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Mary

The Practically Perfect Woman

Of the three great world religions, the Roman Catholic Church occupies the position of 800 lb. gorilla in Christianity. This is the religion founded by followers of Jesus Christ and which ruled much of the Western Hemisphere until the Reformation. Regardless of whether one is Catholic or even Christian, one cannot deny the importance of the woman who started it all: Mary.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, appears in the gospels of Matthew and Luke in the Bible’s New Testament and in the Quran. Venerated as the quite possibly the most important saint in all of Christianity, Mary is revered by the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran denominations, all of which hold to the belief in her immaculate status as perpetual virgin.

Although many Protestant denominations minimize Mary’s role and dutifully trot her out at Christmastime, Mary occupies an exalted place in Islam as the practically perfect woman. As one of the few women named in the Quran, she is explicitly mentioned 70 times—more than the entire New Testament—starting with a reference to the Annunciation in which Archangel Gabriel offers her the opportunity to become the Mother of God. In this retelling of the Annunciation, both the Christian and Muslim faiths agree on the virgin conception of Jesus, even if they disagree as to His divinity. Muslims also believe, as do many Christians, that Mary remained virgin throughout her entire life.

The Quran, not the Bible, refers to Mary’s family, calling her the daughter of Joachim and a sister of Aaron. The family tree has her mother, Anne, descended from Fakudh who also begat Ishba who married the prophet Zechariah.

Not surprisingly, Mary’s greatest achievement which makes her worthy of mention within two of the world’s great religions is having produced a son of great renown and influence. Much as women may rebel and resent the reality of history, a woman’s worth in biblical times and still in many countries today rests upon her childbearing productivity. Motherhood being perilous to survival, a woman spent much of her (short) adult life pregnant, nursing, and taking care of children. Patriarchal societies, of course, prized male children; thus, a woman who bore sons would receive greater honor—and, possibly, privileges—than one who bore daughters or no children at all.

Mary is assumed to have lived a long life. The Bible and Islamic literature make few references to Mary in her later years, and the Quran does not refer to the Assumption at all. The Assumption is a strictly Christian belief and one of a handful of critical events in the matriarch’s life celebrated mainly by Catholics and Orthodox Christians: the Annunciation, the Immaculate Conception, Christmas, and the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.

For those not familiar with the term, the Assumption refers to the belief that, upon her death, Mary was taken bodily—assumed—into Heaven. On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII dogmatically defined this doctrine into the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus with these words: “The Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heaven.” Earlier celebrations of this event are not recorded until 336 A.D.; however, the belief is said to have dated back to the Apostles themselves. The “Memory of Mary” remained a celebration local to Mount Zion and Palestine until the seventh century, when Rome recognized the date as “Dormito” or “the Falling Asleep” of the Mother of God as accounted by St. John the Theologian.

The Assumption of Mary is celebrated on August 15th.

By Karen M. Smith