A Node in the Web of the Emerging Church

Mary's Courage

Posted Aug 12, 01:11 PM | 1 comments | by Steve Knight | Link

By Dennis Teall-Fleming:

The Feast of the Assumption is coming up soon in the Church (Friday, August 15). A very special, crucial feast in the life of the Church (and also my wedding anniversary!), but not on the top of my list of Marian celebrations. That honor goes to the Feast of the Visitation, celebrated on the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar on May 31, earlier this summer.

You can only find this story of Mary’s visit to her cousin, Elizabeth, in Luke’s Gospel, which makes it suspect as an actual, “factual” event. Whatever the facts, the Truth of the story is pretty powerful.

Visitation follows Annunciation, also told only in Luke — the angel Gabriel’s announcing to Mary that she will bear a son, the Messiah, and Mary courageously accepting this mission. (Annunciation is celebrated March 25 — go figure, nine months before Jesus’ birthday!) Something very profound becomes very clear with both of these feasts — Mary’s courage. In taking on a vocation from God that could have likely gotten her killed (having a child before/outside of sanctioned marriage); in taking off, alone, as told in Luke, on a journey to see Elizabeth, who is also pregnant (though “legit,” by her husband Zechariah), soon to give birth to John the Baptist (his birthday’s celebrated June 24) ... amazing and astounding.

So an unwed, pregnant teenager travels on her own to see her cousin. The fortitude and strength that took … it must have been great comfort to hear Elizabeth’s praise of her. (Gabriel and Liz’s proclamations to Mary make up the first part of the Hail Mary, in all its Eastern and Western variations.) The story concludes potently, with Mary’s Magnificat, calling on the God that she met through Gabriel, the One who knocks the powerful off their thrones, and lifts up the powerless; the Liberator that dismisses the rich, and fills the bellies of the hungry.

Not the Mary I experience in much of the traditional church these days! Yeah, we tend to dress her up all nice and polite, much like we do with this crazy God we believe in. As I usually find in my work, the Truth constantly needs to be resurrected, recognized, again, for the first time — and the God who hides in the midst of all of this needs help to really be uncovered and revealed to all who will only have the courage to look. And so we call on the courage of Mary …

Dennis Teall-Fleming is Director of Faith Formation at Queen of the Apostles Catholic Church in Belmont, NC, and a member of the Charlotte Emergent cohort.