[11] 87 The Angel Gabriel From Heaven Came

‘Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head,
“To me be as it pleaseth God”, she said,
“My soul shall laud and magnify his holy name”:
Most highly favoured lady.
Gloria!’

Think about it; Mary is the only major female character in the Nativity story. This is a fairly constant problem with stories in the Bible; women just don’t feature. It might tell us two things about the cultural mores of the age; either women weren’t considered worthy of writing about, or worse, they weren’t allowed to do anything worth writing about. The other female character is Elizabeth – does this send the message that women are only good for bearing children?

The two Gospels which deal directly with what we recognise as the Christmas Story are Matthew and Luke. It’s interesting to examine how they treat their leading lady. Luke says ‘In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary.’ (Luke 1:26-27). Although Mary is mentioned first, she is not given a name until after her husband Joseph. He is described first in terms of his gender, then his name, then his lineage. She is twice referred to as ‘the virgin’ before she is named. Here is a man named Joseph and a virgin named Mary; almost as if her gender doesn’t matter – what’s important here is that she hasn’t had sex. Matthew goes a step further by following Joseph as the ‘protagonist’ of the story; Matthew is saying how great Joseph is by allowing his wife to be pregnant, while Mary (who has to live with the back-pain and swollen ankles) is a purely passive element.

In fact, it is this passivity which shows an insidious misogyny at the time of Christ and after. In Matthew, Mary ‘had been betrothed to Joseph’ (1:18) – evidently not her own decision. In Luke, Gabriel uses phrases such as ‘you will’ and ‘you shall’ (1:31), because it is never really an optional thing. She of course obeys. As the carol says; ‘Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head’, and she describes herself in Luke’s account as a ‘servant’ (1:38). Here is a woman who is used to being seen as inferior, a woman who does everything and gets little recognition.

Just as I typed that last phrase, a song began in the concert hall. I am currently in the foyer, acting as Front of House Manager for this evening’s concert. After a programme of modern instrumental works by contemporary composers, suddenly a choir started singing, repeating ‘Maria, Maria’. This is Gorecki’s ‘Totus Tuus’, meaning 'Totally Yours', written for Pope John-Paul II's visit to Poland, since this was the Pope's motto, and he devoted himself in particular to St. Mary. I’ve often said that Providence has a sense of theatricality, but the perfect timing of this coincidence is almost as if something (or someone) wanted to make a point.

Even if the gospel writers down-play Mary’s role, history has put her back on her well-deserved pedestal. Happily, songs and poetry have honoured Mary for centuries. I’d tentatively suggest that this is a large part to do with the third line of the verse above. It is a snippet from the Magnificat – Mary’s own song of love for the Lord, in which she casts herself as the servant of ‘humble estate’ (Luke 1:48). I stressed ‘herself’ in the previous sentence because the Magnificat is the place in the gospel where Mary takes charge of her own destiny. Here she chooses to humble herself.

By being meek, she inherits the earth. In her own words, God has ‘exalted those of humble estate’ (Luke 1:52), exactly the phrase she used to describe herself. It is her passive nature that God flips on its head, for her to become Mary, Mother of Christ; object of adoration for the ages. Whether she is forced down by sexism, or by her own volition, it is Mary’s lowliness that makes her a ‘most highly favoured lady’. Thanks be to God.