Mary’s Birthday

Today we celebrate the birthday of the Blessed Mother, an event the church celebrates exactly 9 months after her Immaculate Conception, to emphasize the duration of the human pregnancy. But today I’d like to focus on her infancy – what was Mary like as a toddler, a young girl, a teenager?

I imagine Mary as a two-year-old, jumping and running here, there and everywhere, as do all two-year-olds. As every mother and father can testify, that’s the age when you can’t keep children sit still for even a few seconds because they have extraordinary energy. And I am pretty sure that that Mary used to keep Joachim and Anne on their toes for every shenanigan she got herself into. I imagine her also as a 7 or 8-year-old playing with her dolls along with her friends and trying to help her mother with household chores, possibly at times messing things up instead of helping out. Now many of you may be thinking that I’m criticizing Mary – that is not the case for sure. Because like every young girl, we cannot imagine her always as we see her in holy pictures, with a serene face and angelic disposition. I am pretty sure she had her moments too, as did little Jesus when he was growing up at Nazareth. I am not saying they were naughty or misbehaving kids, but let’s say they were impish, mischievous, and playful, as are all children that age, after all.

The last phase is when I see Mary as a 13 or 14-year-old, who like every other teenager felt the physical changes in her body, and maybe even had a crush on some neighborhood boy. These are normal feelings that everyone experiences, and Mary certainly was no exception. We know that at the age of 14 or 15 her life changed completely when the Angel Gabriel chose her as the mother of the Messiah and encouraged her to take Joseph as her husband. And we know the rest of the story. So when we think of young Mary, let’s not imagine her as we see her in the statues, but as a normal young healthy, pretty girl, maybe without a cell-phone glued to their ears, and texting her friends.