She Treads Where She Pleases. Are You Paying Attention?

This morning, I really didn’t want to get up and make the hourlong drive to Mass. I felt stressed out and hadn’t slept well. But as I was getting ready to pull the covers back up and the sleep mask back down, I felt her saying to me, “Just get your butt out of bed and go.”

Her little missives for me never come in words quite so clear, but the sense of what she wanted from me was unambiguous.

It’s been this way for several years now. And, honestly, it’s the biggest reason I maintain my faith, however shaky, that there’s something out there bigger than ourselves, something that wants the best for us, something that loves us.

A while back, I saw a priest posing online with a flag he had hanging on the wall behind him. The sea of yellow made it look like the “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsden flag that’s become a favorite among American conservatives, libertarians, and constitutionalists. But the snake on the flag wasn’t in his usual position of being coiled to attack. Instead, he’d been trampled underfoot by a certain woman in blue with a crown of twelve stars around her head. The caption: “I Tread Where I Please.”

The comments were mixed with regard to the priest’s spoof of a flag. I thought it was hilarious, because I can perfectly relate to its meaning. Mary does tread where she pleases, in my experience.

If you know your Douay-Rheims Bible, you know that it puts forth a unique translation of Genesis 3:15: “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: She shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” Here God is speaking to the serpent after the latter tricked Eve into eating from the tree. Most translations use either male or plural pronouns in the second half of the sentence: “He” or “they,” both in reference to the woman’s offspring, will do the crushing. The traditional Christian understanding of the passage is that it’s a foreshadowing of Christ’s eventual triumph over evil. The Douay makes the same claim, just in a more indirect way: The “she” foreshadows Mary, and so “she” will crush the serpent’s head by way of her son. 

I neither speak nor read Hebrew, but it’s my understanding that there’s enough ambiguity in the original texts to allow for any of these readings. But the point is that the Douay reading is responsible for all the Marian art we’ve seen down through the ages that depicts Our Lady standing triumphantly on the head of a serpent. Here, that imagery made its way into an unexpected vexillological context.

Some may not like the flag parody. Others may take issue with the Mary-centric Douay rendering of Genesis 3:15. But the Gadsden-meets-the-Virgin symbolism stands as a vivid evocation of what Our Lady does whenever the faithful report experiencing her presence in an apparition. She comes to us, it seems, wherever and whenever she pleases. And she does so because she wants us all to get off our butts and get serious about our faith life. That’s evidently one of her primary jobs in the heavenly realm. It’s not by accident that the last time Mary got in my head, she prompted me to make an unplanned stop at a Catholic-supply store, where she guided me toward a book on Marian apparitions that I’d been on the fence about buying for a long time. When your mom tries to tell you something, it’s a good idea to listen.

I should make clear that I have less than zero interest in theological debate on this matter, or on pretty much any others. I know what I’ve experienced with regard to Mary. For me, this is a relationship that goes back to early childhood, when a representation of Our Lady stood in the silence of the church as an island of refuge in my tumultuous life. I felt her serene presence, even though I couldn’t have expressed what I felt in words at such a young age. Looking back, I know without a doubt that she gave me the motherly love and compassion that I needed to get through the difficult times. And as far away as I drifted from the church over the years to come, it was always Mary who would eventually show up and nudge me back to where she wanted me to be. Sometimes it’s a gentle tug on my sleeve, and sometimes she drags me by my ear. A mom’s gotta do what a mom’s gotta do.

It’s always a feminine presence that I experience. Twice in my life I’ve felt it very intensely, both times in the presence of a likeness of the Blessed Mother. So it’s never been hard for me to put two and two together.

People may think I’m nuts. There’s more than a reasonable chance that I am. I can relate to the words of Mortimer Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace: “Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.” But at the same time, I’m not trying to tell you that I have a disembodied voice in my head telling me what to do. It’s more like a spiritual frequency that I’ve learned to tune into over the years through paying attention to, and in the process sharpening, my intuition. If I were less oriented toward Catholicism, I suppose I’d say the universe is trying to give me a sign. We all speak different religious and spiritual languages. Mine just happens to be guided by the mother who’s been a constant presence for me since I was a little kid.

If there’s any lesson I can impart, it’s that listening for the Still, Small Voice (see 1 Kings 19:12) can help you navigate through this crazy life. It may take a different form for you. And you have to be careful to discern between what’s really the Voice and what’s either wishful thinking or extraneous noise. That comes with practice and patience. May you learn to hear and trust that voice, and may it bring you guidance, comfort, and peace.

And may our Blessed Mother pray for us now and at the hour of our death.