I am always a
little surprised when Catholics tells me they don’t have a devotion to Mary,
that praying to Jesus is enough for them. It is true: Jesus is,
after all, God, and therefore, enough. I can’t, however, ever let it go at that.
“Why should I pray to Mary?” they ask. “Why not?’ I always reply, and my
explanation always begins with the most powerful statement ever made about a
woman: “She is the Mother of God! If God chose her as His means to enter humanity, why wouldn’t we?”If we do believe in the true divinity of Jesus, then we believe in the
sanctity and holiness of Mary. To be the Mother of God, Mary had to be pure,
humble, compliant to God’s will, without guile, without anger, without
self-serving – I guess everything we would like to be but somehow fall short.
Would it not make sense, then, that if we found perfection in a human being,
someone we could emulate to become all we could possibly be, we would go to her,
be with her, study her and ask her to help us become more perfect in God’s eyes?
In his excellent book, my all time favorite book written about Mary, “The World’s
First Love”, Fulton Sheen offers this short prayer to Mary as he points out the
greatest attribute she possessed, and we lack:
“We speak much
of freedom today, Mary, because we are losing it – just as we speak most of
health when we are sick. Thou art the Mistress of Freedom because thou didst
undo the false freedom that makes men slaves to their passions by pronouncing
the word God Himself said when He made light and again when thy Son redeemed
the world – Fiat! Or, be it done unto me according to God’s
will. As the ‘no’ of Eve proves that the creature was made by love and is
therefore free, so thy Fiat proves
that the Creature was made for love as well. Teach us, then, that there is no
freedom except in doing, out of love, what thou didst do in the Annunciation, namely,
saying Yes to what Jesus asks.” (The World’s First Love: Mary, Mother of
God, Ignatius Press, 1952)
So the first point
of my explanation is the most powerful one of all: Mary is the Theotokos: the
Mother of God. God gave Adam and Eve freedom in the Garden of Eden, and they used
that freedom to turn away from Him. God wanted to redeem man, but in the
context of freedom once again, and He gave Mary the freedom to choose to be His
Mother. He sent an angel to ask her to be His Mother, and this time, mankind
got it right. Fiat! Can we do that?
Do we do that? Do we want to do that, every single time God knocks on our
hearts? If we do, then we turn to Mary. She will show us the Way. After all,
the Way is her Son. He came forth from her body. He looked like her, He acted
like her. “Show me a good man, and I will show you his good mother” is to
paraphrase a popular expression. Would God have been born to a selfish mother?
Would He have been born to a mother who wanted more praise and honor for
herself than for her son? Of course not! Mary does for us what a beam from a
lighthouse does for a ship: she points us in the right direction. I will end
with another powerful statement from Fulton Sheen, quoting from the above book.
By the way, Fulton Sheen had a profound love for Mary. When asked what he hoped
Jesus would say to him at his judgment, Fulton replied, “I know all about you!
My Mother told me all about you!” Mary, please tell Jesus all about me!
“As our love does not start with Mary, so neither does it
stop with Mary. Mary is a window through which our humanity first catches a
glimpse of Divinity on earth. Or perhaps she is more like a magnifying glass;
she intensifies our love of her Son and makes our prayers more bright and
burning. God, Who made the sun, also made the moon. The moon does not take away
from the brilliance of the sun. The moon would be only a burnt-out cinder
floating in the immensity of space were it not for the sun. All its light is
reflected from the sun. The Blessed Mother reflects her Divine Son; without
Him, she is nothing. With Him, she is the Mother of Men. On dark nights we are
grateful for the moon; when we see it shining, we know there must be a sun. So
in this dark night of the world, when men turn their backs on Him Who is the
Light of the World, we look to Mary to guide their feet while we await the
sunrise.”
Here is Fulton Sheen’s favorite poem about Mary:
TO OUR LADY
Lovely Lady dressed in blue–—
teach me how to pray!
God was just your little Boy,
Tell me what to say!
Did you lift Him up, sometimes,
Gently, on your knee?
Did you sing to Him the way
Mother does to me?
Did you hold His hand at night?
Did you ever try
Telling stories of the world?
O! And did He cry?
Do you really think He cares
If I tell Him things–—
Little things that happen? And
Do the Angels’ wings
Make a noise? And can He hear
Me if I speak low?
Does He understand me now?
Tell me–—for you know!
Lovely Lady dressed in blue,
Teach me how to pray!
God was just your little Boy.
And you know the way.
Author:
Mary Dixon Thayer
The Child On His
Knees, pages 24 and 25
The MacMillan Company, New York, 1926
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