Mary, Model of Teachers
By the Reverend Peter M. J. Stravinskas, Ph.D., S.T.D.
At first glance, it is somewhat counter-intuitive to think of the Blessed Virgin as a model for teachers rather than as a model of discipleship. But, of course, a disciple by one’s very nature is intended to become a teacher. After all, didn’t Our Lord Himself say: “A disciple is not above his teacher, but every one when he is fully taught will be like his teacher” (Lk 6:40)?
So, how might we proceed? I would suggest that we take the cue from the Fathers of Vatican II as they launched onto presenting their doctrine of the Church in Lumen Gentium. Maintaining that the reality of the Church is so vast and that no single image could do justice to it, they resolved to consider the Church under a panoply of images, just as one might hold a diamond up to the light, turning it about in many directions the better to appreciate its complexity. And since the Fathers of the Church held that Mary and the Church were mirror images of each other, I thought we might benefit from the very same approach.
Let’s consider a baker’s dozen of such Marian images that might profit Catholic educators.
1. Our Lady is the preeminent woman of faith. As we read in Lumen Gentium: “The Blessed Virgin advanced in her pilgrimage of faith” (n. 58). Centuries earlier, St. Augustine could declare that “Mary is more blessed because she embraces faith in Christ than because she conceives the flesh of Christ.
What does that have to do with us Catholic educators? First, we must remember always the need to be men and women of faith, mindful of the simple truth of the adage, Nemo dat quod non habet (No one can give what he doesn’t have). Our stock-in-trade is faith; if we don’t have that, we have nothing else. Surely, that is what Pope Paul VI meant when he first penned that now-oft-quoted line from Evangelii Nuntiandi: “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses” (n. 41). Imitating Mary’s faith, we too bring forth Christ in the youngsters committed to our care.
2. Fiat is the most important word ever uttered by a human being. Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum (Let it be done to me according to thy word), said the Virgin of Nazareth, reversing every previous egotistical sentence spoken throughout history, starting with the primeval egoism of our first parents. That young Jewish maiden knew, instinctively, that great things can happen only when one does, not one’s own thing, but God’s thing.
Dante presented that insight as a truism: “In His will is our peace.” That means two things simultaneously: First, that God wills us to live in peace; second, that we can achieve such peace only when we conform our wills to God’s. Mary is the exemplar of such an attitude and we do well to follow her holy example. We also do well to enjoin such an attitude on our students, to whom the culture has lied by telling them that self-assertion is the path to fulfillment, while the very opposite is true.
3. Mary is the “Woman of the Spirit,” par excellence. She gave free rein to the Holy Spirit in her life from the moment of the Annunciation to her Son’s dying moments on Calvary. She demonstrates that Spirit-lived life in extraordinary fashion in exercising her charism of prophecy. Here our friend Frank Sheed is helpful: “To prophesy does not mean to foretell but to speak out. [The prophets] were not there primarily to foretell the future but to utter the eternal and judge the present by it.” Figures like Jeremiah or Ezekiel or Isaiah sought to make the divine agenda the human agenda, urging their listeners to conform their wills to that of Almighty God.
Our Lady has donned the prophetic mantle in her messages of Mount Carmel or LaSalette or Fatima, with the clarion call to repent, a strong echo of her Divine Son’s first public word.
Teaching, at its heart, is a prophetic ministry from which we cannot shrink. The world inhabited by our students and the one in which we are called to “forth-tell” is one which has everything topsy-turvy: black is white; right is wrong; up is down. Hence, the importance of making a hallmark of our teaching the mandate of St. Paul to the Romans, an audience so like our own: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (12:2).
Speaking the unvarnished truth in love is the only effective antidote to the poison of that “dictatorship of relativism” identified and made a mantra by Pope Benedict XVI. Our Blessed Lord declared that “the truth will make you free” (Jn 8:32). Speaking the truth is a liberating experience for the teacher and equally liberating for the young who hear it.
4. Our Blessed Mother was (and is) a woman of prayer. We see that in the profound spirituality and soaring poetry of her Magnificat, which the Church makes her own at Vespers every evening. We see it as she joined the disciples in the Upper Room as they made the first novena in history—those nine days between Christ’s Ascension and His sending of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. In fact, St. Luke goes out of his way to note her presence as that fearful band awaited its birth (see Acts 1:14).
Can we not also suppose that, during that primal novena, Mary taught the apostolic community how to pray, as her Son had begun to do during His earthly life and ministry? Perhaps as she had taught her own Son who, in His human nature, needed such lessons?
Mary, however, did not simply know how to pray and to teach others to pray; she was a genuine “prayer warrior” in her own right. Was it not her Jewish “motherliness” that prodded Jesus to work the first of His signs at Cana? That intercession of hers, Lumen Gentium teaches, was not “laid aside” upon her glorious Assumption: “On the contrary, she continues to obtain for us the graces of eternal salvation. By her maternal charity, she takes care of the brethren of her Son who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers and difficulties, until they are led into their blessed home” (n. 62).
We, too, must rely on prayer for the strength of our mission. Needless to say, we must teach others how to pray. But one more aspect of this question: We must heed the admonition of the Venerable Mother Luisita, foundress of the wonderful Carmelite Sisters of Alhambra, who asserted, without fear of contradiction: “Do not simply be good teachers. Be souls of prayer or you will have nothing to offer the children.”
5. Father John Lynch, in his eponymous book-length poem, called our Blessed Lady “A Woman Wrapped in Silence,” attributing her response of faith, precisely to her ability to rest in holy silence: “A woman wrapped in silence and the wait / Of silence was her heart that heard.” Her “hearing heart” imbued her with strength, passion, and serenity.
At least three generations (and probably more) have been infected with the disease of noise pollution: inseparable from phones, videos, computers, games. And ironically, what was supposed to foster communication has done the exact opposite. It is incumbent upon us to share with our students the value and beauty of silence, which gives birth to genuine communication and wholesome relationships.
Silence also teaches us that presence is often more powerful than words, especially when compassion is called for. Com-passio in Latin signifies “suffering with” another. Cardinal Newman would make much of this disposition in his meditation on Mary as the Consolatrix Afflictorum (Consoler of the Afflicted):
St. Paul says that his Lord comforted him in all his tribulations, that he also might be able to comfort them who are in distress, by the encouragement which he received from God. This is the secret of true consolation: those are able to comfort others who, in their own case, have been much tried, and have felt the need of consolation, and have received it. So of our Lord Himself it is said: “In that He Himself hath suffered and been tempted, He is able to succour those also that are tempted.”
A teacher’s compassion, especially offered in a Christian context, may be required quite often today—and perhaps more often than in the past—for the child of divorce or one who has suffered the loss of a loved one; one who has flubbed a play in a key game or has failed an important test; one who lives an intolerable home situation. A silent presence, accompanied by a knowing glance, at times, may mean more than a thousand words.
6. The Litany of Loreto hails Mary as the Turris Davidica (Tower of David). Cardinal Newman explains that title thus: “A tower in its simplest idea is a fabric for defence against enemies. David, King of Israel, built for this purpose a notable tower; and as he is a figure or type of our Lord, so is his tower a figure denoting our Lord's Virgin Mother.”
It is an indisputable fact that, down the ages, the Church’s teaching on Mary, especially as “Mother of God,” has served as a rampart to guard the Church’s most fundamental teaching of Jesus as “true God and true Man.” For a millennium and more after the Early Church struggled with her Christological doctrine, that tenet of faith rested secure. That is no longer the case, so that a robust affirmation of that truth must be presented to our students who, in turn, will be able to explain and defend the God-Man’s true and full identity in the various spheres of influence they will occupy once they have left our tutelage.
7. Our Lady can also teach us much about how to offer correction and direction. In your mind’s eye, bring forth that episode of the supposed loss of the adolescent Jesus who, it turns out, wasn’t really lost at all. At any rate, upon His being found in the Temple, Mary—again, a real Jewish mother—doesn’t hesitate to chastise, albeit gently, even the Son of God: “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously” (Lk 2:48). John Calvin actually proffers a charming apology for Mary’s behavior here; he says: “The weariness of three days was in that complaint!” Some two decades later, we shall hear her enjoin the waiters at the wedding feast of Cana: “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2:5).
In those two pericopes, I think we have the foundation for a healthy Catholic discipline policy: correction given honestly, fairly and lovingly; direction rooted in the mystery and Person of Jesus Christ. Gauging any particular disciplinary norm by those two standards, no teacher or administrator will ever go wrong.
8. Holy Mary is the Mulier Fortis (Valiant Woman) of Proverbs 31, standing in the long line of other valiant women like: Sarah and Rebekah, Deborah and Esther and Judith, and that noble mother of the Maccabees.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux makes the case for her bearing this title: “A lady full of bravery: she traveled through her mortal life upon this evil world, yet through the majesty of her spirit she surpassed all creation. For it was to her, the valiant woman, that Gabriel was sent—this very name means ‘God’s valiant man.’ Was she not indeed valiant, this woman, Mary, whose love was stronger than death?”
Yes, she had “a love stronger than death” (Song of Solomon 8:6). At the foot of the Cross, St. John the Evangelist makes clear, she “stood” there (19:25); she took her stand there—no swooning for her. Not only did she “stand” there; her “standing” there reflected her fidelity to the end. Valiant and faithful.
Valor and fidelity are in short supply today. Inculcating those virtues in our students would make them true sons and daughters of Mary which, in turn, would make her their proud Mother.
9. Blessed Mary was a woman of Tradition. It is apparent that she was steeped in the Sacred Scriptures, so that verses tripped off her tongue in the Magnificat. We also see her as observant of the Law: presenting her Child for circumcision on the eighth day, offering Him to His heavenly Father on the fortieth day, dutifully going on pilgrimage to the Temple.
No student should emerge from a Catholic school without a full understanding of our Tradition, along with a deep appreciation for a Tradition that has spawned a culture of literature, art, music, architecture—and thousands upon thousands of saints.
10. Mary was the quintessential counter-cultural woman. In her Magnificat, she identifies all the ways of God that go counter to those of the world:
He has shown strength with his arm,
he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,
he has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and exalted those of low degree;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent empty away.
Along with her Son, Mary crushes the head of the serpent as that is graphically portrayed in Revelation 12.
The Church in America was never very good at being counter-cultural. In point of fact, she was all too often given to assimilationism. Sometimes one hears well-meaning but poorly informed “conservative” Catholics bemoan the current state of affairs by asserting, “Before Vatican II, Catholics didn’t divorce or abort or contracept.” That’s true but only half the story: Nobody did! Catholics were no different from the mainstream, and once the mainstream changed course, so did most Catholics.
The present moment calls for raising up a generation of genuine Catholic counter-cultural agents, comfortable in their Catholic skin and desirous of sharing our Catholic vision of life with a society that desperately needs such a vision—whether it knows so or not.
11. The Blessed Mother was an icon of charity and sensitivity. Hearing the joyful news of Elizabeth’s totally unexpected but potentially fraught pregnancy, Mary—forgetting her own needful situation—embarks on a dangerous journey through the hill country to attend to the even more needful situation of her kinswoman. As a guest at Cana, her desire to save the newly-weds from embarrassment has her importune her rather unwilling Son to hasten His “hour.”
Young people growing up in an egocentric culture of entitlement will need heavy doses of education in altruism, which lessons can most effectively be taught through the holy example of our Blessed Mother.
12. St. Luke, perhaps aptly called the first “Mariologist,” shares an important piece of information in his Infancy Narrative: “But Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (2:19). What would he have us take from that verse?
Cardinal Newman sees therein Mary as a model of one who seamlessly unites Faith and Reason and so he instructs his congregation:
Thus St. Mary is our pattern of Faith, both in the reception and in the study of Divine Truth. She does not think it enough to accept, she dwells upon it; not enough to possess, she uses it; not enough to assent, she developes it; not enough to submit the Reason, she reasons upon it; not indeed reasoning first, and believing afterwards, with Zacharias, yet first believing without reasoning, next from love and reverence, reasoning after believing. And thus she symbolizes to us, not only the faith of the unlearned, but of the doctors of the Church also, who have to investigate, and weigh, and define, as well as to profess the Gospel; to draw the line between truth and heresy; to anticipate or remedy the various aberrations of wrong reason; to combat pride and recklessness with their own arms; and thus to triumph over the sophist and the innovator.
The union of Faith and Reason is the Magna Carta and Ratio Studiorum for all Catholic education.
13. The Holy Virgin is the Sedes Sapientiae (Seat of Wisdom) and Hodegetria (Indicator of the Way), which is to say that Mary is the first and best Evangelist. At the Visitation, she—literally—brings Christ to Elizabeth. She gives a seat to Wisdom Incarnate as she points Him out to both the shepherds and the wise men.
The Greeks sent a delegation to Philip with the request, “We wish to see Jesus” (Jn 12:21). If our students could articulate it, I think that would be their plea to us: They wish to see Jesus—and it is our bounden duty and high privilege to grant that holy request, following the path first trod by none other than the Seat of Wisdom herself.
At the end of this reflection on Our Lady the Educator, I want to commend to each of you this beautiful prayer of Cardinal Newman; make it your own prayer of preparation for Mass, and teach it to your young charges:
O Holy Mother, stand by me now at Mass time, when Christ comes to me, as thou didst minister to Thy infant Lord—as Thou didst hang upon His words when He grew up, as Thou wast found under His cross. Stand by me, Holy Mother, that I may gain somewhat of thy purity, thy innocence, thy faith, and He may be the one object of my love and my adoration, as He was of thine. Amen.
Reverend Peter M. J. Stravinskas, Ph.D., S.T.D., is founder and superior of the Priestly Society of Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman, a clerical association dedicated to holiness through the renewal of priestly life, the sacred liturgy, and Catholic education. He has authored or edited more than 50 books and 600 articles. This is an adaptation of an address given in June 2024 to Catholic classical educators.