We, especially we Catholics, have a devotion to Mary that developed from early beginnings. It was a good thing from the start because it emphasised the role of the female in what was recorded as and developed as, a mostly male dominated Christianity.
The earliest ‘belief,’ recorded in the gospels of Matthew and Luke are of the annunciation of her pregnancy. They clearly had in mind the account in Isaiah of a lady becoming pregnant as a sign of a better future (Isaiah 7 :11ff) “Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test. And he said, “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” And this passage was applied to Mary at her conception of Jesus – the virgin birth. This was believed also because Jesus was the Son of God. At the end of her life it was thought that she would go straight to heaven and hence the belief in the assumption (sometimes like a deathless transition but mostly as a resurrection after death. She was naturally regarded as sinless so that when the idea that all humans inherited the sin of Adam in the story of creation Mary was seen as an exception to this too.
Though many Christians like to focus on these exceptional beliefs about Mary’s life and death, we don’t always see how it should affect the way that we live or try to live – a challenge that devotion to Mary does not naturally pose to us – as it should. Let’s try to change that!
iseeitmyway 