Mary, did you know that your Baby Boy would one day walk on water?
A: No. Mary is not omniscient and could not foresee every particular act of her Son. See the story of the Finding in the Temple in Luke 2:41-51.
Mary, did you know that your Baby Boy would save our sons and daughters?
A: Yes. “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus” (Lk 1:31). “Y’shua” means “the Lord is salvation”. Mary knew the meaning of that Name. That’s why she said, “My spirit exults in God my Savior.” It’s also why she spoke with complete awareness that her Son was the fulfilment of the promise of salvation to Abraham, a promise that encompasses the whole world since Abraham was told that through him, all the nations of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:3). So she says,
“He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his posterity for ever.” (Lk 1:54–55).
Did you know that your Baby Boy has come to make you new? This Child that you delivered will soon deliver you.
A: Yes. In fact, she knew that her Son had already delivered her, because she, the most saved person in the world, was immaculately conceived by his grace and preserved from all sin both original and actual. That’s why the angel greeted her with “Kaire, Kecharitomene” or “Hail, Full-of-Grace” (Luke 1:28) and why she thanks God her Savior.
Mary, did you know that your Baby Boy will give sight to a blind man?
A: No. Mary is not omniscient and could not foresee every particular act of her Son. See the story of the Finding in the Temple in Luke 2:41-51.
Mary, did you know that your Baby Boy will calm the storm with His hand?
A: No. Mary is not omniscient and could not foresee every particular act of her Son. See the story of the Finding in the Temple in Luke 2:41-51.
Did you know that your Baby Boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kiss your little Baby you kissed the face of God?
A: Yes. In fact, an angel who walked where angels trod, named Gabriel, specifically informed her that “He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32).
And when she asked for clarification of this astounding claim, the angel told her:
“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.” (Lk 1:32–35).
Mary, did you know that your Baby Boy is Lord of all creation?
A: Yes. This goes with being “Son of the Most High” and conceived by the Holy Spirit. It was part of the job description, and Mary (who, along with Joseph, taught Jesus his Bible) knew the Book of Daniel backwards and forwards and knew this passage:
…and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
and glory and kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed.(Da 7:13–14)
She heard Jesus refer to himself as the Son of Man many times. She knew what he meant by that.
Mary, did you know that your Baby Boy would one day rule the nations?
A: Yes. The Archangel Gabriel was really quite plain about all that:
...and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David,
and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever;
and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 1:32)
Did you know that your Baby Boy is heaven’s perfect Lamb?
The sleeping Child you’re holding is the Great, I Am.
A: In summary, yes. Mary did know that. And Christians knew she knew that for roughly the first 17 centuries of the Church until a small but influential minority of Protestants, mostly in the English-speaking world, came to dominate Christian discourse in lands under their domination. The result was multiple generations of Evangelicals so filled with fear and loathing of Mary that they came to believe that Mary had no idea who Jesus was and lived her life in either stupid incomprehension of, or hostility to, the Son of God. So we get tales that constantly cast her as either an unbelieving blasphemer calling him demon-possessed (in Evangelical exegeses of Mark 3). Or conversely, we get condemnation of Mary for believing Jesus too much and trying to shove him on to the public stage to impress the Women’s Auxiliary Guild as My Son, the Messiah (in Evangelical exegeses of the Wedding at Cana).
So the myth has grown up that Mary had no idea who Jesus was and that Jesus was typically hostile to her. What this illustrates is that the same principle by which the Latest Real Jesus always reflects our face back to us also applies to Evangelical takes on Mary. What we discover in the strange Mommie Dearest vision of Mary in older Evangelical circles is nothing about Mary, but plenty about the peculiar fears Evangelical culture has of connecting anything feminine with Christian piety.
Given that background, I regard songs like “Mary Did You Know” as a step forward for Evangelical culture, but a step backward for Catholic culture. Along with Simcha, I think it’s a song that has no place in the liturgy since it is a marinated in a theology that is, at best, describable as “Recovering Evangelical”. It is a song written by and for a younger generation of Evangelicals who see Mary as a sort of “forbidden fruit”: someone their parents did not talk about and weirdly treated as taboo. Someone they are becoming curious about. That’s good. I encourage that curiosity because it will, with God’s help, lead to a recovery of the fully Marian piety that was handed down by the apostles to Holy Church. But Catholics should not sacrifice that fulness by embracing Evangelical and post-Evangelical notions that Mary was ignorant of and hostile toward her Son. She wasn’t. She was his greatest disciple and knew herself to be the Mother of the Son of God from the start. The sooner we see that, the sooner we grasp how to be disciples ourselves.
By the way, for a full discussion of All Things Marian, easily digestible by both Catholic and Protestant (and Orthodox) readers, as well as curious non-believers, see my MARY MOTHER OF THE SON.
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5 Responses
I’m a Catholic and a singer. I’ve hated this song since the first time I heard it, and could never quite put my finger on why.
In fairness, I’m not a big fan of sentimental pop Christmas songs in general, and it kind of fits that category. Also, the final lyric line is stupid enough to blow up the song altogether. But it’s always made me very uncomfortable. And you’ve outlined the reasons very clearly. Thanks very much for this.
Obligatory pedantic clarification, brought up many times in the comments of previous incarnations of this post: Mary would have been well aware of the prophecy of the Messiah giving sight to the blind, but would not have known how literally that prophecy was to be interpreted. Therefore, while it’s entirely plausible that she expected Jesus to literally grant vision to one or more blind persons, we don’t know she did, and in any case we can’t say she knew he would.
Anyway, I really like this “pick apart religious songs to hold their content up against Catholic teaching” genre of blog post. (Been meaning to write some myself.) So for what little my two cents is worth, if you’re ever short on post ideas, that’s a well I wouldn’t mind seeing you dip back into.
It’s interesting since Immaculate Conception was first widely accepted by preeminent Protestant theologians, including Luther himself, before it was eventually approved as dogma ex cathedra when it was criticized in some circles as modernist and Protestant influence on the church.
But I’m preaching to the choir since you wrote about it on the Solemnity on 8th of December.
If you want a pop song for Christmas, “Father Christmas” by the Kinks actually has a much more theologically sound message cloaked in typical Kinks humor. 🙂
You must have moved in some very odd Evangelical circles, Mark. Weren’t you in some sect that refused to even celebrate the Eucharist? This might come from me living outside the US and thus avoiding the wilder shores of the American Zion, but my own experience with Protestants’ view of the mother of Jesus has uniformly been along the lines of “yes she was greatly beloved by Jesus and his apostles; no, she wasn’t sinless, or else she wouldn’t have had to go to the Temple every Passover to offer sacrifices for her sins (see the story of the Finding in the Temple in Luke 2:41-51); no, she can’t have been the Woman Clothed With The Sun in Revelation 12 if Catholic tradition is correct because Genesis 3:16 says birth pains are punishment for Original Sin… pick one; she’s the mother of Jesus but not “the mother of God” if we are using “God” and “Jesus” in the Nicene Creed rather than the Athanasian Creed senses; that’s about all we know about Jesus’ mother and if God had wanted us to know more then He would have inspired the Apostles to record more.”
Saying “filled with fear and loathing of Mary” is as uncharitable as if a Protestant said something like “Catholics ignore the Bible because they think it’s all myths and legends”.
If you really want to zing Protesatants over their Mariology, Mark, zing them for using the term “Virgin Mary” even though most Evangelicals believe her marriage with Joseph was 1 Corinthians 7- and Hebrews 13:4-compliant. It’s like Baptists et al having “altar calls” even though they insist very emphatically that their chapels do not have “altars”; or like Prots using the word “Christmas[s]”.