On the Devotion of Mary
December 21, 2025
Rev. Traceymay Kalvaitis
Luke 1: 26-38
In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But
the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”
“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “Let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel left her.
Luke 2: 1-7
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
*** Today’s sermon is titled, On the Devotion of Mary.
We see Mary depicted most often in artwork as the young mother, the Madonna with child. We also see Mary in the marble sculpture by Michaelangelo known as The Pieta, (see below) where
a life-size Mary is grieving as she holds the body of her grown son, draped across her lap after he was lowered from the cross. Between these two depictions, one as a young mother, so hopeful and protective, and the other as a mother bereft following the violent and premature death of her firstborn son, we can imagine the magnitude of the many sacrifices that Mary set in motion as she answered the angel Gabrielle, saying, “Let it be with me, according to your word.”
Mary is not a central figure in the Protestant tradition, but I think she should be. The disciples were asked to give up their livelihoods to follow Jesus, but no one was asked to give as Mary was asked. The Trappist Priest, Thomas Keating, writes, “Mary is asked to let go of everything she is, everything she has, and everything she may yet be.”* Mary is asked to surrender her entire life to the ultimate mystery of the incarnation of God.
About 20 years ago, I began to search for a painting or a piece of sculpture that captured the profound sense of Mary’s devotion. I found a plaster Madonna and Child at a St. Vincent’s DuPaul’s thrift store in Berlin, New Hampshire. I purchased it straight away for three dollars and fifty cents.
What draws me to the particular piece is the tenderness of Mary’s gesture as she bend her head to the head of the Christ child. I also appreciate that, being cast in soft white plaster, there is an absence of color. But, mostly, what continues to captivate my heart is how I feel when I look at her. I see her every morning and I am reminded, over and over again, what love and devotion to God can look like. I am reminded that when much is offered, much is received. Mary was asked to give her life over to nurturing another life, and that life would change the world.
There has been a great emphasis on Mary being a virgin and an even greater emphasis on the nature of conception, being immaculate, perfect, and free from sin, not as a result of human biology but the result of divine intervention. This can be a stumbling block for some. I found a beautifully articulated piece to hold onto this week, a piece that may prevent our stumbling. In one of his daily devotions, Father Richard Rohr quotes Benedictine author Kathleen Norris. Norris proposes “Mary’s ‘virginity’ has less to do with biology than with her stance towards God and life itself.”**
What do we really know of Mary’s “stance towards God and life itself”? There are two sources of information. The first is what scholars have gathered about Mary’s upbringing. Mary is the niece of the Priest Zechariah and his wife, Elizabeth, parents of John the Baptist. Zechariah is of the tribe Abijah and he lives in the “hill country of Judea” and distinctly apart from other members of the priestly class that, in this time period of the second temple, are very much concentrated in Jerusalem. Zechariah had a very different kind of ministry among what my New Testament professor, Rev. Dr. Mark Lawson, described as a community characterized by abject poverty. Mary grew up serving this same community, helping in the household of her aunt and uncle; she was steeped in a life of service and devotion. Knowing Mary’s background informs us as we look to the second and most revealing insight into Mary’s heart and mind, her response to the angel’s announcement. The scriptures say that Mary replies, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
We need to spend some time here, here at this precise point where Mary, in essence, empties herself of her own will and, in doing so, creates sacred space for divine action. This point where one’s identity drops away, leaving space for goodness, for God-ness, to find expression…this point has a name. The Trappist monk Thomas Merton named this “point vierge [the virgin point].” He describes this point as being accessible to us all, at the very center of our beings. Merton writes, “It is a point untouched [by sin and] by illusion, a point of pure truth . . . which belongs entirely to God. . . .” ***
This point vierge, this virgin point, this is the point where who we have been breaks free of every limitation and possibilities are suddenly infinite. This point vierge, this virgin point, is the point where we may realize, as truth, what the scriptures say, that “Nothing is impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37)
I love Mary for her courage. I love her for her vulnerability, her humility, and her willingness to empty herself so she could be filled with the Holy Spirit. I can not imagine a more perfect way for God to, literally, break in to the world of humankind than through an act of a woman offering her life and her all, to create a body that would be the temple for the infinite spirit of God.
According to the scriptures, Mary readied herself when the angel appeared to her. She answered, “Let it be to me according to your word.” In the words of Father Richard Rohr, Mary proceeds—as we must do in life—making her commitment without knowing much about what it will entail or where it will lead. How could the young mother Mary have known what the older mother Mary would have to endure? In the same way, we can not know what the future will hold for each of us, but we can face the future with the assurance that we are not alone; we have one another in this loving community of faith, bound by a common love that we call God.
In closing, I pray for the courage and devotion of Mary when I find myself in times of trouble. I pray for the willingness to set aside my own sense of knowing and listen to the divine words of wisdom, words that carry enough assurance that I, too, may answer, “Let it be.” I pray that, though we are parted as a nation, that there is still a chance that we may see. I am grateful for reminders of Mary, wherever they are found, assuring us that it is moments of tenderness, moments of heartbreak, seasons of joy and seasons of sadness that shape us the most. In all the seasons of our lives, if we allow, the love that is God is our constant companion and guide. So be it. Amen.
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeewXNcqHfs Thomas Keating
**https://cac.org/receiving-the-gift-2020-12-08/ Richard Rohr’s daily meditations
***Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Pastoral Prayer
Infinite Love we call God, I pray your guidance within us through the challenges of our lives. We have been told that nothing can separate us from your everlasting love; help us to be open and trusting enough to experience that as truth, and as grace. May we remember Mary in this season and may we gain inspiration from her example of emptying herself that she may be filled with the Holy Spirit of God. May we, too, be willing to make room within our hearts and minds for the light of Christ to be born anew within us. This I pray in Jesus’s name. Amen.
Benediction
I leave you with these words from James Paul McCartney, 1969: When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree
There will be an answer, let it be
For though they may be parted, there is still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be