Mary Stayed When Everything Else Left

For the Queers, the Wounded, the Too Much

In July 2007, I was riding in a car with two college friends from a wedding of other college friends in Connecticut to New York City. Conversation was breezy and religious— as conversation between recent graduates from Franciscan University of Steubenville was wont to be. “Who's your Mary?” the one who would go on to become a religious sister asked. Both of the other girls answered based on apparitions meditated on and rosaries prayed. But I had never really thought about it before. While I prayed a rosary once a week and meditated on Scripture daily and I’d even consecrated myself to Mary using St. Louis de Montfort’s formulation and wore a dirty chain on my wrist, I hadn’t really cultivated a relationship with Mary at that point. But I blurted out, “Our Lady of Sorrows,” and that seemed instantly to fit me. How much more emo can you get?

Mommabear died less than a year later and Mary showed up for me big. How much more fucking emo can you get.

Before all this, Mary seemed to me quiet, perfect, untouchable, and unknowable. Everything I wasn’t and couldn’t be and, therefore, I couldn’t have a relationship with her. Once I found an access point, I realized how wrong I’d been about her. Once the floodgates opened, Mary became the thing that held me on when everything else in me wanted to let go. There were nights when I was so unsure of everything that I'd stare at the crucifix and repeat, “Mary, just take me to your Son,” willing myself to believe in anything else besides her.

This is how I fell in love with her as Mary, Stella Maris— Star of the Sea, guiding us to safe passage. I didn’t have to see where I was going to know I was going to get to exactly where I needed to safely. That’s the thing about Mary, she’s safe. And not because she’s quiet and placid and untouchable and unknowable. Exactly the opposite. Because she’s audacious and in the muck and there and embracing us and opening herself in every way to us as individuals. Truly friend, truly mother.

Mary stayed, Mary stays. And I desperately need permanence in my life. I know Jesus was talking about the Holy Spirit when He said, “I will not leave you orphaned,” (John 14:18) but I think He was also talking about how He would give us His mother, Mary, because she is permanent and has a body and is a body and gave us His Body. When not even Jesus could stay, when my mom just falls down some stairs and dies, Mary stays. Eternity is ever-present in Mary and Mary is ever-present in the world. That’s why she keeps appearing, so that we know her in all times and spaces and cultures and faces. She’s not quiet, she’s really fucking loud. She wants to be heard and seen and known. Just like me.

That’s why I have her tattooed on my arm. Not some traditional art of her or in some standard title or apparition, but one of my own creation. Instead of dressed in blue with a mantel, she’s dressed in purple, the color of royalty, with her hair flowing free. She’s holding a lamb, the Lamb of God in her arms, as she stands barefoot in the ocean, an anchor that looks suspiciously like the cross at her feet. Twelve stars crown her. Though her face is forlorn, she’s also resolute, ready to take on the world and bring me with her. I call her Stella Dolorosa, “Sorrowful Star”. And that’s who Mary is to me.

And she’s a little different for everyone because everyone has a little different needs. She’s this Mary for me but she’s also Mary for the queers, the wounded, the “too much”.

Mary is not quiet or submissive, she’s radical! The Magnificat is a protest song and she sings it loudly. “He has shown the strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.” She’s not just singing about herself; she’s singing about every person to ever be born. This is why it’s important that she later came as Our Lady of Guadalupe to a poor indigenous man in colonized Mexico. Mary scoops us up in her arms and crushes the head of the snake by being a body that brought The Body into the world that can scatter the proud and cast down the mighty. She’s dangerous, if you listen to her. She isn’t just sitting in the corner, she’s active…and God listens to her.

Prosperity gospel melts in front of the indomitable Mary. Perhaps this is part of why she's been sidelined in some traditions - she's too dangerous, too radical. She came to destroy earthly power and prominence so that the lowly and meek might have absolute prominence. And God chose her for this because she was this. Not just because she was “pure”. She was an unwed teenager (scandalous), then a refugee (the flight to Egypt), then the mother of an executed criminal (standing at the foot of the cross), and yet she is still there and still here and still shows up. She knows what it is to be the marginalized, the wounded and what it takes to stand in the face of power and spit in it. Mary is active, not passive.

She’s always been active. From the moment the angel Gabriel came to her, Mary has been active in her own salvation and story. The angel told her what could happen, she asked how, he told her and then asked for her consent. Mary gave her consent. Mary said yes. God waited for her yes to act. This changes everything about how we understand obedience - it's not submission, it's agency. And this matters deeply for sexual ethics and bodily autonomy. If God Himself waited for Mary's consent before entering her body, how dare anyone claim we owe our bodies to another person? The “marital debt” concept that incels and theology bros wield— whether online or in bedrooms— crumbles before Mary's free “yes.” We are not owed each other. God gave us our bodies as a full gift of Himself for ourselves and we have the full right and agency to give our bodies as a gift to another person of our choosing when we want, only when we want and never at another time. It’s not a gift otherwise and everything about life is a gift. That’s what Mary so deeply understood. It’s about joy.

Mary may not have had sex, hard to know and not really the point. The point is, Mary wasn’t about deprivation, but about abundance and joy. The abundance of the God of the universe growing in her body, growing a body related to her body. The abundance of more wine at a wedding feast. The abundance of two prophets meeting in the womb and leaping for joy of the other. The Church likes to emphasize her submission and purity as modes of deprivation, but the Church fails to emphasize that submission and purity are actually modes of abundance, when done correctly and for the right reasons. The Chud God tells us we’re “too much” or that we don’t fit. Mary knows all about not being the right kind of person or in the right position at the right time. But she also knows that those things make us exactly right for the redemptive work that the real God, the God of Love has in store. Love that will save the world.

Love will save the world. No matter what form it comes in. A large family. A straight but abstinent couple. A single man who’s forgone marriage and family life to serve God. A queer couple who images the Trinity anyway because all love images the inner life of the Trinity. Mary is mother for the shes, the hes, the theys, the gays, and everyone in between. She’s steady and has room for all. It’s our hardness of heart that excludes. We should be more like Mary.

Mary knows what it's like to be dissected for the most minute of details. People still argue about whether her hymen was intact after giving birth, as if reducing the Mother of God to a gynecological specimen is somehow reverent. They miss the point entirely: Mary's body doesn't exist to satisfy your theological curiosity. She knows all about bodies that don't fit. But she loves anyway. We should love anyway. Because it’s about abundance.

Mary is still here. When I can’t receive the Eucharist, Mary still brings Him to me and me to Him. Mary never wounds me, only wraps me in her mantle. When the Church wounded me, when I couldn't stomach Mass, when I was stripping away everything to see what remained— Mary stayed. She didn't demand I fit into a box. She didn't ask me to shrink or submit or be less angry. She just held me. While the institutional Church told me I was too much and not enough, Mary said, “You're exactly enough. Come as you are.” That's the difference between the Church and Mary— the Church often serves the Chud God who demands perfection; Mary serves the real God who offers abundance.

I treasure this relationship I have now with her. I am so grateful that she showed up for me when I didn’t know where else to go, that she showed up when I needed to save face and then didn’t stop. I’m so glad she shows up for my kids. My kids are consecrated to her (my oldest to Our Lady of Sorrows, my middle to Mother of the Lamb, and my youngest to Stella Maris) and while I let them handle their own relationships with Mary, I bless them every night, asking Mary to wrap them in her mantle. I have different images of Mary hanging around the house and talk about her often. She’s not just another person in our family, but she is a regular member. I hope my kids look to her and find in her what I have.

Everyone needs Mary in their life and she’s there in whatever way you need. Because Mary lived with the eternal in her body constantly for nine straight months and then lives eternally while still appearing temporally, she can be absolutely whoever we need whenever we need. If you’re leaving, if you’ve left, you can still have her. My uncle’s second wife was Protestant but loved Mary so much that she’d pray the Hail Mary multiple times a day. Mary was Mother to her and Mary loved that. Mary wants to be there for you. Like most things in my life, I kind of stumbled into my relationship with Mary, but there are some practical things you can do and questions you can ask to cultivate your own relationship with Mary and see who she takes form for you.

Does the Rosary make her come alive for you or does it make her more nebulous? Are there other prayers that make her more alive? What Scriptures or apparitions or images resonate with you? When you picture the perfect, powerful woman, what do you picture? Is it a woman at all? What do you need in a mother? What does mother mean to you? How can you get closer to that mother? What’s keeping you from her? And what can Mary do for your relationship with Jesus or God/higher power?

I don’t want to say that this will be easy and roses and sunshine. Because it won’t be. Mary challenges. Mary said yes to carrying and raising a child she didn’t know she wanted until that moment, a child she didn’t plan for. Then she suffered at the foot of the cross watching him die when he was innocent. Then she consented to taking on all of his followers, more outcasts, as her new children. And she had to look after those suckers and correct them and tell them how to go! And we’re not much easier. But she loves us so much. Remember, she is abundance in human form. That’s what makes her so special. That’s what she wants to give and help us live in. That’s what I want to live in. Maybe you do, too.

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