Prayer: In nomine - Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier.

More years ago than I care to acknowledge when August 15 was called the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I was enjoying peace at the end of the Eucharist when the organist began the voluntary - Bach-type variations (home-made!) on the tune Heave Ho and Up She Rises.

The merriment then of those who recognised the source of the music is in sharp contrast to the sombre reading chosen for today's celebration of Mary Mother of the Lord.

There are relatively few explicit references to Mary, mother of Our Lord in the New Testament. In the gospels we have brief glimpses - of a young woman newly a mother, of a worded Mum when her 12 year old goes missing, of a proud Mum sure: her son can fix the urgent need for more wine at the wedding at Cana and of an anguished, sorrowing Mother, at the foot of the Cross watching her son die - today's Gospel reading.

I drove back from Albany recently and was appalled at the number of verge-side crosses, each marking the death of a young person in a car crash. Each of these spoke-to me of loss, of pain, of suffering, of grief Each represents the extreme end of the cost of mothering. Is there anything Mary, who must have known similar agony, can say to us? Instead of making the new into old, as with the organ voluntary, can we make the old, the Mary of 2000 years ago relevant to us today?

Of course, for many people, Mary is best known as the virgin mother of the baby Jesus. Frequently depicted in art as beautiful, isolated, impervious, unattainable, locked in time and space, unconnected with life and the real world. The recent display in New Zealand of a painting of Mary with a condom on her head offended many, seemingly reducing and degrading Mary by linking her to such a symbol of raw human sexual expression. However, for others, like the Piss Christ, removed from a Melbourne gallery earlier this year, Mary with the condom spoke of harsher, more authentic realities.

Mary's calling cannot be locked in the time warp of a selective reading of biblical texts, a particular understanding of Church history and Christian discipleship, but has to be understood in relation to her life's experiences of rejection incurred by an unexpected pregnancy, a dangerous birth far from home, a murderous king and flight as a refugee. Motherhood has a cost and this motherhood had an immense cost.
Motherhood, parenthood is costly. I occasionally say, to the chagrin of my children, "If I'd known then what I know now ....." (They might not have been born).

Ignatius of Loyola, whose day we keep on July 31, in one of his spiritual exercises offers a useful framework to consider our options as mothers /fathers to our children. I want to consider this in relation to Mary, mother of Our Lord, to see what it suggests for our parenting, tells of her mothering and reveals to us of God who is mother and father to us all.

Ignatius talks of a gift, given to three people, each of whom responds in a different way.

Let us consider the birth of a child as the gift, perhaps the supreme gift. What patterns of mothering, of responding to this gift, does Ignatius suggest.

The first speaks of the mother who clings tighter, who regards the child as an object to be owned, who cherishes the child so closely that it is a grasp that brings death, rather than life, that suffocates rather than frees.

The second mother knows that the child has to live its own life - and intends to make that possible. However, even in that phrase there is the clue. It remains in the mother's power and control to offer the child its freedom. So freedom is offered in such a way that the mother still retains a subtle possession. There is no real intention to liberate the child from the bonds of relationship even though these may then become unhelpful and potentially unhealthy for both mother and child.

The third mother recognises and delights in the attachment with her child and yet wants to relinquish it, so that the child is free to live the life God offers. The mother loves and lets go; gives her child the liberty to determine its own future and paradoxically, in that way, rejoices in close relationship, held together with subtler and more mutual bonds of love.

Hearing these examples, simply stated, most of us would find it easy to see which model we would want to follow. Easier said than done.

It is the most natural thing in the world to want to keep close the most precious gift we might ever receive. A baby, after all is helpless, needs all our care. Mary would have wanted to shield her child from the very real dangers of the world. According to the writer of Luke's gospel, Mary had even been warned, when Jesus was only eight days old, that this child would be rejected and her heart broken. How natural then to keep him tight to her.

When WE act like this, to our sadness and surprise, as the child grows they TAKE their freedom and our relationship is lost.

Many of us recognise this danger and resolve not to fall into such a trap. We will let our child go, nurture its independence, encourage a range of directions. Easier said than done.

Our natural responses and hopes for our child invariably predisposes us to encourage directions that, deep down, suit us. Understandably we have dreams for our children, maybe dreams that originally were for ourselves, which we didn't have chance or freedom to fulfil. How logical to inspire our child to follow these paths.
We may be giving even more subtle double messages, trying to have our cake and eat it as it were, desiring our child both to risk where we didn't and yet, play safe by adopting more legitimate and acceptable goals.

No wonder our child feels confused and struggles to develop the ability to have autonomy over their life decisions.

It would have been easy to appreciate such subtle control and possessiveness being shown by Mary. After all she had a growing understanding of the uniqueness of her child. If he was to be so special, why not suggest ways he could use this specialness, why not suggest ways he could demonstrate his uniqueness. Water into wine, after all, at a wedding, would be an "act of generosity". If you have to be different, why not be different THIS way?

But, of course, that's not good enough, that's not freedom for the child. That's not what God intends for the child, rather it is what we want and need, to protect ourselves from the cost of parenting.

That wasn't Mary's way. We don't know how hard it was for her, what struggles she had. what we do know is that she stood at the foot of her son's cross, helpless, almost alone, watching him die -ref new icon.

As the third mother, she relinquished her son to the path he believes is required of him. Paradoxically, the life, the freedom God offers is not guaranteed an easy one. Our loving God who wants only the best for us, does not determine our life decisions. God, our creator who gave us the gifts of life AND freedom of choice does not then keep us so tight, so close that we are suffocated in God's grasp. Nor does our creator God offer us the illusion of freedom, so that we think we're making choices, but in fact we're responding to some celestial programming; so that we grow bewildered as we sense the contrast between the rhetoric and our experience.

Mary's example shows us how it is possible for us to mirror the overwhelming generosity of God, who creates and lets go AND THEN, arms open, receives and welcomes us back.

The gospel today tells us of the culmination of cost, of the extremity of demand and response. It tells us of a mother whose pain at watching her son die must have even surpassed her pain at his birth. And yet in her child's death, we believe there was new birth, a restoration of relationship so that, in some mysterious way, the ultimate letting go brings an ultimate coming home. With this extreme pain, salvation is born. Without Mary's bearing of Jesus her son, without Mary's growing self-denying generosity, without Mary's resolute loving in the face of agony, without Mary's showing us the cost and triumph of mothering, we would have no reason to believe that we, too, could be like this.

After all, Mary was like us. A human being. Yes, she was called by God to play an extraordinary part in salvation history, but as God gives us all freedom to choose our path, so Mary could have let the side down. That SHE didn't is OUR challenge and example.

An image from Chaim Potok's book "My Name is Asher Leviticus" may help. Potok writes of an orthodox Jewish boy, Asher Ley, who is developing into a great painter. Asher wants to depict the cost to his mother of her faithfulness to her family in the midst of suffering. As an Orthodox Jew, however, he has no artistic resources in his tradition, he is not allowed to paint images of God and he is certainly not allowed to use X images of suffering.

Notwithstanding all that Asher can find no other way to convey his truth, so he paints a crucifixion, with his mother, body twisted, arms extended, on a cross or window uprights and Venetian blinds as she waits for whatever occurs.

As Mary, her giving is her acceptance.
In mothering, arms are often outstretched for loving, for welcoming, for accepting, for comforting. In crucifixion arms are outstretched in helplessness, in vulnerability, in submission.

Mothering is both. Mary, Mother of Our Lord shows us how both come together and teach us of the love and freedom of God.

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