Since Catholics pray to Mary we’re sometimes accused of mariolatry, or the worship of Mary. Yet nothing could be further to the truth. Everything that begins with Mary always ends with Jesus, and so it is with prayer as well.
We pray to the Virgin Mary because we want her intercession. Whenever we pray to Our Lady we are in essence asking her to pray for us, and with us, to her Son. Could we skip Mary and go straight to Jesus? Yes. But this is a mistake. We ask our family and friends to pray for us, so why would we not ask our Heavenly Mother to pray for us? I don’t know about you, but I need all the help I can get down here. So there’s no way I’m going to deprive myself of the help of the most powerful intercessor in the Church!
Praying to Mary doesn’t take anything away from Jesus. In fact it honors Him, because now instead of just one person praying to Him (us), there’s two (Mary and us). It also honors Jesus because He gave Mary to us as our Mother. When we pray to her, we are honoring His command to take her into our homes/hearts (Jn 19:26-27)! But when we don’t allow her that role in our lives, it is we as her children who suffer. Like any good mother Mary loves us and wants to help. But she can only help as much as we allow her to. So the more we make her a part of our lives, the more she can help lead us to Jesus.
I like to think of it this way. Mary is seated at the right of Christ (like Queen Bathsheba seated to the right of her son King Solomon in 1 Kings 2:19). I go to her with a request, and she and I both turn to her Son with my request. Then, knowing His divine will perfectly, she turns back to me and dispenses the appropriate and necessary graces to do His will. Then we both turn back to Christ in thanksgiving, since it is only because of Him that those graces are there to be given. Could we ignore Mary and only talk to Jesus? Yes. But she’s right there next to Him so that would be insult to both the King and Queen.
The bottom line is that Mary loves us and wants to help. The more we “behold our Mother” (Jn 19:27), the more she can work in our lives. Mary’s will was, and is, in perfect conformity with the will of her Son – so therefore like her Son, she desires the good for us more than we ever could for ourselves. Let us not deprive ourselves of so great a Mother and Advocate!
Pray for us O Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ! Tota tua…
See Also: Why Bother with Mary?
Today the Church celebrates the life of St. Francis de Sales. If you’ve ever read anything by him (he’s most famous for Introduction to the Devout Life and Treatise on the Love of God), then you’ve experienced his infectious love for God. It’s amazing that hundreds of years later his words still have the power to make readers fall more in love with the Lord! That being said, rather than another post about St. Francis, it seemed more fitting to simply let the saint speak to you directly through quotes:
In His great love, Jesus is always pursuing our hearts…
- “Behold this divine Lover at the gate, He does not simply knock, but stands knocking; He calls the soul, come, arise, make haste, my love (Song 2:16), and puts his Hand into the lock to try whether He cannot open it.”
And the more we come to know His love for us, the more we desire to love Him…
- “When the soul sees her God wounded by love for her sake, she immediately receives from it a reciprocal wound…And we, seeing the Savior of our souls wounded to death by love of us, even to the death of the cross, how can we but be wounded for him, but wounded with a wound as much more dolorously amorous as his was amorously dolorous, and a wound as great as is our inability to love him as much as his love and death require?”
And Jesus always responds to our desire to love Him more by giving us the ability to do so…
- “For the measure in which our heart dilates itself, or rather lets itself be dilated and enlarged, and does not deny the void of its consent to the Divine Mercy, in the same measure the Divine Mercy always pour into it, sheds over it, and increasing and ever increasing inspiration under which we also increase, growing more and more in divine love”
Love of God and a life of prayer then help teach us to place God’s will above our own…
- “Our free will is never so free as when it is a slave to the will of God, nor ever so much a slave as when it serves our own will. It never has so much life as when it dies to itself, nor ever so much death, as when it lives to itself”
- “The indifferent heart is as a ball of wax in the hands of its God, receiving with equal readiness all the impressions of the Divine pleasure; it is a heart without choice, equally disposed for everything, having no other object of its will than the will of its God, and placing its affections not upon the things of God but upon the will of God who wills them”
When we have died to ourselves we are then able to joyfully embrace all the Lord sends us…
- “Look at tribulations in themselves, and they are dreadful; behold them in the will of God, and they are love and delights…In truth, love either takes away the hardship of labor, or makes it dear to us while we feel it”
- ” God has given [crosses] to you with His holy hand; receive them, kiss them, love them. My God! They are all perfumed with the dignity of the place from which they come “
I hope you will meditate on some of these quotes because they are so rich! We have so much to learn from St. Francis de Sales, and it’s my most fervent prayer that we will come to know him better and let him teach us to love God as he does!
For a more autobiographical post on St. Francis de Sales, check out The Patience & Perseverance of A Saint
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the Cross and how painful it must have been for Jesus. Not just physically, and not just because of the seeming separation He felt from His Father which made Him cry out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” But because of us.
I can’t imagine the pain of being on the Cross, knowing and suffering for each and every sin we would commit. I can’t imagine the pain of being on that Cross, knowing how many of us would never come to accept Him as Savior. I can’t imagine the pain of offering absolutely everything He could possibly offer for us, and still knowing it wouldn’t be enough to secure every person’s fiat.
Looking at a crucifix I never ceased to be amazed at how much He loves me and how little I love Him in return. He has given everything for me, but somehow too often it still doesn’t feel like enough to me. Love has perfectly poured out Himself in total self-gift and yet how often I am unable or unwilling to receive that love!
He not only gave His Body and Blood on the Cross, He continues to offer them to me each day in the Mass. He not only merited all the grace the world could ever need on the Cross, He continues to offer it abundantly to me each second of every day.
Sometimes I can almost hear Him cry out, “What else can I do? What else can I give that I have not already given? What else will it take?!” I can almost hear this plea every time I sin, every time I become more attached to the things of this world rather than the next, every time I settle for pale imitations of His love instead of the real thing.
The Cross is a constant reminder that He loves us and has given us, and continues to give us, everything we need to respond in kind. Let us hear His call and give ourselves to Him more wholeheartedly, embrace His will more fully, and love more deeply.
Today the Church celebrates the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God! It’s so fitting that a week after we celebrate the birth of Christ our King we then celebrate our Queen Mother, who gave Him to us. Just as certain Old Testament figures foreshadowed Jesus, so too for Mary:
• Mary’s role is foreshadowed in the Old Testament in the office of the “Gebirah” – the Great Lady
• The Gebirah was the mother of the king (never the wife), and she was in charge of dynastic succession (a massively powerful position!)
• She was also the principle intercessor for the people of Israel to the king
• As mother of the king, the power of her role extended over the whole kingdom her son occupied
• The wives bowed before the king, but king Solomon bowed before his mother! (See 1 King 2:19)
We also see Elizabeth acknowledge Mary’s role in the New Testament when she calls Mary “the mother of my Lord.” This doesn’t strike our ears as anything special, but in the ancient Jewish world this was the specific title of the Gebirah! So Elizabeth was acknowledging that since Mary was pregnant with the King of kings, Mary therefore was the new Gebirah – the Queen. These powerful titles all reinforce Mary’s most fundamental and honored title of Mother of God!
Mary, the Mother of God and the new Gebirah, is the principle intercessor between us (the people of God’s kingdom) and our King. On account of the Lord’s dominion, her power extends over His whole kingdom – that is, over each one of us! And if that isn’t enough, Jesus explicitly gave Mary to us as our mother from the Cross (See Jn 19:27). So today we celebrate Mary not only as “Mother of God”, but as our mother as well! Let us turn to her in confidence and in love, knowing that Mary, the perfect mother, will lead us ever deeper into the love of her Son.
P.S.: A small apologetical note: since Jesus honors and loves His Mother, we too are called to do so. In fact, this is why it is impossible to love or honor Mary “too much.” Because no matter how much we do so, it will never match how much Jesus loves and honors her!
Catholic Living | admin | 
February 29, 2012 4:24 pm | 
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