Veneration of Mary is wholly appropriate

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/061019.cfm
Genesis 3:9-15, 20
John 19:25-34

Is our veneration of Mary appropriate? I think so. No. I know so. We venerate all presumed saints. They're special. Mary, though, takes the veneration to another level.

Mariam Webster says that to venerate comes from the word to love. The synonyms, and therefore definitions, of venerate are: revered, respected, esteemed, and honored; and in spiritual language, hallowed, holy, and sacred. Note that worship is not among those definitions. That's a critical emphasis for worriers of adoration turning into worship. Unfortunately, for Christians, we're all being drawn into the divine. God wants us to be with him as if we are deified. To be so much like God that we are gods ourselves. 

So, it's not accidental that folks get this very confused. Frightened of scripture's actual words (eat my body and drink my blood) to the point of disgust at one end and sniveling in fear at the other. And yet, that's God's work. That's what he does to us. Nonetheless, does Mary deserve the blessed badge that God assigned to her, the sainthood title we've calculated as doubtless, and veneration as the Mother of Jesus? 

Jesus is God. So, Mary conceived, birthed, nurtured, taught, raised, and even buried the incarnated Son of God. Ergo, God. All that doing by Mary means "mothering." Super ergo, Mother of God. (The disgusted pull their hair. The sniveling bawl in their hands.) It's not mathematical. It is, however, logical.

Does Jesus come up to Mary in heaven and say, "Hi, Mom." I'm pretty sure he does.

When Mary became a mother at 14 or 15 years of age, that seminal event (literally) elevated and humbled her place in human history immediately upon Jesus' conception. There is no pause here in the role of mothering, a wait between Jesus' fetal beginning and his birth. The biological and spiritual change in her being took place upon her words, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”

“Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Luke 1:30-33

Her willing acceptance of motherhood in the most strange of ways — the indwelling of the Holy Spirit upon the request of the Father God for the incarnation of Jesus as the Christ — changed not just her state as a child, but also as the historical bridge between “ages.” The conception of Jesus in her took creation from sinful cooperation with evil, as with Eve's innocence ruined by evil, into a far different future outlook for human beings. 

Mary's innocence easily matches that of Eve. Mary, as Catholic doctrine states, knew no evil in her heart. Nor did Eve, created through the hand of God from Adam. Eve is approached by a fallen angel hidden in the body of a serpent and persuaded to improve upon her goodness by measuring what is evil and good. Mary is approached by an angel of the Lord in full transparency of his assignment. His persuasion is not to bring Mary into God's knowledge, and therefore into divinity itself. Gabriel asks for Mary's cooperation with God to allow God's indwelling and installation of an everlasting Kingdom. 

Mary's innocence is not twisted by knowledge in order to distance her intimacy from God. Mary is offered love and mission and divine partnership with intimacy from God. Mary's agreement to comply with this angel's request is not to improve upon God's creation by her being aware of her perfection and reveling in it by knowing evil, as Eve was persuaded, but for Mary to open creation up to God's physical incarnation, joining God intimately within creation as one of us.

The stark differences between Eve's and Mary's visitation by an angel describe how humanity can be salvaged and renewed. First, there is a fall, a dangerous ruination by Eve poorly grasping the place of divinity and our intimacy with it. Then, there is a restoration, a shocking trust by God to place his divinity within the confines of a broken creation; and to do so with a similarly innocent young woman. God places himself within the hold and care of an innocent child as reparation of his being disjoined with Adam and Eve from Paradise by their sin. 

Mary was not guessing, or falling upon blind faith. She was told everything she needed to know before she submitted to the angel's request. She had been told Jesus' name. She knew his legacy ahead of time. And, she surely realized the implications of being pregnant without intimacies with the man she was betrothed to marry. She knew Joseph was not involved in the equation. Rather than ask about Joseph, she asked, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” She's begging the question about proprieties that she has already agreed to follow.

“The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God."

It's an important part of persuasion by the angel to support a crazy sounding request not with only the glamour of her son's future, but something even more incredible. He includes the disclosure of an important trust that God knows what he's doing here. Mary was not being left high and dry with a difficult and unbelievable proposal. She would have camaraderie in her cousin, Elizabeth, who though aged and childless had already conceived a child. 

"And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God.”

In the Catholic lexicon of beliefs, outlined in our catechism of faith, "'Being obedient she became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race.' Hence not a few of the early Fathers gladly assert 'The knot of Eve's disobedience was untied by Mary's obedience: what the virgin Eve bound through her disbelief, Mary loosened by her faith.' Comparing her with Eve, they call Mary 'the Mother of the living' and frequently claim" 'Death through Eve, life through Mary.'" Catechism of the Catholic Church (#494)

This notion of Mary's exalted position as "cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race" comes from very early in the Church's history. This short paragraph quotes none other than Iranaeus (2nd Century), Epiphanius (4th Century) and Jerome (5th Century). That record of understanding Mary's pivotal place in the Church begins only a few decades after the Apostle John's death. 

It's important to put this into the proper context of Christian thinking, tradition, and doctrine. The 15 year old mother likely lived another 40 or 50 years after Jesus' birth. She lived with John following Jesus' death. She was handed over to John by her only son in a public and even legal Roman/Jewish manner. 

“Woman, behold your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home. (John 19: 26-27)

Mary spent her obviously widowed and childless years with a paragon of scripture. She knew details of Jesus that no one else would. John surely filtered through her stories and provided input for our faith that at least matched those of the apostles. This woman mothered more than Jesus. That, in effect, is the source for her veneration.

We cannot be surprised to hear that people venerate Mary as "on par" with the divine. Her DNA is in the body of Jesus. Her motherhood comprised Jesus' formative years. Veneration defines our honor for all of the saints. Mary's elevation is not done by us, but by God. We recognize that she holds a place no other human has, and that Mary's restoration of the failed innocence of Eve must be attributed to her having "found favor with God."

Yes, it is one thing to be hand-picked by God. It is quite another to be wholly signed up. In essence, we're all hand-picked by God for something. At the least, we're created for love, which can surely be argued to be more than enough. Mary, however, had Davidian DNA, Jewish upbringing, and was a betrothed virgin. Her markings and other assignments are much like the gifts of a great athlete. Some athletes are gifted with talents beyond everyone else. As the book "Outliers" by Malcom Gladwell tells us, birth dates, genes, geography, and our time in history greatly affects our outcome for success. 

Indeed, Mary held the winning hand on being the Mother of Jesus, and she parlayed that into love and caring for the Church. Indeed, for all of us.

As Gladwell explains, though, timing, talent and stewardship aren't enough. We need to be committed to something beyond everything else in order to achieve greatness. When you add humility, faith and trust in God to the mix, as did Mary, her veneration is not excessive. It's entirely appropriate.