In Galatians 4:23, St. Paul writes, “The son of the slave was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through the promise.”
This contrast reveals the immense mercy and love that Our Lady has for us. She is the perfection of Sarah, the free woman who gave birth to the child of the promise, for she didn’t laugh impertinently when God told her that she would bring forth a son. And she is the antithesis of Hagar, who abandoned her child in the desert.
While Our Blessed Mother Mary consecrated herself and her virginity to God, Sarah fretted about not being fruitful. And just after God gave His promise to Abram, she said to her husband: “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my maid; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” (Gen 16:2) In contrast, when God gave His promise to Mary, she neither derided nor doubted. Most of all, she didn’t take the matter into her own hands. She said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no husband?” (Lk 1:34) When the angel explains that God will overshadow her, she thinks last of all of herself. Though she now owns the promise in her womb, she acts with pure Christian faith and love, bounding away to visit her cousin.
By committing herself to the service of others for six months, Mary allows the promise to grow inside of her unimpeded. All along, she trusted that it would be to her according to God’s word (Lk 1:38). The antithesis of this is the way that Sarah and Hagar grapple with each other, fighting to put their children into competition. Sarah laughs sarcastically when the three angelic visitors say that she will bear a son: “So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?’” (Gen 18:12) Her heart had grown hard due to her constant focus on herself and what she thought was due to her.
Further evidence of the hardness of Sarah’s heart can be seen in the interactions between her child and Hagar’s, and the effect that this has on Abraham. “But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, ‘Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.’” (Gen 21:9-10) While it is true that Isaac was the son of the free woman, representing the heavenly Jerusalem, he is to be brought to the nations as a sign of mercy and love. However, Sarah immediately is seized by envy when she sees Hagar with Isaac, and has her cast out.
After conceiving Our Lord, however, Our Blessed Mother takes him to the mother of another boy. And Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, rejoices at Mary’s greeting: “And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Lk 1:41) This, one of the most joyous scenes in all of salvation history, is made possible by the absolute selflessness of Our Lady. Mary gives away everything to rejoice in Elizabeth’s pregnancy, and she is duly rewarded with conviviality and adulation.
Indeed, throughout her life, Mary gives up her son willingly. She sets him free on His public ministry, which will certainly lead to His death, and she stands alongside on the Way of the Cross as He carries that cross toward the mountain on which He will perish. She is there all along because, just as during the early days of her pregnancy, she thinks not about herself, but about the other. Hagar and Sarah, on the other hand, are willing to let their children go to death without their mother’s accompaniment.
Even though Isaac didn’t die at the top of Mt. Moriah after carrying the wood of his offering on his back, Sarah surely thought that he would. Abraham led him up the mountain to die, but Sarah is nowhere to be found. Unlike Mary, who stood beside Jesus as He walked with that wood, Sarah can’t bear to witness the awful truth. But Hagar is even clearer in her inability to be with her son in his death. “When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went, and sat down over against him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, ‘Let me not look upon the death of the child.’ And as she sat over against him, the child lifted up his voice and wept.” (Gen 21:15-16)
This tragic cry of a dying son echoes forward through history to the death of Christ on the cross. As St. Mark relates: “At the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Mk 15:34) And further: “Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed His last.” (Mk 15:37) Unlike Sarah, who waits at home while her son goes off to die, and unlike Hagar, who deliberately walks away from her perishing son, Mary is there, as St. John tells us: “Standing by the cross of Jesus were His mother...When Jesus saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing near, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother!’” (Jn 19:25-27)
Full of grace from the moment of her conception, Mary puts the life of Jesus above her own at every moment. And even here, she is consoled not personally, not as a son to a mother, but by becoming a mother to the entire people of God. And there, the Church is born, the offspring of charity and selflessness at the foot of the cross of Jesus.
Steven Richardson is a Lay Dominican and a member of St. Ann Parish in Charlotte with his wife Mary and his three children, Maria, Rita and Joseph.