This May 21 marks a dark anniversary in the annals of art history. Exactly 40 years ago, a crazed man named Laszlo Toth unleashed his sledgehammer on Michelangelo’s Pieta, dispatching pieces of her nose, eyelid, neck, arm, fingers—some 50 shards in all by the time the mayhem was put to rest. Toth didn’t know what he was doing, the courts ruled. Poor guy! His stunt landed him in an asylum. Nevertheless, I can’t help reading this sad event like an icon. How often has our broken world pummeled our Blessed Mother with criticism?
If we barricade our spiritual lives against the Blessed Mother, if we chip away at our Spiritual Mother, do we really lose anything significant?
As Simeon foretold and as Michelangelo’s statue testifies, Mary is called to share in Christ’s Passion. But when she is despised, it is we who are torn asunder. We are impoverished, when she is forgotten.
Even some Protestant apologists lament this fact. R. C. Sproul once said, “Now it’s no objection to Protestants that Mary be seen as one of the most—if not the—extreme model of faith… See, we’re so much caught up in the polemic with the Roman Catholic Church about Mary that we have missed a magnificent example of godliness. No better example of godliness can be found in all of Scripture than this woman, Mary.”
Hat’s off to Sproul for his sincerity! Mary has a pivotal role to play in our lives, if only we’d let her in. She offers us an excellent image of Christian discipleship.
Mary’s faith was unprecedented
No one was ever asked to be the mother of God. Can we, who have gotten used to the idea of God’s becoming man, even put ourselves in her sandals and imagine how outlandish the angel’s proposal must have sounded to her?
How terribly confusing! And there were no hotlines, no libraries to consult, no experts standing by ready to explain the philosophical and theological nuances that help us wrap our minds around the Incarnation. Sure, Gabriel gave it the old college try with that sound-bite about the overshadowing Holy Spirit. But did that diminish the mystery or increase it? What Holy Spirit? He hadn’t even been revealed yet! When the angel vanished, Mary surely had more questions than answers.
Still, she said fiat: “Let it be done to me according to your word.” She believed with a simple, unconditional and unlimited faith. And her peerless faith changed the world forever. If we have believed, it is because we are the beneficiaries of her surrender.
Mary also continued faithful to her yes in the most difficult of moments. “Standing by the cross of Jesus,” Mary hangs before our mind’s eye like a vivid portrait. Calvary’s sword diced her heart into a thousand pieces; “yet not even beneath the Cross did Mary’s faith fail” (Redemptoris Mater, 26). Her triumph in the hour of greatest darkness shines as a beacon of hope: yes, a radical, persevering fidelity to Christ is truly possible!
Imitating Mary
There’s truly something about Mary, something out of this world! Something worth contemplating, worth imitating, worth celebrating! Something grander than even Michelangelo’s stone could capture, something no fitful hammer will ever destroy.
We may not have a hand for the chisel, but if we imitate Mary’s unwavering faith, accepting everything that Providence allows to happen to us with love and gratitude, we will join the chorus that forever calls her blessed (Lk 1:48).
Blessing God always, in success and joy, in failure and misery, is the simplest, most practical way to imitate the heroic level of surrender we see in Mary. Try it! Just say, “Thank you, God,” in every instance. God himself will smile upon our admiration and emulation of his masterpiece and, through it, sculpt us into saints.
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