During seminary at Boston University School of Theology I lived one year on Mission Hill in Roxbury, a Boston suburb.  Roxbury is a heavily Catholic area.  Driving around Roxbury one day, I heard the words to the “Hail Mary” prayer  broadcast on the radio over and over : “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.  Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” 

As a Christian feminist, Mary has always held a fascination for me.  She is, after all, the most important female figure in Christian theology, art, music and tradition.  It’s clear that in Irish  and many European settings, the figure of Mary was layered on top of pre-Christian feminine images of the divine.  Part of the process of converting “pagans” was to transfer the devotion to these other figures onto Mary.  It wasn’t hard.

In years past and still today, thousands and thousand annually make pilgrimages to sites related to Mary (Lourdes, Guadalupe, Czestochowa, etc.). Part of the reason they go is  because many feel Mary “understands” our human plight more than the distant God the Father.  Telling Mary your problems seems even easier than telling Jesus.  She understands.  Thomas Bandy, church growth consultant, says the importance of Mary is easily grasped by “pagans.”

In my feminist explorations of Mary over the years I always hit a wall though when it came to relating in Mary in prayer. We pray to God. Can we pray to Mary?  Will she hear and answer our prayers?  As I understand it, the Catholics venerate Mary, but pray to God. Is that a valid theological distinction or is it just patriarchal hair splitting?

If a “pagan” is someone who doesn’t go to church, doesn’t confess Jesus as one’s savior and never cracks open a Bible, I once was a “pagan”.  I was a “pagan” in my twenties, a college graduate making my way in the world. Worship in a church was outside my radar screen.  Yet once I had a powerful prayer experience with a mother figure. At the time, I was working in a field I had never before considered as a ‘career’ before landing a job as manager of a discount commodities brokerage firm in Boston. 

The business world was new to me, exciting and I was making a decent wage. The work was very stressful however. Often I’d come home frazzled and exhausted.   After one particularly difficult day, I found myself sobbing in my apartment, releasing all the tension of the day. I began praying a lament about my life at that moment. ‘Mommy, you never said it was going to be this hard’ were the words that came out of my mouth.  From the depths of my soul came a cry for help from the one person I felt was able to help me -- mother. My mother was the one my unconscious said was responsible for the order of things.

What is the cry of your soul this Advent?  Is there a way you can share what is in the depth of your being with Mary, the mother of our Lord? 

I suspect there might be a “pagan” inside you, a part of you that is yet unconverted, a part that stands outside the Christian faith looking in and therefore might be able to see Mary more clearly than those of us steeped in Protestantism. 

Let your heart speak to Mary today.