To mark the significance of December 8, Melinda Henneberger has a lovely column at Politics Daily about her fondness for yesterday's feast and her devotion to the BVM.

I've written before about my attachment to God's mom, whose company I so often sneaked off to enjoy during recess at St. Mary's Grade School (no relation to the hospital), much preferring communing with her in a candlelit church to embarrassing myself at team sports. Then and now, one attraction was her perfect calm: There's an angel in the parlor? "Be it done to me according to thy will." Bride's family is out of wine? Honey, can you c'mere and work your magic? Though often viewed as passive, she on the contrary actively supported her radical son in his scary, counter-cultural, truth-to-power challenge to the oppressors of his day, and ours.

She links to Sally Cunneen's article in this week's issue of Commonweal, "Maximus's Mary," so consider this a second plug for that piece!

Speaking of underappreciated portraits of Mary: a couple years ago I was preparing for an RCIA session about the Blessed Mother in Catholic teaching, and various footnotes led me to Paul VI's 1974 "apostolic exhortation" Marialis cultus. I found paragraph 37 useful -- and pleasantly surprising, as the text itself predicts. This passage seems relevant to Cunneen's article:

The modern woman will note with pleasant surprise that Mary of Nazareth, while completely devoted to the will of God, was far from being a timidly submissive woman or one whose piety was repellent to others; on the contrary, she was a woman who did not hesitate to proclaim that God vindicates the humble and the oppressed, and removes the powerful people of this world from their privileged positions (cf Lk. 1:51-53). The modern woman will recognize in Mary, who "stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord," a woman of strength, who experienced poverty and suffering, flight and exile (cf. Mt. 2:13-23). These are situations that cannot escape the attention of those who wish to support, with the Gospel spirit, the liberating energies of man and of society. And Mary will appear not as a Mother exclusively concerned with her own divine Son, but rather as a woman whose action helped to strengthen the apostolic community's faith in Christ (cf. Jn. 2:1-12), and whose maternal role was extended and became universal on Calvary. These are but examples, but examples which show clearly that the figure of the Blessed Virgin does not disillusion any of the profound expectations of the men and women of our time but offers them the perfect model of the disciple of the Lord: the disciple who builds up the earthly and temporal city while being a diligent pilgrim towards the heavenly and eternal city; the disciple who works for that justice which sets free the oppressed and for that charity which assists the needy; but above all, the disciple who is the active witness of that love which builds up Christ in people's hearts.