Her Children Call Her Blessed

Some things are worth repeating.  Below I am reproducing a reflection I wrote a couple of years ago.  It captures so much of what I want to say about this day and about the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Mother.

Revelation 11:19a; 12:1-6, 10; Psalm 45:10-12, 16; 1 Corinthians 15:20-27; Luke 1:39-56

“From this day all generations will call me blessed”

Luke 1:48

The year was 2006. My wife and I had just decided we were going to enter RCIA in the fall and become Catholic. Our pastor recommended we go to a special celebration being held in Cleveland on August 15th. It was a feast day but I didn’t quite get all the details. There were two things that were rather humorous about this situation. The first is that we were at Holy Rosary Parish in little Italy. This is a very Italian parish and neither of us have an ounce of Italian blood in us. We were sitting in the midst of people speaking Italian and not getting a word of it. It felt like we had crashed someone else’s family reunion. The second humorous detail is that we were still very Protestant in a lot of our thinking and here we were celebrating a Marian feast. Ask most evangelical Protestants what they dislike most about the Catholic Faith and the teachings about Mary will be first or second.

This was my introduction to what we call Marian devotion. Marian devotion does not mean we worship Mary. Nor does it mean that Mary is somehow competing with God for our attention. Catholics use the term devotion to the saints to indicate our recognition that the saints in heaven are in communion with us because we are all one body in Christ. Therefore, we believe we can pray to them- which is to say that we ask them to pray to God for us- for help in time of need. While this is true in general of the saints it is especially so for our Blessed Mother.

Today we celebrate that Mary was taken body and soul up to heaven, similar to Elijah and Enoch in the Old Testament. It is a precursor to what many Protestants think of as the Rapture. When our Lord returns in power and glory we will be caught up to be with Him. St. Paul is very clear that the dead in Christ will rise first and then those alive at the time will simply go up to meet the Lord (1 Thess. 4:16, 17). Sounds like assumption.

The Church celebrates many Marian feasts but today stands out in my mind as the Marian feast. Why do I say that? Because we typically celebrate a saint’s feast day on the day of their death, which is their entrance into eternal life. This feast is when Mary experienced that. So today I have a couple of thoughts about Marian devotion.

First, as a Protestant I was concerned that all this attention to Mary was somehow detracting from the proper adoration given to God. Now I know different. Think for a moment of a beautiful painting. Suppose you are seeing it in an art gallery and you are mesmerized. You can’t take your eyes off of it. The more you behold it the more you love it. You begin to talk about how great it is; how beautiful, how amazing, how deep, how engaging, how ingenious it all is. But of course, the more you praise the painting the more you are actually praising the painter. It is impossible to give the painting itself any credit. There is no way that anything you are saying, thinking, or feeling is not ultimately the result of what the painter has accomplished. So it is with Mary.

Mary is who she is by a special work of God’s grace. She didn’t earn her way to the fullness of grace. It was given to her by God. It was a gift. Mary didn’t become all-holy by her own efforts. Rather it was the result of God’s grace at work in her. She is His masterpiece and there is really nothing we could say, think, or feel about her that does not ultimately go back to the author of her perfection- our great God. In praising her we are praising Him. It cannot be otherwise.

This is why Mary proclaims in today’s Gospel that all will call her blessed. It is not an arrogant thing. Rather, it is a humble, gracious acknowledgment of God’s grace. Mary knows she doesn’t deserve the honor of being chosen as the Mother of God. She is awed and humbled. What can she say? Only that God has blessed her. The emphasis is on God who gives the blessing rather than on Mary who is receiving it.

This leads me to the second thing about Marian devotion. Taking our cue from this same verse in today’s Gospel, we call Mary blessed. But what does that mean for us? It occurs to me that we can gain some insight from a phrase in Proverbs 31 where the ideal woman is extolled. It says, “Her children rise up and call her blessed,” (Prov. 31:28). I think most mothers would be overwhelmed to hear their children actually use this term for them. But that would only be the case if her children actually acted as if it was true. It won’t matter if they call her “blessed” if they never listen to her and disobey her. She would not be honored, she would be insulted.

Again, so it is with Mary. She is not honored when we call her blessed. She is honored when we live like it. Mary is our mother and, as such, she is to be obeyed. And what does she say? “Do whatever He tells you,” (John 2:5). Mary is always pointing us to Jesus. Her every intent is that we become more like Him; that our union with Him becomes more perfect.

We have a wonderful gift in our Blessed Mother. In beholding her beauty and grandeur we are praising the Lord who made her that way. In listening to her counsels we are drawn nearer to our Lord.

So, today my family and I plan to visit Holy Rosary parish in little Italy. We have not become Italian. But we are now part of this wonderful family called the Catholic Church. We will celebrate and rejoice, not only in the grace and goodness of our heavenly Father, but also in the gift of our Blessed Mother.