I wrote this poem when, after 5 1/2 years in a fundamentalist church, I finally began to come to terms with my Roman Catholic upbringing. Mary has always been a part of my life--whether as the quiet, gentle, beautiful woman hovering in the background of my family's faith; or as the picture of "papist" denials of the sufficiency of the atoning death of Jesus Christ; or as the symbol of the oppression of women in patriarchal Christianity. From all these influences, a new picture of Mary is beginning to emerge for me. I would like to share some of that with you.

My image of Mary is based, primarily, on Luke's portrayal of her in his infancy narrative. Unlike the Mary depicted in Matthew, the Mary of Luke is active, an independent agent: here it is Mary who receives visions of the angel Gabriel, not Joseph; it is Mary who chooses to give her physical-spiritual self to God's redemptive purposes; it is Mary who picks up and visits her kinswoman Elizabeth; and it is Mary who ponders on the meaning of all these events.

It is Mary's "yes" to God which is the primary focus of later Mariology. Through that "yes" Mary takes an active part in our redemption. As St. Ambrose put it: "Mary . . . has worked the salvation of the world, and conceived the redemption of all." This stress on Mary's part in our salvation led some to call her co-redemptrix. Tempting though it may be to see Mary as the female savior, balancing the male Jesus, such an approach leads too easily to a male/female dualism, where women and men are seen as radically different, requiring separate mediators to bring them to God.