Gaga

Mary the God-Bearer 2010
Isaiah 61:10-11 
Galatians 4:4-7 
Luke 1:46-55 
Psalm 34:1-9


Lady Gaga is in town. The feature article in the newspaper had a picture of her in one of her trademark outlandish costumes. The caption read, “The Fame Monster.”

I actually have respect for that young woman whose real name very few people know, even people who consider themselves her fans. Lady Gaga has chosen to become rich and, above all, famous, and she has achieved those goals. To be fair, that news article title “The Fame Monster” was taken from a body of her own work in which she reflects on the reality of fame. Lady Gaga can sing, she can dance, she works very hard to give her fans what they want. Some of her songs touch people deeply. She puts a lot of effort into being Lady Gaga, and it shows.

But growing up Catholic on Long Island, there was another famous Lady whose image I saw everywhere.

That Lady we called by her given name, Mary. Pictures, statues, even those bathtub shrines that many homes sported in the front yards—she was everywhere. Miriam Bat Joachim as she was probably called was probably much darker and more Semitic-looking than the Caucasian faces gazing from walls or lawn shrines. But people tend to make Mary look like one of them, as much or more than they do Jesus.

No music videos, no MP3s, no concert tours, no paparazzi—why does Mary’s fame endure, far longer than Lady Gaga’s will?

Lady Gaga for the most part points to herself. Mary points to a deep and personal reality who speaks through her.

God does not speak from on high, commanding that we gaze up straining to see the divine presence. God speaks from among us, from within us, from the very ground beneath our feet and the very voices that we hear each day. In the Gospel, Mary is that ground.

Isaiah speaks of gardens and plants and new shoots—God lies beneath our feet and brings new life to birth right beneath us. A Catholic poet whom I knew in the Midwest wrote once of a “warm, moist, salty God.” That image jars us, until we gaze at Mary and remember that the eternal, creative, vibrant Word of God grew in a woman’s body and swam in amniotic fluid and tasted her milk as his first food. “Taste and see that the LORD is good” sang the Psalm. That taste was milky on the tiny divine lips and little trembling divine chin, just like on Rose or the newly-baptized twins or any other baby among us.

The one who bore God in her body through her openness, her “yes” to God, held him while he and she gazed on a wounded world.

Brutal occupation by Rome and violent insurgency tore the bodies of the people, while rigid religion and purity codes tore their souls and their community. Imagine what Mary and young Jesus saw walking by their own doorstep—Roman soldiers, pilgrims, beggars, rich merchants, revolutionary Zealots in disguise, Pharisees, lepers maybe, and just plain folk. Mary’s eyes guided her Son’s first steps amidst a world as violent and uncertain as our own. Every poor woman who gazes in pain and anguish from Pakistani floodwaters or Haitian rubble, from midnight emergency rooms and crime-ridden streets, gaze with Mary’s eyes. She is one with them, and so her ancient song-which-is-always-new, “my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord”, is the song of hope for Israel and for all the world’s poor.

For God chooses the cause of the poor, and God came as one of the poor. So long as Mary sings “Magnificat, with tune surpassing sweet”, the powerful will know fear in their hearts, and the poor will lift up their eyes and know hope.

When we honor Mary, we honor the hope of the poor and know, with relief and joy, that we are God’s poor.

When we long for God, when we pray, when we look with love and wonder and grief on a beautiful, wounded world, we find Mary. She does not point to herself. She points to her Son, the life and hope of the world. Funny how real fame comes from not trying to be famous.