Reflections on the Rosary The Annunciation

Last week, I talked to a friend who is a life-long Catholic. She told me that she has always had great difficulty relating to Mary. How hard it was for her--a woman whose seventeen-year-old daughter committed suicide and whose son fought for his life after being deliberately hit by a car--to identify with the serene and perfect Mary depicted in Catholic art.

I wish to offer a different picture of Mary, one which does not--I hope--conflict with the teachings of the church but which does no doubt conflict her image in popular art.

Mary was almost certainly desperately poor, both because Palestine was itself a poor country and because she was betrothed to a laborer. In an agrarian society, a man who worked as a carpenter belonged to a family that had lost its land. Joseph was no doubt only a step above destitution. Recall that in the ancient world, there was not much of a middle class. With few exceptions, people were either properous or poor. An additional sign of Mary's poverty was that after the birth of Jesus, she offered two doves rather than a lamb as a sin offering. A woman who could not afford a lamb in a country in which sheep were common is poor indeed.

Children who grow up in poverty have a distinctive look, a kind of tightness in their features. You can see this most clearly, perhaps, in pictures taken during the Great Depression of families with small children. I sponsor a child in Honduras and receive photos of her several times a year. When I first began sponsoring her, when she was five, her face was open and happy. Over time, poverty has affected her facial expressions and she stares into the camera with a look of gritty determination that makes my heart ache every time I look at her. She is fifteen now.

Mary no doubt had that same look found in nearly all children who experience severe and prolonged poverty.

In Mary's day, parents arranged marriages for their children and no doubt she had very little say in her marriage to Joseph. Tradition records that he was much older but there is no real support in scripture for that. Still, the betrothed Mary was not a young woman in love but a woman about to embark on married life with a man she scarecely knew.

When the angel announced that she was to bear the Christ, her response is translated as "Be it done to me according to your word," but many scripture scholars report that her response indicates much more: an enthusiastic YES! to God's plans.

She said yes even though this event would make her an unwed mother in a culture that was sexually conservative, even repressive, and that subjected women suspected of adultery to severe sanctions. (In the ancient world, her betrothal meant that she was legally committed to Joseph and sex with someone else would be considered adultery.)

The Mishnah offers the following desciption of how women suspected of adultery were treated:

If she says: I have been defiled, she forfeits her marriage allotment and is sent away. If she says: I am pure, she is brought to the Eastern gate which is near the gate of Nicanor. There the suspected women drink the bitter water. There the women are cleansed after child birth, and there the lepers are cleansed. A priest gets hold of her garments, if they get torn, they are torn. If they are ripped, let them be ripped, so that her bosom becomes uncovered. He undoes her hair. Rabbi Yehuda says: If she has a beautiful bosom, he does not uncover it. If she has beautiful hair, he does not undo it. If she was dressed in white, he dresses her in black. If she wore ornaments of gold chains and rings in her nose and on her fingers, they are taken away from her to make her look repulsive. Then the priest takes an Egyptian rope and ties it above her breasts. Whoever wants to gaze at her may come and gaze upon her, with the exception of her slaves and bondswomen, because her heart would be hardened by this. All the women are permitted to gaze at her, as was said: (Ezekiel xiii, 48) That all women may be taught not to do after lewdness.



Mary was signalling her willingness to undergo severe and brutal public humilation, if necessary, to cooperate in God's plan. This passage indicates what kind of "public example" she would become if Joseph had chosen to do this. It also reveals Joseph's compassionate nature. As any man would be, he was no doubt hurt and shamed by Mary's suspected infidelity and yet he was able to conquer the angry feelings he no doubt had and act mercifully toward a spouse he believed to be unfaithful.


Mary's social humiliation no doubt continued all her life. All four gospels contain passages in which critics of Jesus allude to his irregular birth. "Is this not Jesus, Mary's son?" is one such veiled allusion. If Jesus had been regarded as legitimate, he would have been referred to as Joseph's son.

When Joseph was alive, he could extend his protection to her but after his death, she was alone, impoverished, and still regarded as an adulteress. One tradition records that as an old woman, Mary worked spinning wool into thread--a tedious, low-paying task that still left her deeply impoverished.

I urge you to remember the time before Mary became Queen of Heaven and was a child of poverty, an unwed mother, a widow in a village where everyone remembered that she became pregnant before her wedding, and a widow.

Sometimes, I think, people reject Mary with such passion and often vulgarity because they think of this serene, eternal virgin and think that she could never love them with all their (often sexual) sins. I believe the opposite is true. This is a woman whose life taught her the reality of suffering, social rejection, and the pain of being judged by others. This is the Mary who can understand your sorrows and respond to them compassionately. She was a human being as we are. She will help you.