“As Jesus was saying these things a woman in the crowd called out, ‘Blessed is the mother who gave You birth and nursed You.’ He replied, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.’” (Luke 11:27)
The gospels feature our Lord, God and Savior Jesus the Messiah and focus on His message and actions. It took a while for the Church to appreciate what the woman in the crowd grasped in a moment of divine inspiration—what a mother He had to produce such a Son. We know there was much more to it, which the Church took just as long to recognize, identify and agree upon, then ratify as official doctrine. And yet this unknown woman’s blessing is lifted up in the gospels read on the feast days that honor the holy Theotokos: Blessed be her womb and breasts for birthing and suckling the Son of God.
Did she realize the profound mystery she was celebrating? Probably not. Most likely she was a mother herself. She would appreciate a child that fulfilled all a mother’s expectations from the moment she was aware of her pregnancy through the gestation period while a living creatures was being developed within her, a blend of her husband’s genes together with her own. A precious three parts of a year when dreams and fantasies abound: What will the child look like? Be like? Take after? Will the child be happy or morose, intelligent or slow, aggressive or passive? Then watching Jesus captivating a crowd of listeners, perhaps having healed one or a few, giving hope to their people that it might just be He was the long-awaited Messiah, come to turn things around and restore the fortunes to Israel, much like the golden age of King David. Maybe she was old and hard of hearing, barely able to make out what He was saying. But it didn’t matter; she knew that He was special. As such, He had been raised properly by a loving and wise mother.
We also bless, praise and honor the Mother of God for the same reasons, but we from our advantage place in time, equipped with the theology of the Orthodox Church along with our own meditations on those precious events in her life: Her early childhood raised in the temple, the Annunciation by the Archangel Gabriel, the incidents in Bethlehem and the flight to Egypt, return to Galilee and life in Nazareth, then the subsequent events following the preaching above where the unknown woman was present—Palm Sunday, the crucifixion, resurrection and her life with the beloved apostle John.
The response of our Lord Jesus to the outburst from the woman, also in the form of a blessing, “Blessed rather are they who hear the word of God and keep it,” has been misunderstood by those who are not prone to honoring the Mother of God. They think it to be a put-down rather than the honor Jesus is bestowing on His mother. Yes, of course she is blessed for having given Him birth and nurturing Him; but the blessing from the heavenly Father was prepared from the beginning of the universe. Surely the Holy Trinity was aware even before the world came to be that human nature being what it is and freedom being integral to the free choice to be united with divinity, Mary’s role was paramount in mankind’s salvation. She heard the word of God from the voice of the Archangel, through the events listed above, and she kept it even to the time of her falling asleep. Indeed, she served as the Church’s historian—how else would we know about those events before, during and after Christ’s nativity?