Christmas: So, what did Mary know?

Here is a new carol, “Mary, Did You Know?”  sung a cappella by Pentatonix:

Mary, did you know
that your Baby Boy would one day walk on water?
Mary, did you know
that your Baby Boy would save our sons and daughters?
Did you know
that your Baby Boy has come to make you new?
This Child that you delivered will soon deliver you?
Mary, did you know
that your Baby Boy will give sight to a blind man?
Mary, did you know
that your Baby Boy will calm the storm with His hand?
Did you know
that your Baby Boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kiss your little Baby you kissed the face of God?  (Mark Lowry/Buddy Greene)

I find this an astounding change of perspective.  No longer are we consumers of Christ’s coming (“Oh come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant . . .”).  We have moved to Mary’s view of the event.

 Mary did you know… 
The blind will see.
The deaf will hear.
The dead will live again.
The lame will leap.
The dumb will speak
The praises of The Lamb.
Mary, did you know
that your Baby Boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary, did you know
that your Baby Boy would one day rule the nations?
Did you know
that your Baby Boy is heaven’s perfect Lamb?
The sleeping Child you’re holding is the Great, I Am.

Mary’s point of view.  Well, yes, she has been through the Annunciation (Luke 1:26) and has spent three months with Elizabeth (carrying John the Baptist) but now her own baby boy is here!  The one foretold.  

What is she thinking?  Does she have foreknowledge of what is to come?  And if she does, then she sees the crucifixion already, the baby boy in her arms, nailed and dead.  

It is merciful that the carol does not take us there.  But we think of it, of her wonder, of her joy, and of her coming grief.  

This carol is not a Catholic veneration-of-Mary argument.  It is our song for her, her song, about her foreknowledge perhaps, about her fears perhaps.  About her wonder certainly.  And our wonder, our grief, our foreknowledge.