I have always loved the rich affection that the Catholic imagination has for Christ’s Mother. In one sense, Mary is a humble, normal girl, who at a very young age was called by God to great things. At the same time, she is the New Eve, conceived without sin and crowned the Queen of Heaven. To Juan Diego, she appears as the comforting mother, ready to guard and protect her children. At Fatima, she prophesies a dramatic, eschatological vision for the entire century. For some, she shows what it means to accept God’s plan, no matter what he asks of us. But for others, she is a political revolutionary, ready to “cast down the mighty” and “send the rich away.” 

Mary defies the patriarchal structures of ancient — and modern — society. She refuses to be a
one-dimensional character, and will not be typecast. Yes, she is “a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph.” And she is also “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet.” To be Catholic is to sit with both, and to run towards, rather than away from, confounding tensions.

Much the same could be said of Jesus, who is at once born in a manger amongst the animals and also the King of the Universe, who is fully human but fully God, and who raises people from the dead but dies on the Cross. There are no one-dimensional characters in the Christian theodrama — but rather, a rich multitude of gifts afforded to each of us. 

Too often, Christians — and Catholics included — like to box in Mary as a “mother” and avoid saying anything else. And of course, Mary is the mother par excellence, not only of Jesus but of all humanity. To only think of Mary as a timid, passive, comforting mother, however, is to miss a whole other side to the (second) greatest human in history.

How often do we do this to people around us? How often do we treat them as archetypes and caricatures, rather than as full, living beings created in the image of a rich and multifaceted Triune God? Can we love Mary if we only see one side of her? Can we love our neighbor if we only see one side of them? 

The answer, of course, is no. The work of Christian love is also a work of encounter, of learning to live with rich complexity where we are tempted to see only caricature.