“If they did it would be a relic,” my mother protested, and went on and on about how according to the visions of Blessed some sickly nun with three names, Mother Mary saved all of Jesus’s and her own dropped out hair and teeth as being too sacred to throw away, which seems a narcissistic thing for a perfect and perfectly humble woman to do. They also added that “Jesus and Mary had a very pure diet– they ate bread and vegetables and sometimes fish,” because according to the prophecies of Blessed some sickly nun with three names, Jesus and Mary never ate meat (other than fish, that ever-present Catholic paradox). Only worldly old Saint Joseph ate meat.
I pointed out that, with a diet like that, Jesus and Mary would go to the bathroom more often.
My parents were not pleased.
Never mind the implied allegation that Jesus and Mary, devoutly observant Jews, the Messiah and His pious Mother, disobeyed God the Father and didn’t eat a lamb dinner at Passover every year, but I’ll leave that little matter between God and whoever the nun was.
Thank God that Holy Mother Church has declared all private revelations, even the sensible ones, completely optional for the faithful to believe.
In any case, I believe that Christ and Mary had bowel movements. And I believe that Mary the blessed Theotokos and ever-virgin washed diapers while Jesus pulled up grass or sucked on his fist, and probably went and pooped the other diaper while the clean one was still too wet to wear. I believe that the Pure Virgin wiped His nose and cleaned dribble off of His chin. I believe she washed His hair before Shabbat and privately wondered how he’d managed to get crumbs in it, just as mothers have always done.
I believe that, when she breastfed Him, sometimes she leaked and sometimes she hurt, and sometimes He threw up milk on her.
I believe that, as He got older, He went out to play with friends or to help His foster-father in the shop, and came home with shockingly dirty and torn clothes she had to wash and mend.
And I know, because the Bible tells me so, that she was at the foot of the Cross.
You can’t stay clean at the foot of the Cross, not physically. If you draw near, you’re going to get smeared. There will be blood, and the blood will be ugly, and you’ll be stained red with the mark of a Man declared unclean and condemned by all. Everyone will know you were at the foot of the Cross, and they won’t like you for it. You’ll be stained for life.
It’s the stain that gets you clean, somehow. Mary was immaculate from the moment of her conception, but it was still Christ that did that for her, outside of time, with that same ugly blood. He’ll do it for all of us, if we’re willing to be dirty.
You can’t serve Christ without the mess. When you approach the pure white unblemished Lamb for cleansing, you’re going to get dirty. Christ became man, like us in all things but sin, and men are gross. He ate, He worked, He sweated, He went to the latrine. He needed His feet washed. He died covered in blood, tears and other men’s spittle. If you come to serve Christ, He will send you out to gather up the little Christs, all His precious icons in the world, and treat them as you would treat Him. That will look different for each one of us, because each vocation is different, but the people you serve are always Christ, and Christ will absolutely stain you. Babies will throw up breastmilk and need caked crap cleaned off their buttocks. Children will get into messes and ruin the carpeting. Adults will pretend to be self-sufficient and sanitary, but nobody completely is. And then, of course, they age, and suddenly they need someone to change their diapers and wipe up their slobber again. Next thing you know they die and need burial– the final corporal work of mercy that Christ demands of us, is that we bury the dead.
If you serve Christ, it will mark you. Men will find you ugly for keeping ugly company. They will laugh at you, mock you and crucify you, and you’ll die dirty and be buried in the dirty earth.
But you’ll die marked with the blood of the Lamb.
I pray for us all to have the grace of getting filthy, like Immaculate Mary. It’s the only way to ever be clean.
(Image: a detail from Henrique Bernadelli’s Mater, via Wikimedia Commons.)
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