Pentecost, and Mothers' Day: Let It Be

Today marks, for the worldwide Church – Protestant and Catholic both, in fact – Pentecost: the winding up of the long lovely Lenten/Easter season. We commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit onto the Apostles and the Disciples, including Mary – mother of Jesus. On this day, the preaching of the gospel (it's an Old English word that simply means "good news") moved out from Jesus' own immediate coterie, into the whole world... and down to you and me, who are both doing lousy jobs of living the Message.

Today also is Mothers' Day here in the US, and in a number of other Western countries. Moms should be taking the day off – hark; I hear a collective snort and bitter chuckle out there! And to show them how, I'm doing the same, a bit: I'd like to repeat the greater portion of what I posted last year for Mothers' Day.

Give her some thought and consideration, folks. Did you call her? "When I find myself in times of trouble..."

(And tomorrow, it gets really ugly here; you'll see.)

One of the things generally overlooked about The Beatles' "Let It Be", penned by nominally Catholic Paul McCartney, is the title, and its context within the lyrics: "When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom: 'Let it be'." Over the years, some of the overly analytical have seen "mother mary" to mean what in that era was also called "mary-jane", or marijuana – "420" to you young whelps. Thus pretty-boy Paul is hinting to us that he thinks best, or most calmly, with his system temporarily altered.

Others note that his mother's name was Mary, and that she died of cancer when Paul was fourteen… less than a year before he met John Lennon, aka //oo\\. These analysts see a wistful looking back to younger, more innocent times – especially with the Beatles juggernaut fraying heavily at the edges when they recorded his song. (This image is far sweeter than that painted by John's later bitter, aching ode to his own mother – killed by a drunk driver around that same time – in his characteristically simply named "Mother".)

Granted that today is Mothers' Day, here in the Disunited States. But I see in Paul's lyrics… Mother Mary herself, Theotokos, mother of God incarnate, who stood and watched powerless as her son died before her eyes.

Blow the dust off your Bibles, and flip open to Luke 1 (our Protestant cousins can find it in the dark, and are already there; for you Catholics unschooled in which books are where, it's about three-quarters of the way in). An old high priest by the name of Zechariah is confronted by an angel, and is told that his wife would bear a child who was to become a great prophet and who would pave a metaphorical path through the wasteland to his cousin, Jesus: John the Baptist.

To paraphrase a bit, Zechariah made a colossal blunder. We assume he recognized this being as an angel… yet doubted him – and this even when he knew full well that angels come to us straight from the Throne of God. He said to the angel, "Oh, yeah? Prove it. In case you didn't notice, the Mrs. and I are too old to have children. It ain't gonna happen."

Don't doubt an angel bearing great tidings – they have a direct line to the Front Office.

So this angel (a particularly mighty one named Gabriel, who was last seen some centuries earlier warning King David himself – and thus all of Israel – both of a coming devastating series of conquests of their country, and the coming as well of their longed-for Messiah) took note of his chilly reception. Wong answer, Zechariah: when you meet Gabriel, you fall on your face and do exactly what he tells you, up to and including taking on an army with the jawbone of an ox, to willingly jumping off a cliff.

And you don't tick off an angel. They might be messengers of the divine (it's what the word "angel" means in the original Greek), but they're not merely messengers: they also have some serious powers.

So Gabriel struck this old man speechless (and probably deaf, too) as punishment. Okay, I'd accept that too, if I were Zechariah (and he did) – sure beats being turned into, say, a pillar of salt, or dead on the spot.

Now, about half a year later Gabriel comes down again and visits young teenage Mary, daughter of Anna and Joachim (no, they're not in the Bible – but neither is the word "Presbyterian"), consecrated to the Temple as were many first-born. Gabriel brings similar word to Mary: she, too, would conceive and bear… not just a prophet, but the new (ah, though metaphorical) eternal King of the Jews.

Mary is an ideal role-model for all Christians: she was educated, and she wasn't stupid, yet she had a genuine humility about her, and a total trust in her God. She didn't doubt this angel, but did admit she didn't understand how this could be possible: though betrothed to marriage to Joseph the carpenter (who was very possibly a somewhat older man, and widower with children), son of Jacob, son of Matthan (etc.), she had even earlier committed herself to a life of devotion and consecration to the God of Israel and to his temple.

If angels smile, then I suspect Gabriel smiled indulgently at Mary's utter trust even in the face of the unknown she was being called to. So he explained that the conception would not be done via the usual route of human sexual mechanics, but rather through the power of God Himself which reaches into all of humanity: the Holy Spirit. Most of us – even those wise enough to be face-to-the-flagstone at this point – would look up and say, "Wait a minute. What was that?"

(Interestingly, the terminology Gabriel gives is very similar to that used in biblical descriptions of the Ark of the Covenant, which – as both your Bible and Indiana Jones will testify – carried the very real and powerful presence of God Himself. ("Ark", by the way, means "chest" here, in the sense of a protective container – e.g., "treasure chest". This has nothing to do with Noah and his floating menagerie.) So some modern Catholic mystics/theologians (e.g., convert Scott Hahn) realize that Mary became a modern-day
Ark, both metaphorically and literally; this shows up also in the Book of Revelation (11:19-12:1), where she is actually identified as the Ark of the Covenant.)

Anyway, the angel's answer satisfied Mary, and she said, simply, "Then I am God's servant. Let it be done to me just as you've said."

And there are those three words: Let it be.