Adapted from a homily for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.
The Gospel of Luke doesn't waste a lot of time. In the first sentence of today's reading (1:26-38) there are six names: Gabriel, Galilee, Nazareth, Joseph, David, Mary. An angel, a region, a town, a carpenter, a king, and a teenage girl. Of all the people mentioned, the most important isn't the carpenter, or the king, or the supernatural being, but this humble woman who has the entire weight of the world laid upon her in this moment. Everything hinges on Mary's yes. The grand story of salvation, from Eden to Egypt, from Babylon to Jerusalem, comes down to one girl, in one moment, and her willingness to say the words we heard today: Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to thy word.
How could she bear that weight?
There are many moments in the Bible when God intervenes in the world for our salvation. There is precisely one moment, when a representative of humanity gets to make an equal contribution. See, mankind had plenty of opportunities to do the right thing. We heard about the very first one in today's reading from Genesis.
In the garden, our parents are told not to eat from the fruit of a certain tree—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Humanity is innocent at this point, untainted by original sin, but free to choose a path for ourselves, and free to take the consequences. So we chose—poorly.
When God asks what they have done, Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent, and the serpent doesn't reply. And so humanity falls. I don't need to lay all the blame on Adam and Eve. If the serpent had whispered something about free fruit to me I would have said Oh yeah sounds great! Sign me up! I do it all the time. I’m given two paths. One of them is the one God wants me to take. It's probably a hard road, but one with immense rewards. The other is the one I want take, and it's probably easier, nicer, faster. I've taken the easier road too many times to criticize Adam and Eve.
But that's not the road Mary took. Mary was given a gift that was only ever given to two other people. Only Adam, Eve, and Mary were created without original sin. Adam and Eve were *made* in innocence by the hand of God. Mary was *born* in innocence through the immaculate conception. That's the dogma we celebrate today: the conception of Mary, in the womb of her mother, without original sin. Mary, like Eve, was given an utterly clean slate to begin with. And just like Eve, she was given freedom to choose. She chose—wisely.
Eve is the mother of all the living, and through her we inherit sin. Mary is the mother of all those alive in Christ, and through her, we inherit everlasting life.
In the second century, St. Irenaeus put it this way. Mary
was obedient and was made the cause of salvation for herself and the entire human race ... the **knot** of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience. For what the virgin Eve tied by her unbelief, this Mary untied by her belief. (Against Heresies, In Book III, Chapter 22)
That knot was the knot of sin, and it bound all Eve's children in cords of disobedience and death. Mary chose the better path, and in so choosing, undid that knot.
And that brings us to the image of Mary in today’s post. Some time in the 17th century a German man (Wolfgang Langenmantel) was facing marital problems, and in danger of splitting from his wife. He approached a local priest, Fr. Jakob Rem, who prayed that the Blessed Mother would untie all the knots that tangled up their lives, and smooth out the friction between the couple. It worked, they were reconciled, and much later their grandson commissioned a now-famous painting that we call Mary Untier of Knots.
This statue is a copy of it, and it shows Mary as she's often depicted in celebration of the Immaculate Conception, standing on a crescent, with the snake under her foot, showing her triumph over Eve’s sin. In this case, however, she is also shown untying a long knotted cord. The devotion has particularly grown in the past 20 years, and we shouldn't wonder why. The idea of our blessed mother, patiently untying our knotty problems is naturally appealing.
Think of the image of a modern mother bent down at her child's feet, her fingers methodically working loose a knotted shoe lace, and retying it properly. She sends the child on his way with a kiss, just another one of a thousand moments of motherly sacrifice that will be forgotten as individual moments, but recalled as a lifetime of love and patient care, and even sacrifice.
And when our own lives get tangled up in the messes we make of them, in sin and selfishness, there's our mother Mary, who, though troubled by the angel's greeting, nonetheless said, be it done unto me according to thy word, and untied the knots that bind us all.