Scottish Catholic Observer

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 DISCUSSION: How important is Mary to your spiritual life?

MIABIA HEGGS: Stairway-to-Heaven style importance!

MO FRANCES: Mary is central to our prayer life.

ANDREW McMANUS: The entire of creation waited with baited breath for her ‘Fiat.’ There is no salvation but through Her. To those who say we pay her too much attention: “Hail full of grace, the Lord is with thee” (Luke 1.28); “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8.31)

GERALD BONNER: For me, Mary is the anchor for the truth that Our Lord was fully human, as well as fully divine, truly like us in all things except sin.

She is also the highest example of the remarkable fact that God seems to delight in achieving His plans through our cooperation rather than some other way.

Mary is at the heart of our spiritual lives

By Aidan Michael Cook

There are many ways of seeing Mary. The Litany of Loreto alone gives us about 50 different titles for Her: mystical rose, seat of wisdom, vessel of honour, and many more. At the top of the list, below only Her name, is ‘Mother of God.’ She did not seek to be a mother, choosing instead to remain a virgin, but God had other plans. Her ‘yes’ made possible the Incarnation: in Her, ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.’

In saying ‘yes’ to becoming the Mother of Christ, the Mother of God, She became our mother also: the Mother of all. For if we are the Body of Christ, then how could His Mother fail to love us also? And how could She fail to be at the heart of our spiritual life? She does not push Christ aside but rather brings Him to us and us to Him: to look to Mary is to look to Christ. As She said to the servants at Cana, so too She says to us: ‘do whatever He tells you.’

It is no surprise then that there has been a strong devotion to Her from the earliest times. Countless prayers have sought Her intercession and hymns have praised Her virtue. Her life was bound so intimately with the incarnation that She has always held a privileged place in the devotions and spiritual life of Christians, in both east and west.

In my case, I had already accepted the theological reasons for devotion to Mary some time before developing any real heart-felt devotion to Her. I understood why She was important but this had not yet carried over in any meaningful way into my spiritual life. What finally brought home to me the real relationship we have with Mary was drawing an image of Her one day.

It was a quick sketch based on part of a painting of a young Mary looking down on Her newborn son. Even though my attempts lacked any real artistic merit, the act of drawing Her loving gaze—Her motherly care and attention—touched me in a way that understanding the intellectual case for Marian devotion simply had not been able to achieve. For the first time, I truly saw Her as Our Blessed Mother (above) with my heart and not just my mind. Ever since, that sketch has had a privileged position in my room—and She in my heart—watching over me with motherly love and attention.

Everyone will have a slightly different way of honouring Our Lady, a different relationship with Our Blessed Mother, but to fail to recognise Her importance would be a grave mistake. Not only would we fail to give Her the honour She is due, but we would also suffer in our spiritual life.