known world and not to encounter an image of the Virgin Mary in short order. Scenes of her life are often featured in the stained glass windows. A statue of her probably stands to the right of the sanctuary. Her monogram may be emblazoned on a pillar or altar, and symbols associated with her are everywhere: a lily, a rose, a crown, the morning star. Holy articles like the rosary, the miraculous medal, and the scapular remind us that she is our constant intercessor and invite us to prayer as well. Her portrait is one of the most familiar to inhabit the average Catholic home. Mary is an immutable feature of our spiritual landscape.

Daughter of Israel

But just who is Mary, daughter of Zion, girl of Nazareth, and mother of Jesus? And how are we to know her? She has been called by many names, among them Blessed Virgin, Our Lady, Mother of the Church, and Queen of Heaven. Her image is portrayed in countless ways in the art of many cultures and centuries, from the smiling Madonna with her infant to the sorrowful mother of the Pieta bearing her grown and lifeless son in her arms.

We know Mary from the stories of scripture, through the dogmatic teaching of the church, by the testimonies of those who claim to have been favored with her apparition, and in the thoughtful practice of devotions like the rosary, which help us to see salvation history through her watchful eyes.

It has been said there are three things that uniquely shape Catholic Christianity: the authority of the pope, participation in the sacraments, and a special relationship with Mary. When we come to appreciate her significance for us and for the whole church, we begin to understand why Mary makes the "top three" list.

For such a substantial figure, Mary occupies little space in the story of the New Testament. She doesn't appear in Mark's gospel at all and is referred to offstage only twice. Matthew has hardly more to say of her, concentrating on the actions of Joseph in his story of the birth of Jesus.

Luke, however, reveals more of Mary, as he does of women in general, in his gospel. It is from his account that we acquire our stories of the Annunciation by the angel Gabriel, the Visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, the Canticle of Mary, many details of the popular Christmas story, the Presentation of Jesus in the temple by his parents, and the finding of Jesus in the Temple as a young child.

By the time of John's gospel at the end of the first century, we see that Mary's role has become more symbolic, taking on a richness beyond her actions as a historical person. Now she is the intuitive and insightful woman at the wedding feast of Cana who gives birth to the ministry of her son. She is the brave and faithful mother at the cross, to whom the beloved disciple (and by extension, the future church) is entrusted.

In later church writings Mary continues her evolution in symbolism, becoming the New Eve who opens the gate once shut by sin, or the perfect daughter of Zion who embodies the collective history of Israel and ushers in its long-awaited hope of redemption.

A second-century document once thought to be written by James--who is known as "the brother of the Lord" in the Acts of the Apostles and listed among Jesus' kin in Mark's gospel--supplies legendary elements about Mary's life for those eager to know more about her, such as the names of her parents, Joachim and Anne, and the circumstances of her birth; Mary's own presentation in the temple as an infant; details about her betrothal to Joseph; and the midwife's testimony of Mary's virginity even in childbirth. These stories entered into the popular depictions of religious art and have become almost inseparable from the biblical portrait of Mary.

Who is Mary for us today?

The supernatural elements of Mary's life and legend do not wholly explain her significance for us. What draws us to Mary is not how she may be special but how she is like us. An insistence on Mary's uniqueness in salvation history may make her suitable for veneration. But such veneration does not bring her close to us and to our experience. In all her humanity Mary of Nazareth is the model of the true disciple. She reminds us that we, too, are called to say yes to the divine invitation to be Christ-bearers for the sake of the world. We give birth to good news when we "hear the word of God and keep it" as Jesus said his true family does.

We also share Mary's vocation to remember and hold in our hearts the events of our lives and what they teach us. Like that young gift from Nazareth, we are amazed at the long and unknown route we each embark on at the start and all the surprising places life will take us that we never imagined: the roles we might play, the relationships we will prize, the sometimes heroic (and sometimes infamous) things it is within our capacity to do. Mary urges us, along that journey, to seek the higher ground with the wisdom we reap through pondering each event.

In Mary's company we are not strangers to the "sword" that the holy man Simeon once predicted would pass through her heart on behalf of her son, for which she would earn the title Mater Dolorosa, the Mother of Sorrow. That personal relationship to suffering deepened in Mary the boundless tenderness and empathy with which she was destined to console the afflicted of human history. We likewise accompany Jesus to the cross and endure his suffering in the anguish of those we love whose fate we are powerless to affect. We remain at the cross in our witness of the cruelty perpetrated against innocent ones around the globe who pay the price for the sins of the whole world in their weakness and vulnerability.

We, like Mary at Cana, are invited to intercede for divine action when we perceive the need of those around us. Just as Mary recognized the problem, assessed the consequences, and took the initiative to change the outcome, we learn that following Jesus is no mere passive vocation.

God never does anything in human history without the full participation of someone acting in faith and offering his or her free will for holy purposes. In this sense, God waits on our invitation to act--and the history of the saints proves that God finds the surrender of our free will practically irresistible. Certainly Jesus found his mother's behind-the-scenes preparation for the miracle at Cana an offer he could not refuse, however put out he may have felt about the hour not being quite right.

In all of these ways and more, Mary shows us how to be church. And for this reason, she is truly our mother in faith, giving birth to more possibilities in our assembly than we have yet dreamed of.

History:

Ave Maria!

Virgin birth

Grounded in gospel tradition, this teaching emphasizes the divine origin of Jesus and the absolute newness breaking into history at the birth of God's Son. In our more biologically sophisticated age, it seems necessary to add that this dogma is not intended to be a statement regarding or negating sexual relations, natural motherhood, or Mary's superiority over other mortals.

Immaculate Conception 

Mary is not simply sinless, which would imply a perfection beyond humanity, but is "preserved from sin" by God's initiative. Mary needed to be saved from sin like the rest of us. As theologian Elizabeth Johnson has written: "In her very being, through the mercy of God, the grip of evil is broken." This dogma is about the readiness of Mary from her conception to become the mother of Jesus, not about the conception of Jesus.

Assumption

If Mary is preserved from sin, it is only natural that the penalty for sin--the corruption of death-would also be spared her. This teaching says nothing about whether or not Mary actually died or experienced dormition (falling asleep and being translated into eternal life). Body and soul, Mary was reunited with God at the end of her life, as all believers hope to be.

CHURCH TEACHING:

Our Lady of Apparitions

Among Christians, apparitions appear to be a uniquely Catholic phenomenon. Although apparitions of Mary are the most commonly sighted, appearances of other saints or of Jesus Christ have also been reported.

Throughout history the church has recognized some of these apparitions as authentic but has maintained that belief in a particular apparition is not binding on all Catholics.

Devotions to Our Lady manifested at Lourdes, Guadalupe, and Fatima are among the most well known in this country, though Our Lady of Knock, Medjugorje, La Salette, and El Pilar of Zaragoza, among others, have their staunch adherents.

Some Catholics may feel that such devotions no longer hold a place in the life of faith as understood since the Second Vatican Council. But recent scholars have pointed to several key ideas related to Marian apparitions that have a modern appeal. Among them are:

* the role of personal religious experience in relation to the church's public worship,

* the need for new symbols to express each new generation of the faithful,

* the need for the feminine presence within a patriarchal worldview,

* the role of "apocalyptic" or hidden mysteries within a society that is perhaps too comfortable and self-assured,

* and the balance of personal testimony in relation to official teaching of the hierarchical church.

Perhaps the new millennium needs a new apparition of Mary more than we know.

ALICE CAMILLE, author of The Rosary: Mysteries of Joy, Light, Sorrow and Glory (ACTA Publications).