Follow me: the Marian Saturday and the demands of following

**Scripture:**“And coming up, a scribe said to Him, ‘Master, I will follow You wherever You go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the sky have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.'” (Matthew 8:19-20)**Saturday of Our Lady:**In the Latin liturgical tradition, the Saturday of Week Twelve of Ordinary Time is known as Saturday of Our Lady, a day dedicated to the memory of Mary, introduced by Alcuin in the ninth century and popularized by Cistercian monks under Bernard of Clairvaux in the twelfth century. The Gospel pericope from Matthew 8:18-22, which the ferial liturgy for this Saturday presents, offers an unexpectedly rich key for Marian contemplation through the two conditions Jesus presents to the scribe and the disciple who wished to follow Him—conditions that precisely define the exemplary following of Mary.**The Two Encounters:**The encounters described in Matthew 8:18-22 depict two temptations of incomplete following. The scribe, declaring, “Master, I will follow You wherever You go” (Matthew 8:19), expresses genuine enthusiasm but untested commitment. He does not understand the implications of “wherever You go,” which includes homelessness, economic insecurity, and social marginality. The disciple, requesting permission to “go bury my father first” (Matthew 8:21), has a valid reason but reveals a hierarchy of priorities where following Jesus is subordinate to family obligations.**I. “Follow You wherever You go”: The Tested Enthusiasm**The scribe in Matthew 8:19 stands out for his enthusiasm—unlike the fishermen and Matthew, he takes the initiative. His declaration is unconditional, with no exceptions or limitations. However, Jesus does not immediately encourage him but responds by describing the concrete reality of what following entails: “Foxes have holes, birds of the sky have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head” (Matthew 8:20).**Jesus’ Statement:**“The Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head,” a statement by Jesus about Himself, is one of the most sober and revealing in the Gospel of Matthew. Although Jesus was the son of Joseph the carpenter, he likely had a home in Nazareth. But upon beginning his public ministry, he renounced security and depended on the hospitality of disciples, women who followed and served him (Luke 8:1-3), and houses that welcomed him. The radical itinerancy of Jesus, later emphasized by the Franciscans, is part of his identification with the poorest and most vulnerable in society.**Jesus’ Response:**Jesus’ response is not a rejection of the scribe’s enthusiasm but a preparation. The “follow You wherever You go” needs to understand what is included in “wherever You go”: it includes Week Twelve of the journey from Capernaum to Jerusalem, it includes Calvary, and it includes post-Paschal persecution. Enthusiasm that does not know the implications of following is fragile; the house built on sand in Matthew 7:26 collapses when a storm comes. Enthusiasm that knows and accepts these implications is the house built on rock celebrated in Matthew 7:24.The Marian Saturday is, in this context, the day of reviewing enthusiasm: “Where is my following of Jesus after this week? Does it correspond to ‘I will follow you wherever you go’ that I proclaimed on Sunday? Or was it conditioned by comforts, conveniences, fears that made the following more selective than the initial declaration?” Mary is not the model of Sunday enthusiasm but of a lifetime’s following: the “fiat” (yes) of the Annunciation was renewed at each station, in the Visitation in Bethlehem, in Egypt, in Nazareth, on the Cross, at the Cenacle.## II. “Let the dead bury their dead”: PrimacyThe second encounter (Mt 8:21-22) is even more disturbing: “Lord, let me go first to bury my father.” A reasonable request, committed to basic family obligations. Jesus’ response, “Follow me. Let the dead bury their dead,” seems to contradict the honor due to parents (the Fifth Commandment) and filial piety celebrated in the Old Testament. The exegesis of this phrase is a subject of debate: some interpreters suggest that the father was not yet dead and the disciple requested to postpone his following until his father’s death (possibly years in the future). Others take the phrase literally.The key to interpretation lies in “let the dead,” the “spiritually dead,” those who did not respond to Jesus’ call, can perfectly fulfill funeral obligations. The disciple who received Jesus’ call has a responsibility that the “dead” do not have: the urgency of the Kingdom’s announcement does not allow for indefinite delay. This principle, the primacy of following Jesus over family obligations, not because family doesn’t matter but because the Kingdom is urgent, is the same Jesus enunciated in Mt 10:37: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.”Mary understood this primacy exemplarily and paradoxically in two ways. She who at the Cross received from Jesus as ‘son’ the beloved disciple (Jn 19:26-27): the reconfiguration of biological family into spiritual family. But she was also Mary who, in Mark 3:33-35 (“who is my mother and brothers?”), saw the maternal bond redefined not as a blood relation but as a discipleship relationship: “Whoever does the will of God is my brother, sister, and mother.” Mary did not feel excluded by this declaration; she was included, and deeper: not only as a biological mother but as a disciple who does God’s will.“‘Let the dead bury their dead’ also has an application in ordinary spiritual life: ‘the dead’ are the projects, ambitions, and securities that hold me back from following. The ‘death’ I need to leave behind is not necessarily the biological death of a relative; it can be the death of a life project I am pursuing because it is ‘what everyone expects’, the death of economic security that binds me when the call demands mobility, or the death of a reputation that prevents me from committing myself visibly to the Gospel. The Marian Saturday is the day to examine what I need to ‘put first’ before following.”—**III. Mary, the Itinerant Follower**Mary’s journey through the Gospel is that of a woman who followed, without knowing the final destination, every step required by the mission of the Son. From Nazareth to Ain-Karim (Visitation), from Ain-Karim to Bethlehem (Nativity), from Bethlehem to Egypt (flight), from Egypt back to Nazareth (return), from Nazareth to Cana, Capernaum, Jerusalem, and finally to Calvary and the Cenacle. This journey was not planned by Mary; it was lived in obedience to the mission of the Son, who had ‘nowhere to lay his head’ and whose mother learned to have nowhere to fix her attention permanently, always available for the next step required by the mission of the Son.Spiritual tradition has seen in Mary the model of the ‘pilgrim of faith’, an expression used by Vatican II in Lumen Gentium 58: ‘The Virgin progressed in the pilgrimage of faith’. The pilgrimage of faith is not a seasonal excursion to a sanctuary, but the way of being of one who never permanently settles in any created security, always walking ‘towards’ what God promises but has not yet fully revealed. Mary lived this pilgrimage without a complete map; she did not know for certain where the ‘fiat’ would lead her, but she knew Who was leading her.Mariology identifies in Mary’s ‘itinerancy’ one of the dimensions of her co-redemptive mission: her presence at Calvary (John 19:25, ‘she stood near the cross’) was not accidental; it was not a visit from a mother to see her son die. It was a presence that completed the ‘follow you wherever you go’ in its most extreme sense: as far as Calvary, to the moment when no other disciple (except John) had arrived. Mary reached where others did not, because her following lacked the conditions and the ‘let me first’ that others imposed.The Marian Saturday, as a day of contemplation of this itinerancy, has a precise spiritual function: it is the day when the believer examines his or her following, ‘where have I stopped? Where did I place the conditions that Jesus in Matthew 8:21 did not accept?’, and asks Mary to help renew the ‘follow you wherever you go’ more fully, with fewer conditions, with greater availability for the itinerancy required by the Gospel.**IV. Holy Saturday: Mary, Guardian of Faith**In the liturgical tradition that dedicates Saturday to Mary, this day is seen as connected to Holy Saturday, the day between death and resurrection when the disciples fled while Mary remained. Holy Saturday is the most radical day of “no place to lay one’s head”: the Son was dead, the plan seemed destroyed, faith had no anchor but itself. The disciples closed themselves “for fear of the Jews” (John 20:19). Tradition holds that Mary kept faith alive where all others lost it.Mary’s Saturday is the weekly liturgical participation in Holy Saturday: the day “between,” where the week with its difficulties is left behind and Sunday with its promise has not yet arrived. Faith persisting on Saturday, without the consolation of the Sunday Eucharist or the enthusiasm of the Sunday assembly, is the purest faith, the faith independent of external consolations. Mary is the model of this faith on Saturday: she who “guarded” (Luke 2:19, dietērei) not only the words but also the experiences she did not understand, preserving them in hope that the Father, who rules all, had a plan beyond what she saw.“Follow you wherever you go,” Mary’s Saturday is the day when this promise is tested, renewed, and entrusted to her so that she sustains it. The faithful who ends the week with Saturday’s prayer to Mary does not ask Mary to replace following, but to sustain him where his own strength fails. Like John who “from that hour took her into his home” (John 19:27), the disciple who welcomes Mary on Saturday receives the same presence that sustained faith on Holy Saturday—the presence of the woman who followed to the end and knows by experience that the end is not death but the dawn of Sunday approaching.