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Mary was a laywoman, in the fullness of this term. She was the wife of a carpenter, the mother of a son. She was a housewife. The neighbors who dropped in for a chat saw her cooking, cleaning house, mending, sewing, weaving, praying. She was not set apart—she belonged fully to the world of her time, a part of that little village and its ordinary life.
What better model, what better helper to ordinary lay folks than Mary? Shouldn’t we ask her help in a world filled with turmoil, confusion, anxieties, and problems?
She is a member of our race: she is a creature, a person, a woman. Yet she is also the Mother of God, a benediction to all the world. It is a strange combination, is it not—a woman who is a model of everyday life for you and me, a woman who is my mother and yours, but also the Mother of God.
When you are lonely, when you are frightened, when you feel abandoned, when you feel rejected, when anger against others shakes you, when you feel that you have no place to turn, turn to Mary. You come into a room, symbolically speaking, and you kneel at her feet.
Put your head on her lap, and just listen. Her gentle hands will clear away all loneliness, all anger, all the raging emotions of your heart.
We can have a simplicity of friendship, of love, of sisterhood or motherhood with her. To get to Jesus you can go through Mary, in a sort of natural way.
From The People of the Towel and the Water, (2010), pp. 14-15, available from MH Publications
