Paths to Mary
The Holy Name of Mary
Today is the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary. Every monk at our monastery is given the name Maria at clothing, and so today is treated as an onomastico (name day) for the whole community.
Saint Bernard famously gave the advice: “Look to the star, call upon Mary.” Mary is, in the words of Saint Thérèse, “more mother than queen.” As a true mother, she has a practical eye towards all our needs. When we look to her she sees what is needful to us and takes care of it, as she did at the wedding of Cana. When we look to her and call upon her, her maternal eyes look to us and provides for our needs.
This truth is wonderfully expressed in today’s Collect, which we have been repeating throughout the day, both at Mass and at the Divine Office:
Grant we beseech Thee, O Almighty God, that Thy faithful, who are made glad in the Name and by the protection of the most holy Virgin Mary, may by her Motherly (pia) intercession be freed from all ills upon earth, and worthily attain unto Thine everlasting joy in heaven.
The Importance of Mary for the Christian
“God’s mercies come to us through the hands of our Lady,” according to words of Saint Josemaría Escrivá, and so “each of us can find many reasons for feeling that Mary is our mother in a very special way.”
God wishes each of us to go to Jesus through Mary, according to the phrase of Saint Louis Marie de Montfort. We are to look to Mary, to call upon Mary. Yet God draws each to her according to different paths. For some the way to Mary comes naturally, and it is through her that they are led into the other truths of faith. For others, another mystery of the faith opens the way to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The saints provide numerous examples of these different paths. Some discover Mary early in childhood, as was the case for Saint Thérèse who discovered the presence of her heavenly mother through the loss of her earthly mother.
The Loss of a Mother
Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus was four years old when her mother, Saint Zélie Martin, aged 45, died of breast cancer. Concerning the effect of her mother’s death on her, Saint Thérèse wrote: “When mama died, my happy disposition changed. I had been so lively and open; now I became diffident and oversensitive, crying if anyone looked at me. I was only happy if no one took notice of me… It was only in the intimacy of my own family, where everyone was wonderfully kind, that I could be more myself.” But, for Saint Thérèse, the visible loss of her mother meant a deeper closeness to her heavenly mother. The Apostles, too, in some sense lost an “earthly mother” when the Blessed Virgin fell asleep, but a few days later, they gained a heavenly mother. (Of course, Saint Thérèse’s earthly mother was also in heaven and looking over her.)
The Tenderness of the Heavenly Mother’s Love
Later, when Thérèse was suffering from a mysterious illness — it was both emotional and physical — the Blessed Virgin cured her by smiling upon her. Saint Thérèse discovered that the Blessed Virgin Mary loved her with a motherly tenderness surpassing the tenderness of any mother on earth. As her spiritual journey progressed, Thérèse also discovered more deeply the Fatherhood of God, and this helped to transform her, heal her, and raise her to the heights of holiness.
One day one of her sisters was surprised to find Thérèse alone in her cell, her eyes filled with tears. “What is it?” she asked. Thérèse replied that she had been thinking about the meaning of the Our Father. “It is so sweet,” she said, “to call God our Father.” Perhaps her devotion to her Blessed Mother opened the way for a deeper understanding of God as Father.
Paths to Mary
It delights the Heart of Jesus to see His little ones come to Him through Mary. Yet no two souls journey along exactly the same path, even when journeying to God through Mary. There are souls who discover the Fatherhood of God beginning with the Blessed Virgin Mary while other souls might reverse this, discovering the Blessed Virgin Mary beginning with an encounter with the pietas, the Paternal Love of God.
In the first case, a soul is touched by the goodness and tenderness of Our Lady and, through her maternal Heart, discovers Jesus, the fruit of her womb, the Son who says, “nobody can come to the Father, except through Me.” (John 14:6–7). This Marian grace of conversion would have been the experience of Alphonse Ratisbonne, the worldly young Jew miraculously transformed by an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte in Rome on January 20, 1842.
Perhaps Saint Francis of Assisi might count as an example of the second case — though there are a multitude of other saints in this group. Drawn to the words and deeds of Jesus in the Gospels, which he made the rule of his life, Saint Francis was drawn to the Face of Christ and to His Heart, and, having consented to the loving friendship of Jesus, displayed a dazzling devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, as if his heart had heard within the words of the Lord, “Behold thy mother” (John 19:27).
The Eucharist also can be the draw for the whole journey. Souls have been entirely converted by a powerful Eucharistic grace — ravished out of themselves and into God by the real presence of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament, they then go on to discover devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. A most dramatic example of a Eucharistic conversion is that of another young Jew, the concert pianist Hermann Cohen, who, in May 1847, was smitten by the Sacred Host. He fell to His knees, mysteriously compelled to adore the Hidden God, and when he rose, he already belonged to Christ, through whom He came to believe in and to experience the Fatherly Love of God and the maternal Heart of Mary. In the same way, the French atheist André Frossard entered the chapel of the Adoration Réparatrice in Paris on July 8, 1935. The Blessed Sacrament was exposed in the monstrance; in the twinkling of an eye, Frossard passed from denying the existence of God to being overwhelmed by the reality of God as both Presence and Person. Later he discovered Saint Louis de Montfort’s True Devotion to Mary and would say: “Reading this book was to be a turning point in my life.”
God at Work
Whatever the road through which we are drawn to the Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, there is always something or, more exactly, Someone Who is drawing: God Himself draws us to Mary, for He wants us to receive all things through her and to be drawn to Him through her. God draws us to Mary so that she can draw us to God. To do this, He operates through one means or another: through the mediation of the Sacred Humanity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, or of the Sacraments given to His Church, or through the Angels, through the Saints in heaven, or through important events in our life. All of these are like so many voices saying: Look to the Star, call upon Mary!
It is said: And the virgin’s name was Mary. Let us speak a few words upon this name, which signifieth, being interpreted, Star of the Sea, and suiteth very well the Maiden Mother, who may very meetly be likened unto a star.
A star giveth forth her rays without any harm to herself, and the Virgin brought forth her Son without any hurt to her virginity. The light of a star taketh nothing away from the star itself, and the birth of her offspring took nothing away from the Virginity of Mary. She is that noble star which was to come out of Jacob, whose brightness still sheddeth lustre upon all the earth, whose rays are most brilliant in heaven, and shine even unto hell, lighting up earth midway, and warming souls rather than bodies, fostering good and scaring away evil. She, I say, is a clear and shining star, twinkling with excellencies, and resplendent with example, needfully set to look down upon the surface of this great and wide sea.
Thou, whosoever thou be, that seest thyself amidst the tides of the world, tossed by storms and tempests rather than walking on the land, turn not thy eyes away from this shining star, unless thou dost wish to be overwhelmed by the hurricane.
If temptation storms, or thou fallest upon the rocks of tribulation, look to the star: Call upon Mary! If thou art tossed by the waves of pride or ambition, detraction or envy, look to the star, call upon Mary. If anger or avarice or the desires of the flesh dash against the ship of thy soul, turn thine eyes to Mary. If troubled by the enormity of thy crimes, ashamed of thy guilty conscience, terrified by dread of the judgment, thou dost begin to sink into the gulf of sadness or the abyss of despair, think of Mary. In dangers, in anguish, in doubt, think of Mary, call upon Mary.
Let her name be ever on thy lips, ever in thy heart; and the better to obtain the help of her prayers, imitate the example of her life: Following her, thou strayest not; invoking her, thou despairest not; thinking of her, thou wanderest not; upheld by her, thou fallest not; shielded by her, thou fearest not; guided by her, thou growest not weary; favored by her, thou reachest the goal. And thus dost thou experience in thyself how good is that saying: ‘And the Virgin’s name was Mary.’ – St Bernard of Clairvaux, Ex Homil. 2 super Missus est, circa finem.