The story of your Aunt Dorothy is most impressive Rich, she obviously had a great influence on all who knew her.
I think that Mary is a symbol of the interior life, the loving, the compassionate, the intuitive, the ever faithful. As in the Magnificat “my soul doth magnify the Lord”. I advise you to read James on the Magnificat in Luke’s gospel. But I add a few of James thoughts about Mary from the JFV course:
“Mary, Jesus’ mother, becomes the portal through which Creation out of Nothing takes place, to be in historical fact what had been symbolized by the Tabernacle overshadowed by the Presence of the Most High.
Mary is the first and most complete example of “secondariness”, receiving who she is through the regard of the Presence which has come into history through her.
Mary is not in rivalry with the huge elective family that her son is bringing into being (Luke 8:19? 21). By the day of Pentecost, her motherhood of Jesus has been stretched into her being sister of her son’s sisters and brothers. The one who provided the raw material for the New Creation has become an insider within that new creation.”
