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Mary, Mother of Jesus

“Be it unto me according to thy word” — the Annunciation, the Magnificat, and the sword that pierced her soul

The Visit of Gabriel

The angel Gabriel came to a young woman in Nazareth, a village in Galilee of no particular reputation. She was betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, but the marriage had not yet taken place. Gabriel's greeting was startling: “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women” (Luke 1:28). Mary was troubled, and reasoned within herself what kind of salutation this might be.

The message that followed was the hinge of all human history. She would conceive and bear a son. He would be called the Son of the Highest. The Lord God would give him the throne of his father David. His kingdom would have no end. When Mary asked how this could be — she had not known a man — Gabriel answered that the Holy Ghost would come upon her, and the power of the Highest would overshadow her. Therefore the child to be born would be called the Son of God.

Luke 1:38

“Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.”

That sentence — ten words — is one of the most consequential acts of will in the scriptural record. She did not know exactly what would follow. She knew the social cost of an unexplained pregnancy in her culture. She knew that Joseph had not yet been told. She said yes anyway. Every subsequent blessing that flows from the Incarnation rests, humanly speaking, on this act of consent.

The Magnificat

Mary traveled quickly to the hill country of Judea to visit her cousin Elisabeth, who was herself six months pregnant with John the Baptist. When Mary entered the house, Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost, and the child in her womb leaped. Elisabeth cried out: “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb” — the first human being to acknowledge the child Mary carried as Lord.

Then Mary spoke. What she said is called the Magnificat, from its opening word in Latin. It is a song of praise that draws deeply on the Old Testament — particularly Hannah's prayer in 1 Samuel 2 — and announces the theological meaning of what God was doing through her.

Luke 1:46–55

“My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name. And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation. He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.”

This is not the language of a passive vessel. Mary understood what was happening. She called God her Saviour — meaning she knew her own need of redemption. She read the Incarnation as God's act of covenantal faithfulness to Israel, the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham. She saw in it the reversal of all human social hierarchies: the proud scattered, the mighty brought down, the hungry filled, the rich sent away empty. The woman who would bear the King of Kings understood his kingdom from the beginning.

The Sword

When Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus to the Temple for the ordinance of purification, an aged man named Simeon was there. The Holy Ghost had revealed to him that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Christ. He took the child in his arms and blessed God — and then he said something to Mary that she would carry for the rest of her life.

Luke 2:34–35

“Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; (Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart. She knew, from the beginning, that something sharp and terrible was written into her son's future. When the twelve-year-old Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem to sit among the teachers in the Temple — and when Mary told him that she and Joseph had sought him sorrowing — his answer was a gentle but clear reminder of a higher allegiance: “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?” (Luke 2:49). She did not understand. But she kept all these sayings in her heart.

The Wedding at Cana

At a wedding feast in Cana of Galilee, the wine ran out. Mary brought the problem to Jesus. His response was oblique: “Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come” (John 2:4). The address “Woman” was not a rebuke but a title of dignity, the same word he would use from the cross. And Mary, undeterred, turned to the servants and said seven words that are among the most perfectly practical instructions in scripture:

John 2:5

“Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.”

At the Cross

The sword came. The disciples fled when Jesus was arrested; Peter denied him three times; the rest scattered. But Mary stood at the cross. John records it simply: “Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother” (John 19:25). The woman who had said “be it unto me according to thy word” was still there at the end of the word, watching the thing the angel had announced becoming a broken body on a Roman execution stake.

Jesus, seeing her, and seeing the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, spoke one of his final acts of care. He entrusted them to each other: “Woman, behold thy son” and to John, “Behold thy mother” (John 19:26–27). From that hour, John took her into his own home.

Even in the extremity of crucifixion, the Son provided for the mother. And the mother, who had stood at the beginning of the story, stood at its darkest point without abandoning it.

After the Resurrection

The last time Mary is named in scripture is in Acts 1:14, where Luke lists those who were gathered in the upper room after the Ascension, continuing in prayer. The list includes the eleven apostles, the women, and “Mary the mother of Jesus.” She was there at the beginning of the Church, as she had been at the beginning of his life.

Scripture does not record her response when she saw him risen. But she had kept things and pondered them in her heart across thirty years. She had watched him die. She had heard the angel at the beginning say that his kingdom would have no end. Whatever happened when she saw him alive, she was the one person in the world most prepared, by the whole arc of her experience, to understand what it meant.

Key Scriptures

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