Mother Mary Beyond the Bible and in Apparitions
by Ella Rozett
Many people blame the Catholic Church for having
made Mother Mary into something that goes far
beyond the Bible and resembles more a somehow
"pagan" Goddess. What they don’t
realize is that this Queen of Heaven, who does
exceed the Bible, has been revealing herself
in apparitions throughout the world, on every
continent, and since the first century after
Christ. The Catholic Church never chose all
this activity - God/dess1 did. The
faithful masses, and especially women, usually
love it when their Heavenly Mother appears to
someone, but the church hierarchy and institution
has a sort of love-hate relationship with Our
Lady of the apparitions. They appreciate her
for bringing people to the faith, but they fear
a loss of control whenever the Spirit moves
freely. No wonder - Spirit has this habit of
speaking through uneducated, unordained peasants,
mostly women and children, and it dares to call
the clergy on its shortcomings.
Hardly anybody could be more suspicious of mystical
apparitions of any sort than the Catholic Church
itself. Read any account of the famous apparitions
(like Lourdes, Fatima, Rue du Bac in Paris,
or the Virgin of Guadalupe) and you’ll
always find Church authorities who are trying
to block the whole thing, who interrogate and
disrespect the visionaries, who refuse to believe
until miraculous proof is piled up before them.
Then they send that proof to scientists of all
sorts for investigation. Next, they let a lot
of time pass, hoping people will forget about
the whole thing. And finally, years or decades
later, if they have to, they will admit that
there really was an apparition of Our Lady and
give their official stamp of approval. After
that they may still spend a few decades procrastinating
actually doing some of the things she asked
for.
In order not to allow apparitions of any kind
to have too much influence on the Catholic faith,
the authorities decided to classify them all
as "private revelations" that are
not necessary for salvation. However, as far
as I can tell, her messages are rarely private
and never unnecessary. In 1982 Our Lady of Medjugorje
was asked why she has been appearing so often
and in so many places. She answered: "It
is necessary to awaken the faith. It is a gift
from God. If it is necessary, I will appear
in each home."
Our Lady of Medjugorje, Queen of Peace.
So if you want to blame someone for Mother Mary’s
position in the Catholic Church, blame the God/dess
who sends us Marian apparitions and the masses
who appreciate them, but not the Vatican.
To be fair, I will concede to the Vatican that
the apparitions of the Queen of Heaven do pose
a serious theological challenge. Because even
though the clergy puts great stress on the opinion
that Mary is not God, our Lady sure comes across
as divine. She appears from heaven, speaks for
God, acts for God and calls Jesus "my son",
even though she’s obviously not talking
about the historical Jesus anymore. She makes
the sun dance, writes messages into the sky
and performs countless other miracles. In short
she acts like God.
Besides the theological, there is also the emotional
challenge of how to love a God/dess who has
multiple aspects. Christians deal with this
all the time. How often do I hear people say,
they love Jesus but they don't feel any connection
with God the Father, or vice versa. And how many
have no clue as to what to do with the Holy
Spirit! To have a deep emotional relationship
with all three persons of the Holy Trinity is
not easy and extremely rare.
For me the same issue came up when Our Lady
of Medjugorje said in October 2003: "I
call you anew to consecrate yourselves to my
heart and the heart of my Son Jesus." It
didn’t make sense in my mind, because when
you consecrate yourself, you give yourself entirely
to a heavenly person. How could I give myself
entirely to Mary, and then, when I was already
given away, give myself again to Jesus? I had
a real problem with this, also because I didn’t
feel that I could love Jesus and Mary exactly
equally. A friend of mine was helpful when he
reminded me that God commanded us to love our
father and mother but didn’t say we had
to love them in exactly the same way. Even our
worldly parents don’t expect us to have
the exact same love for our father and mother.
Sometimes we will feel closer to one, other
times to the other. The only important thing
is that we somehow love them both. Still I resisted,
until one day I thought to myself: "Quit
thinking about it; just do what She says!"
When I gave myself entirely, first to Mary and
then to Jesus, it immediately became clear to
me that they weren’t two, but one, and
that consecrating myself to both allowed them
to celebrate their union in me. What joy I felt!
Intellectually I had seen them as one already
for quite some time, but I hadn’t "gotten
it" emotionally until then.
I suspect that Catholics all over the world
and of all ranks have a similar problem: We
don’t want to dilute our love for God by
spreading it around to all kinds of heavenly
persons and saints. And we feel slightly inadequate
when we don't love all aspects of God equally.
The solution however is not to narrow God down
to something we can love easily, but to expand
our love to match God’s reality. To me,
the solution is not to create a hierarchy where
maybe the Son is less than the Father and the
Mother is less than the Son. Rather we would
do well to realize in our hearts that all persons,
aspects, and extensions of God are one but not
mingled, distinct but inseparable.
Endnotes:
1. A note on my use of gender in writing:
Most of us were still taught that the word man
includes woman, he includes she, and God includes
God the Father and Mother. Yet, as far as I
can see wo/man includes man, s/he includes he,
and God/dess includes the aspects of the divine
in whose image we were created as male and female.
2. For details about apparition stories and
the Catholic Church’s handling of them,
see Roy Abraham Varghese’s book "God
Sent: A History of the Accredited Apparitions
of Mary" or search the net under keywords
"Mary apparitions".
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