What Would Mary Do?

From an address to the Catholic Conference of Women at Ascension Church, Boca Raton, FL on March 21, 2023

St. Monica is the saint of patience and perseverance.

Her son, Saint Augustine, said “Patience is the companion of wisdom.”

I may be generally patient, but sometimes - like this month – it’s wearing rather thin.

I’ve had a rough month so far. It included locking myself out of my car – with my wallet AND phone in the car, and having my desktop computer screen dying – in the middle of filing my tax return. And, oh, yeah, my doctor has insisted I cut down on carbs and sugars, which pretty much deleted my usual Starbuck’s Frappuccino order.

As I was getting more and more frustrated over all these little annoying things in life, I was also working on a PowerPoint presentation for a Legion of Mary yearly event. That started off being super frustrating itself. Then I realized I had to approach everything from another angle: What Would Mary Do?

Granted, Mary would not have shared the same frustrations, at least not in the same way.

But maybe there was a day when she was “locked out” of using the family donkey because Joseph and Jesus were using it to make a delivery. Maybe there was a day when she needed to make a record of something, and all the styluses were off in Joseph’s workshop. Maybe there was a shortage of her favorite morning drink. Mary must have had days, or months, when life was filled with little annoyances. I think we can safely say she did not go around moaning about how “everything happens to me” or “the world is against me.” We see her search for and find Jesus in the Temple when he was 12: she was worried, certainly, but she didn’t respond with self-pity. In fact, she remained calm even when Jesus was found.

Her son’s Passion certainly took its toll on her. We see her during the carrying of the cross; we see her at the foot of the cross. She is pained by what is being done to her son, but her pain is for his pain. She’s not crying about what’s going to happen to her with both her husband and son gone; she’s not complaining that she will be all alone. She walks with him, stays with him – perhaps stared down Roman soldiers who wanted to push her away. But with total and complete faith, she stayed by his side, never wavering.

I can be distracted by minor problems that are easily solved, even if my first reaction is panic. Someone drove me home to get a spare key. I finished my taxes on my laptop. I like diet root beer almost as much as I like Frappaccinos. Mary’s faith was so complete and so deep that she faced even the major sorrow of her son’s passion and death with outward calm and peace.

In our own times of adversity, we need to stop and think “WWMD” – what would Mary do? How much calmer would our lives be if we stopped to ask ourselves that when traffic on Federal is so heavy that it takes us three cycles to get through the intersection? When the railroad crossing closes not for a three-car commuter train but for a 253-car freight train? When the bridge keeper decides “bridge opens on command” means every six or seven minutes – and it seems like it’s always when we’re the first car to be stopped.

Mary likely would have welcomed the downtime, seeing it as time she could spend in prayer without the distraction of driving. How would your own individual life change if you saw these little delays as simply time to have a good conversation with God? If instead of inwardly (or outwardly) getting annoyed, you welcomed the pause in your activities as a chance to spend a moment with God?

When we live our lives in a way that fully embraces that which we believe, both we and our lives are better for it. It’s not always easy to face even the smallest adversity with equanimity. But the more we practice consciously doing so, the more we will automatically do so.

For what better model do we have than to be like Mary?