We’re celebrating a unique feast of the Mother of God today, and that’s not only because the feast is celebrated exclusively by Slavic Christians and not by either the Latins or the Greeks. The other feasts of Our Lady are primarily about who she is in herself and what God has done in her. The mysteries of her conception, birth, entrance into the Temple, the Annunciation, the Birth-giving, the Dormition/Assumption are all centered on the mystery of the Incarnation and her role in it, and the fruits of it.
Today’s feast is not primarily about her relationship to God (though that can never be excluded from any Marian feast), but her relationship to us. Yes, finally we can celebrate something that’s all about us! Well, I don’t mean that in a selfish way, but this feast of the Protection of the Mother of God is, so to speak, the least theological and the most practical of the Marian feasts, the one most focused on our own present spiritual needs. All of the theology of the Incarnation and of the holiness of Mary is presupposed as we reflect on how she relates to us now. So this is a kind of post-Assumption feast. It’s about what she is still doing for us after having been taken up into the glory of Heaven.
When Jesus, dying on the Cross, said to the Beloved Apostle, “Behold your mother,” he was not merely establishing a bond between two individuals, nor was it a bond that death could sunder. The use in the original Gospel text of the generic terms “the mother” (instead of “his mother”) and “the disciple” indicate Mary’s universal motherhood of all Jesus’ disciples. So her spiritual motherhood was neither limited to St John nor terminated at her death. Her maternal ministry, then, was given its full scope after she was glorified in Heaven, and now we, and all Christians, are the beneficiaries of her intercession and protection.
At Matins for the feast there are a couple of quotes from Psalm 26(27) which are applied to the Mother of God: “For there He keeps me safe in his tent in the day of evil… He hides me in the shelter of his tent; on a rock He sets me safe.” Our Lady’s mantle of protection is like the “tent” of God in which He keeps us safe. The Son of God Himself was hidden in the shelter of her womb and then of her household for the years of his childhood. Therefore, having been his safe shelter for years, she can be our safe shelter, too, through her prayer and motherly solicitude.
Our Lady is sometimes called the “Queen of Angels,” and this is borne out often in the liturgical texts for the feast. Perhaps it is because we often associate angels with the ministry of protection. Some of the texts read as follows: “All the leaders of the heavenly armies form a spiritual choir and rejoice with all of us when they see the Lady and Queen of all praised by the faithful. The spirits of the just also rejoice as they witness the vision of the Queen praying with outstretched arms. She asks for peace in the world… and salvation for our souls… Today the Virgin is present in the Church and with the hosts of saints invisibly prays to God for us. The angels worship Him with the archangels, and the apostles rejoice with the prophets, because in our behalf the Mother prays to the eternal God.”
“The vision of the Queen praying with outstretched arms” calls to mind the origin of the feast, in which Our Lady appeared centuries ago in a church in Constantinople, which was being threatened by a barbarian invasion. A holy man of God in the congregation saw Our Lady enter the sanctuary, kneel in prayer before God, and then rise, facing the people and spreading her veil over them as a sign of protection. And of course, after this the barbarians were repelled and the people and their church came to no harm. This is most likely the reason why one of the prayers to Christ for this feast includes the line: “Save our city from danger, through the prayers of the one who gave birth to You.”
So the Mother of God is a welcome presence in our lives. She has been given to us by the Lord as a sheltering tent (to recall the words of the psalm), as one who prays for us and obtains God’s grace for us in all our needs. She performs this ministry of protection and intercession out of her tender and motherly love for us and out of her obedience to God’s will. We can be quite sure that there could be no better mother for us in Heaven or on Earth, since she is the one whom God the Father Himself chose to be the mother of his only-begotten Son in the flesh—and we must assume that He would only choose the very best for his beloved Son.
But to say that she loves us and is tender-hearted toward us is not to say that she is sentimental or permissive with her spiritual children. As a matter of fact, she probably has to practice tough-love more often than not, if she is to be faithful to the will of the Lord. She knows she’s dealing with a bunch of brats, hard-headed, self-centered, and rebellious, who act more like sullen adolescents than mature adults, so she’s not going to be handing out toys and candies all day. (I overheard a conversation in our bookstore years ago, when two women were looking at icons of Our Lady. One said, “Why does she always look so sad in her icons?” The other one immediately responded: “Because she knew that someday He would be a teenager.”)
Our Lady is a no-nonsense mother, and her mission is to help get us into Heaven, not merely to give us warm fuzzies on Earth. She has an important job to do, and she’ll take whatever measures are necessary to fulfill her mission. In her various apparitions over the centuries—those which the Church has deemed credible—she does not mince words but always calls her children to repentance and prayer, to faithfulness to God, and sometimes she warns of the consequences of failure to do so. Yet at the same time she offers herself to us as a sheltering tent, a place of refuge, as one who prays for us and looks out for us, as one who dearly wants us to share in the glory and joy that she experiences now in Heaven.
Perhaps an image of Our Lady’s intercession and protection that is not quite as far removed from us
as barbarian invasions in Constantinople is that of Our Lady of Guadalupe, for there is no shortage of her images in this part of the world, and no lack of devotion to her, either, and just about everybody knows the story. She did make certain demands of her chosen son Juan Diego and would not accept any excuses or his attempts to avoid her, for the will of the Lord had to be done. But her words to him were sweet and consoling, and they are words to us as well, which we would do well to reflect upon and find comfort in:
“Listen and let it penetrate your heart, my dear little child. Do not be troubled or weighed down with grief. Do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain. Am I not here who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? … Are you not in the folds of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms?…”
If we realize that we are under her protection, held in her arms like beloved children, and carried by her into the presence of God, then our troubles and burdens will be lightened, our fears and anxieties calmed. Even though the path to salvation is demanding and sometimes painful, we know we are not alone. Jesus still says to all his beloved disciples, as He did to St John from the Cross: “Behold your Mother!”—so that we might walk with her and rely on her help. And through her prayers and protection we will be led to that glorious place in which Our Lady in turn will say to us: “Behold your Lord and your God!”
