This week we are looking deeper at the Magnificat Mary song of praise in Luke 46-56.  Today I want to look deeper at Mary. Mary is an interesting figure in scripture, and I think in many ways she’s a misunderstood character. This is true especially for those of us who are Protestant, I think we often misinterpret our Catholic friends’ reverence for Mary. I think often of the quote by Rich Mullins,” it’s not that Catholics revere Mary too much, is perhaps that we revere each other too little. I think that’s a neat way to look at it.”

To understand where the reverence for Mary comes from, we have to go back to the 1st centuries of the church. In the first few centuries of the church, they struggled they faced with understanding who Jesus was. Those of us that are in this modern context do not struggle to understand the divinity of Christ. We understand that completely, we have no problem understanding that Jesus was divine, that he was the son of God. Our struggle is to understand his humanity. For the early church, this was the exact opposite. They understood his humanity perfectly, they had walked with him and talked with him. Their struggle was in understanding his divinity. How could this person they walked with be fully God? 

The term that the early church used for Mary was Theatokus which in Greek means the mother of God. This is more about emphasizing Jesus’s divinity than anything else. This is where the rise of the reverence Mary comes from because if Jesus is the son of God, then she gave birth to the son of God. That does show her to be an incredibly important person within the Christian tradition.

Also, she has great importance because she is for us an icon of faith. When the Angel comes to her and tells her that she will be with child her responses let it be into me according to the word. In other words, this task that was going to be quite heavy and quite challenging she readily accepted because she had faith in God. That is a beautiful example of what faith looks like, trusting God even when the destination is unknown period Mary, much like Abraham becomes for us an icon of what true faith looks like.

This week we’re going to be looking closer at her song of praise that she sang when she was overcome with God’s plan for her and for the world 

If you’d like to get each day’s daily scripture reading sent to your phone along with this reading guide, text @39110 to 81010 to sign up!