Catholics hold the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, in the highest esteem. As a Catholic mother there is an unwritten expectation that we should be the kind of mother Mary was. A quick Google search will lead you to find articles like “5 Ways to Be More Like Mary” “Be More Like Mary” “How is Mary the greatest role model for Christian mothers” “Becoming a little Blessed Mother.”
I’ve been in a book club at church for almost ten years with fellow moms and most of our books revolve around striving to be like Mary. “Imitating Mary: Ten Marian Virtues for the Modern Mom” for example.
While many of these insights and discussions can be motivating, for someone who struggles with the pressure to attain perfection and never being good enough, the push to be like Mary can be intimidating bordering on frustrating, edging toward debilitating.
“Way to be like Mary!” I ridicule myself as I shove my four-year old off my lap because she elbowed me in the boob for the seventh time during one Little Golden Book. “Mary would never say that,” my inner voice taunts after I yell at my son to pick up his damned Legos and get them off my kitchen counter. “Would Mary be hiding from her kids?” I question myself as I stay in the bathroom for much longer than necessary, screaming at my children to go away every time I hear them approach the bathroom door.
No! Mary wouldn’t do or say or think any of this shit! Because she was Mary! And her child was Jesus! For crying out loud, how is anyone expected to be like Mary?!? I might as well give up ever trying.
I sat in Mass for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception* without my kids and reveling in the peace while feeling guilty that I wasn’t nurturing their faith. The priest’s homily went deep into just what it means for Mary to be born without original sin. She was literally perfect. She never sinned. She never experienced concupiscence (the part of our humanity that has a desire to sin). She was born without sin and never once sinned. She didn’t gossip. She didn’t lose her temper selfishly. She never sinned. Never.
I sat there listening. Stunned. Thinking of all those times I shamed myself because I had failed to live up to our Holy Mother’s standard. “Well fuck… So… trying to be like Mary is bullshit?!?!” I wanted to yell and throw down one of our book club books. How in the hell can I ever be like Mary if there is absolutely no way a normal human can ever achieve what she was?
But I was never asked to be. That’s an expectation that society has put on us. God created Mary in a completely unique way which no one in the history of the world has ever or will ever be created. He did it for a reason critical to the salvation of humanity. In the same way that the Big Bang isn’t a daily event, “being like Mary” cannot happen.
That realization has become freeing. It’s time I forgive myself and allow myself to not be like Mary. Not out of frustration, but because Mary is an impossible standard to obtain because it was meant to be impossible. We will not reach perfection in this life.
Mary is still, however, our loving mother. She still wants the best for us – for all of humanity – and she still has significant pull with her son. I will love her and honor her for the place she holds with the church, but I can’t be like her. I can pray to her and ask her intercession with her son. I can take my breather and break from my children while hiding in the bathroom and pray a rosary to be a better mother and leave out the “perfect mother” part. Mary doesn’t expect it from me. I have to quit beating myself up for failing at something God never required of me.
* A Holy Day of Obligation in the Catholic Church which celebrates when Mary herself was conceived. As Catholics we believe Mary was conceived without original sin so that she could be the perfect vessel to carry Jesus. There are many reasons the Church teaches this – found here – but it starts with the angel Gabriel saying to Mary “Hail, full of grace…” at the time he announced to her that she would conceive a son (Luke 1:26-38)
