Dare Great Things For Christ

Our culture today is at a turning point in many ways.  In general, we are deciding whether or not to allow our Christian faith to continue to inform and direct our cultural decisions.  It seems very tempting to go the route of secularism.  A neutrality with respect to faith, at least in public, in order to let religion be a purely private affair.  But is this the way for Christian leaders?  What value does our faith have in the public sphere?  Surprisingly, the life of the Virgin Mary can help us find the way. 

Let’s face it, leading other people is never an easy proposition.  There are some really dark moments.  If we are honest with ourselves there are times when we would rather quit – stop leading, stop trying to influence others.  Bad things can happen in our lives and moments when it makes us think if it is really worth it.  This is where our Christian faith can be of especial value to us.  Our Lord led us through the cross.  And He has graced His cross to be the power and the strength of those who lead in His name.  The Virgin Mary shows us this in her own life.

Christian leaders follow Christ – even though it seems contradictory to say leaders follow – this is what makes our leadership special.  It’s not about us.  It’s about Him and the influence He gives to the world through us.  The Virgin Mary demonstrates this admirable in her own life.  She is Christ’s perfect servant by doing everything that she can to make Him known and loved.  We can see this throughout his apostolic life but especially at two key moments.

Sometimes even the best leaders can forget that in the end leadership isn’t about them.  If we are leading our people, it’s to lead them to something bigger than ourselves and sometimes we have to die to ourselves in order to bring people to something that will really be good for them.  At Cana in Galilee the Virgin Mary triggers a series of events that will lead to our Lord’s crucifixion and death.  She hastens the hour of its coming even though that means that she will have to say goodbye sooner.  She teaches us how to lead even when that means saying goodbye.

Leading others is not easy.  Sometimes our road is marked by sorrow and hardship.  The same was true in the life of the Virgin Mary.  Her role as mother of the Son of God was marked with sorrow.  In particular when she was forced to flee into Egypt, taking her son with her Mary had to carry the sorrow of the persecution and death of the Holy Innocents, the children in Bethlehem who were killed by the king.  Mary had to play her role as mother with a broken heart but she led all the same.

Anyone moved by the love of God wants to Dare Great Things For Christ!  But ironically most of our time is spent by doing little things.  When we look at the life of the Virgin Mary, the Queen of Heaven and Earth, we see that much of her life was spent doing little things.  Does this mean she wasn’t a leader?  Or in fact is leadership not best expressed by the way that we do the small things?  The life of Jesus and Mary in Nazareth before the beginning of his missionary life is an example of leadership in the little things.

One of the reasons many Christians don’t feel comfortable assuming the role of leadership is that we think it makes us egotistical.  Following, obeying, complying, and supporting seem much more consonant with Christianity.  But why do so many of us equate those terms with a lack of leadership?  By looking at the Virgin Mary as a model for leadership, we can see that a big part of being a leader is following God.  Mary gave the very best of herself to Jesus and so she becomes the leadership model for all the followers of Christ.

Many gifted people struggle with the temptation to draw all the attention to themselves.  The allure of leadership is that it puts us in positions of power and therefore esteem in the eyes of others.  A leader who is Christian needs to resist this of course and dedicate themselves to really enhancing the lives of others around them as a servant.  In this fourth of our thirteen part series on Mary, we look at how she lived as a servant leader as she visited her cousin, Elizabeth, in the hill country of Judea.

Something special about every act of leadership is that it makes us alone.  The famous phrase, “it is lonely at the top” applies well to leader in every state.  But is this just an accident?  Or is it in fact a blessing?  When Mary was chosen by God to be the Mother of God, she had to fill the task no one else could fill.  But she embraced it as being chosen by God and therefore holding His hand into the great unknown that he would lead her.  And so she becomes an example for Christian leaders in every age.

If we look to sacred scripture for examples of great leadership many names come to mind:  St. Paul, St. Timothy, St. John, but what about the Virgin Mary?  Doesn’t her life have anything to teach us about leadership?  Independently of the various faith traditions out there what can we learn about leadership by looking at the life the bible presents us?  I think we can learn a lot.  In this second of a thirteen part series I want to peer into the leadership lessons of Mary’s early life and the solitude that made her strong.