That’s right, and so should you. In May we honor our Blessed Mother, Mary, as well as our own mothers, birth mothers, adoptive mothers, Godmothers, mothers-in-law, and any other woman whose relation to us includes the word or action we typically assign to “Mothering.”
And, isn’t it wonderful that we can look to Jesus’ mother not just as our role-mother, but as our role-model? We know from scripture and tradition the kind of woman Mary was: courageous, steadfast, contemplative, and grounded in her trust in God to name just a few attributes. We can also imagine the stories between the stories of how Mary might have acted at other times of her life. In the Jewish tradition, this imagining, or filling in of the gaps, is called “midrash.” At a recent St. Thomas Sophia’s Circle retreat, our presenter Yonah Klem, employed midrash to guide attendees to deeper understanding of the matriarchs of the Old Testament. Another word uncommon to our Catholic vocabulary is “targum,” which without going into its literal usage in ancient translations can be understood as an extended paraphrase of a story, in other words, targum is the story within the story which helps bring home the truths being told.
We cannot know more about the historical Mary than we already do, however, using that foundation we can practice midrash, or employ targum as a way to fill the gaps with scenes of Mary as a young girl learning at the knee of her mother, as an adolescent, sharing confidences with her friends, and later, as a young bride-to-be just prior to being visited by Gabriel with the news that would change the world. It can be helpful to wonder if Mary did “all the right things” when she was raising Jesus, or if she ever worried that she was too harsh, or too easy.
Mary, our Blessed Mother, was a real (albiet truly special), live flesh-and-blood woman. And like the mothers in our lives, we can still turn to Mary for guidance and wisdom. So, go tell your mother...
(SF)
