There’s a Life Magazine special issue out about Mary.

At the end of the main article, the writer laments, “If only we had a simply human Mary, that would be enough.”

My reaction: We do have a simply human Mary.  No orthodox Christian has ever believed or taught that Mary is anything other than human.  So that should be enough.

My wife’s reaction: For people, it’s never enough.

And that’s really it.  That’s what it’s all about.  We’re a mess.  Insatiable, unhappy, lost – in need of a Savior (though that’s not a politically correct thing to say).

You may choose to believe the Gospels or to think of them as mere myths, but what they present in perhaps the most telling and compelling way in all of literature is human nature in its truest form.  

The Father’s call throughout the Old Testament, through the voice of his prophets, is “Repent!  Stop doing evil, do good and turn to me.  Otherwise you will face disaster.”  That’s the message of the Son in the New Testament as well, but we don’t want to hear it.

We’d rather have the Buddy Jesus, the Jesus-as-Inner-Self, the Vague Jesus, the Jesus of our Own Desires, the Jesus we can make jump and entertain us.

We don’t want a Jesus whose first words are (as in the Gospel according to Mark): “Repent and believe!”

And the Gospels simply tell us what we do when we are given “enough”, when we are asked to repent and believe.  What do we do when we are given all that we need?  A loving God, a good man, a man who walks the earth healing and forgiving and asking us to do the same?  What do we do?

We torture Him, mock Him and kill Him. 

No work of literature before or since has ever shown so clearly the Resistance in our Hearts.