From a teenage girl in Nazareth to the foot of the cross — what the Gospels say about her, in plain steps.
Luke's Gospel records an angel, Gabriel, appearing to a young woman in Nazareth named Mary, betrothed but not yet married to Joseph, telling her she will conceive and bear a son named Jesus, “the Son of the Highest.” Mary's response — “be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38) — is treated in Christian tradition as a model of faith and consent.
Mary travels with Joseph to Bethlehem for a Roman census, where Jesus is born. Matthew's Gospel adds that the family flees to Egypt to escape King Herod, who had ordered the killing of infant boys in Bethlehem, before eventually settling in Nazareth.
Mary appears at points throughout the Gospels — prompting Jesus's first recorded miracle at a wedding in Cana (John 2:1–11), and, according to some Gospel passages, at times seeming to worry about her adult son's mission (Mark 3:31–35).
Mary is present at Jesus's crucifixion, one of the few followers named as staying through it. From the cross, Jesus entrusts her care to “the disciple whom he loved,” traditionally understood to be John.
Acts 1:14 lists Mary among those gathered in prayer with the apostles just before the Holy Spirit's arrival at Pentecost, her last explicit mention in the New Testament.
Mary's role is concentrated in the Gospel birth narratives (Matthew and Luke), while Mark and John barely mention her by name.
Catholic and Orthodox Christianity give Mary an elevated devotional role, including doctrines like the Immaculate Conception, that most Protestant traditions do not share, though all agree on her role in the nativity accounts.