"The Smartest Person in the Room" - Sermon for St. Mary the Virgin 8-10-25

In her recent obituary, The New York Times wrote of the actress Loni Anderson that she typified the American beauty standards of her day – big, platinum-blonde hair, and a dimpled, gleaming smile. Anderson co-stared as the radio station receptionist in the late-1970s sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati”, and what made her character work was that, instead of being the stereotypical ditzy blonde bombshell, Jennifer Marlowe was subtly the smartest person in the room.

We have no idea what Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus, looked like. One could look today at the average Palestinian working-class woman – whatever that means – beset by oppression and poverty, and hazard a guess. But that’s as far as it goes. We’ve left it to artists’ imaginations, and most of them have painted or sculpted Mary to typify the beauty standards of their day and culture. Not Anderson-esque in glamour, which wouldn’t befit the Mother of God, I suppose; but pretty, and pleasing to the admiring and devoted eye nevertheless.

This holds true for the words used to describe Mary, too. Most prayers, hymns, and litanies describe Mary as pure and gentle, obedient and humble. Perhaps she was. And yet, like we have with many of the pre-modern saints, and even with Jesus himself, we have cast Mary in an image and likeness that suits our pieties and serves our purposes – especially those of the dominant classes. It has been countercultural, and in some places dangerous, to lift up proud Mary of the Magnificat as the ideal.

But who else was Mary, is Mary? I’ll make this proposal: Alive, Mary was the smartest person in the room; and assumed into heaven, she is the smartest person there (setting aside in both cases her Son, fully a person and fully divine). This uneducated, unlettered working-class woman, poor and oppressed, was smarter than the disciples who accompanied her son; is smarter than the brilliant Doctors of the Church, now dwelling in holy eternity, who spent their lives trying to explain him to each other and to us. How so?

Well … Who else has conceived and carried the Son of God? Who else has birthed him and brought him up? Who else has pondered directly the divine mysteries about him, revealed by angels and shepherds and magi and prophets? Who else has sought his safety, prompted his first miracle, and has had their heart pierced by seven symbolic swords of sorrow? Who else, already filled by the Holy Spirit, has sat in the Pentecost-day upper-room, waiting for the rest of the believers to catch up?

Of whom else has it been said, Hail, Mary, full of grace: the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus?

What does all this mean? What does it prove? What does it do for us now? I offer you one simple, profound answer.

Have you ever asked anyone to pray for you? You’ve asked for intercessory prayer: for another person to intercede to God on your behalf.

It’s not just the living who we ask to pray for us. We ask the saints to pray for us, too; to intercede in their own special way. And to be clear: we don’t pray to Mary and the other saints – that canard has been a slander against Catholic-minded people for far too long – but we do ask them to pray for us to God, who alone has the power to hear and respond.

On this feast of Saint Mary the Virgin, I put it to you: Who knows better the mind of the Son than his mother? Who, then, knows better than her how to ask him, on our behalf, to listen and to respond?

I want the smartest person in the room on my side. Don’t you?

Ask her.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.  

Father Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP

St. Mary the Virgin, Observed – August 10, 2025

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco

“The Smartest Person in the Room”