Mary, Mother Of Jesus Series

Mary, mother of Jesus

Mother mary lived through every gamut of emotions a mother can face and was even loyal to stay with her son as he died on the cross. Memories of young Jesus were of powerful comfort to her while she waited, as we wait, to be with him again.

Ask someone to name a famous Mary, and he or she will almost certainly mention "Mary, mother of Jesus." she is perhaps the most famous "Mary" in history, even an object of worship for some.

The root of the name mother mary

Mary was called Miriam, after the sister of Moses." Why do we call her Mary? Miriam is Hebrew, while Mary is a New Testament blend of two Greek names: Mariam and maria. Both Miriam and mary guarded God's chosen leaders during infancy as worldly authorities sought to kill them.

After the pharaoh ordered that "every Hebrew boy" be "throw[n] into the Nile" (exodus 1:22), Miriam watched over her brother where he was hidden among some reeds (exodus 2:4). She fetched a nurse (their mother) for the pharaoh's daughter (exodus 2:5-7).

Mary, with joseph, protected Jesus from another jealous king, Herod the great. One meaning for Miriam/Mary is "wished-for child," and both women certainly cared for important children whose safety was under threat from murderous authorities.

Miryam's name "belongs to a family of words which suggest 'bitterness,'" because, as an older woman, she was bitter towards Moses. There is no hint of jealousy or bitterness in Mary, mother of Jesus: she was worshipful, faithful, and courageous.

Prophetic roots of Mother Mary

Christians see parallels between Mary and her namesake Miriam which, in retrospect, reveals the prophetic nature of moses's birth and life. The Christian sees God selected two young women to look after the two men in scripture who led Israel out of slavery to Egypt and sin, respectively.

The prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 foretold that a woman, such as Mary, would emerge one day to give birth to Israel's wished-for child; their Savior: "therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Emmanuel."

Mary, the mother of Jesus, "loved God and wanted to serve him with all her heart." Luke recounts how the angel told Mary that she would become the mother of Emmanuel. "'I am the lord's servant,' Mary answered. 'May your word to me be fulfilled" (Luke 1:38).

Where was mother Mary from?

Jesus' mother was probably "born in Nazareth during the reign of Herod the Great." That reign lasted from 37-4 bc. She "spoke Aramaic, with a Galilean accent (Matthew 26:73)" and also "had contact with a multilingual world" where soldiers spoke Latin, Greek was the language of business and education, and Hebrew was the language of Jewish religious life.

She was part of the peasantry, which included skilled tradespeople, but faced "a triple tax burden: Rome, Herod the great, and the temple." Typical family homes consisted of "three or four houses of one or two rooms each built around an open courtyard, in which relatives shared an oven, a cistern and a millstone for grinding grain, and where domestic animals also lived." Mary would have spent most of her time doing household work, including strenuous physical chores.

Mother mary and life with a family

Mary would have been married as early as 13 "to maximize childbearing and guarantee virginity." Mary lived with Joseph, Jesus, and "James and Joseph and Judas and Simon" plus sisters not named in the bible (Mark 6:3).

She was a tough woman "capable of walking the hill country of Judea while pregnant, of giving birth in a stable, of making a four or five-day journey on foot to Jerusalem once a year or so," of sleeping outside "and of engaging in daily hard labor at home." She was probably illiterate since women rarely learned to read and write when oral information was typically transmitted.

"As a jew, she had been learning about biblical prophecy her entire life." she was taught to expect the promised Messiah. She became "part of the fulfillment of god's ultimate plan" when the angel declared, "You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be the son of the highest" and "will reign over Jacob's descendants forever" (luke 1:31-33).

In Luke 1:54-55, Mary declared, "He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors." Her song, said Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is "the oldest Advent hymn."

Mother Mary and life with Jesus

We do not know much about Mary because the Gospel is Jesus' story, not hers. We might surmise that before Jesus' resurrection, she must have been confused. After all, Jesus began his ministry by offending the people in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4), and he continually upset the Pharisees.