Optional Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Mary

Roadside shrine on Aron Mor Island

Lectionary: 636B

Blessed are you who believed 
that what was spoken to you by the Lord 
would be fulfilled.


On the fifth day since Mary's Birthday, which fell on Sunday this year, nine months after her Immaculate Conception, we have the option of celebrating her "Most Holy Name."
Mary, or Miriam, was not an unusual name but it has beautiful resonance because it belonged originally to Moses' sister. 
She was the wonderful little lady who conspired with her mother to have the infant Moses discovered among the reeds by the Egyptian princess. The royal daughter immediately recognized the boy as a Hebrew but was nonetheless smitten by his helplessness and his vitality. Despite her father's decree that every Hebrew boy should be murdered by the Hebrew midwives, she placed the boy under her protection.
Little Miriam watched the whole thing and then innocently asked if the princess would like her to find a Hebrew woman who might nurse the child. The princess must have known she was recruiting the baby's own mother, but readily consented. 
Despite the overbearing power of the masculine hierarchy in Egypt, women had soft ways of working around, over and under it; and even of humanizing a barbarian society. 
In later years, Miriam would accompany and advise Moses as he led the people out of Egypt and into the Sinai desert. She and Aaron got into trouble with Moses and God briefly, when they seemed to challenge Moses' standing before God; but she is nonetheless remembered as a heroine of the Bible. 
Since nothing in God's world happens accidentally, we believe Mary's name, rooted in ancient history, means something to us. Miriam is a type of Mary, like Eve, Deborah, Judith, Esther, and the Maccabean widow. Miriam represents the watchful, clever intercession of Mary over the Church. She is also Moses' adviser, as Mary advised the Lord at Cana. 
Pope Francis has invoked Mary as the Undoer of Knots; of sticky, apparently intractable situations that seem to have no solution. Moses would not have survived his abandonment among the reeds without the clever intervention of his sister and mother, and the patronage of the Egyptian woman. 
On this day in September, in the waning days of summer, we thank God for Mary, our mother, sister, daughter and friend. And we do not hesitate to invoke her Most Holy Name as we pray daily in the Presence of God. 
"Hail Mary, full of grace...."