by David Pott
Outside Salisbury Cathedral there is a striking statue showing Mary striding purposely away from the cathedral towards the city. The statue by Elisabeth Frink is called Walking Madonna. When we reflect on the many portrayals of Mary over the centuries, what comes to mind most often is a sitting Mary with Jesus on her knee or her sitting on a donkey, arriving in Bethlehem or on the flight to Egypt. There are also paintings of her standing by the cross, but I can’t recall images of Mary walking.
The first time we hear about Mary walking is in Luke 1:39 where we are told that Mary hurried to the hill country of Judea to go and share her special news with her cousin Elizabeth. The Greek verb used is the same as the one used of the shepherds hurrying to the manger in the next chapter and certainly implies fast walking and maybe even some running! She probably walked around 100 miles and the town Elizabeth and Zechariah most probably lived in was just over 800 metres high. It is clear that God chose a very fit and agile teenager to carry and then bear his son into the world!
Although there is no mention in the Bible of a donkey in connection with the nativity, in those images we are so familiar with, Mary is invariably sitting on that donkey and it’s Joseph doing the walking! So is it possible that Mary could have walked from Nazareth to Bethlehem? It’s a distance of about 90 miles and people in general walked greater distances than we do today. I don’t think it would have taken them more than a week. I suspect that Mary was a vigorous young teenager and many women feel quite a surge of energy in the last days before giving birth and clean the house from top to bottom!
If Joseph and Mary did have a donkey with them it’s quite likely it would have been used to carry their belongings. In this article https://petshun.com/article/do- donkeys-like-being-ridden, it mentions that “most donkeys do not naturally enjoy being ridden and may find it uncomfortable or stressful.” Of course many are trained to carry people, but they are better suited to carrying evenly weighted packs on their flanks. Another factor is that bumping along on a donkey’s back was probably less comfortable for Mary than walking.
It’s likely that the flight to Egypt was months after Jesus was born and she would be fit to walk the 150 to 200 miles to Egypt. I remember how well my daughter Katie walked on the 180 mile Thames Path Prayer Walk in 1996 carrying eight week old Esther! After a few years in exile, the longest journey was from Egypt back to Nazareth and I reckon that was at least 300 miles as they had to avoid Judea to get there. That would have been great practice for young Jesus who of course became the great walking rabbi who invited people to follow him. The Greek word for follow in the New Testament (ἀκολουθέω akoloutheó) means “to be in the same path with” and those first disciples responded in a literal fashion by walking after him. Maybe the stirrings of the walking Jesus were happening in Mary’s womb on that memorable walk to Bethlehem?