The Virgin Mary has appeared to thousands and performed miracles from the early fifth century until now. Millions around the world are devoted to her. But have we wrapped so much elevating imagery around her that we've lost the real woman who gave birth to Our Lord? Was Mary of Nazareth a pain-free, perpetual virgin, a spiritual superwoman, even something of a goddess, floating calmly above the storms of her life? Or was she a woman who experienced the agony of childbirth, the dirt and grit of everyday existence, and ultimately witnessed her Son being tortured to death? What do we really know about her from Scripture, and how have we made this first-century peasant woman into a sort of glowing, semi-goddess? And while we're at it, how has the divinity of her Son obscured our clear sight of her? Simply Mary: Meditations on the Real Life of the Mother of Christ answers these questions in a combination of reflection and biography, exploring things we can know and can surmise from the record that have not been brought up before now. With both the eyes of faith and of a realistic, historical appraisal, this book addresses the most important question that has never been answered: who was the woman, Mary of Nazareth? Before she can be the Mother of God, she has to be a woman.
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James Prothero. Simply Mary
Simply Mary
Table of Contents
Meditation One: A Surprise Visitor
Meditation Two: Who Is That Girl Anyway?
Meditation Three: A Beginning
Meditation Four: Whenever It Rains, It Pours
Meditation Five: One Wild Christmas
Meditation Six: Maryam’s Sword
Meditation Seven: Just When You Thought Nothing Would Ever Change
Meditation Eight: Another Lull
Meditation Nine: The Storm Arrives
Meditation Ten: Desperate Measures
Meditation Eleven: The Very Worst That Could Possibly Happen
Meditation Twelve: The Surprises of Adonai
Meditation Thirteen: Another Life
Meditation Fourteen: Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Bibliography
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Meditations on the Real Life of the Mother of Christ
James Prothero
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Unlike in Catholicism, in Judaism marriage is considered the most holy state, pursuant to the first commandment of God given in the Hebrew Bible: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). In Judaism[,] celibacy is frowned upon and even considered sinful. To have consecrated virgins at the Temple would violate Jewish sacred law and custom. No Jewish writings, ancient or modern, provide any support for the idea that there were temple virgins at the Temple in Jerusalem. (StackExchange: Christianity)
And here I am going to step squarely into the minefield. Both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church have come down believing that Mary was ever-virgin, and between them they constitute the vast majority of the world’s Christians. Protestants doubt this, probably because part of the Protestant revolution was a rejection of the perpetual celibacy of priests and monastics, modeled in part on this idea that the Mother of God in her excessive purity, was ever-virgin.
