One of the main inquisitive questions a Catholic receives from someone who is not familiar with the Catholic Church is – “Why do you pray to Mary?”
For Catholics this question can make some defensive and others uncomfortable. Why? Because defining our love and admiration toward the Blessed Mother is like trying to explain why we believe in the Trinity – God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Every Christian Bible has the following account in the New Testament:
LUKE 1:39-56
Mary set out
and traveled to the hill country in haste
to a town of Judah,
where she entered the house of Zechariah
and greeted Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting,
the infant leaped in her womb,
and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit,
cried out in a loud voice and said,
“Blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
And how does this happen to me,
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears,
the infant in my womb leaped for joy.
Blessed are you who believed
that what was spoken to you by the Lord
would be fulfilled.”
And Mary said:
“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me
and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
and has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children forever.”
For those of you who are not Catholic this is the passage where the “Hail Mary” comes from and the “Magnificat“. If you take a look at the Hail Mary you will see we are not reverencing Mary but seeking her prayer:
Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with you, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death – Amen.
I suppose the greatest issue is whether or not one believes in our eternal spiritual salvation in Heaven and then what happens to our spirit in Heaven. When we pass is that it? Are our spirits left to simply roam Heaven or are we of a greater universal spiritual community that’s main source of joy is to adore God and pray for those who are still maneuvering their free will journey on earth?
It depends on what you are taught and what you choose to believe. But it is the best way, in my opinion, to answer the question that I’ve received from both young and old – Why do I pray to Mary?
“I don’t,” I say. “I ask her for prayer and I seek her comfort as the mother of God.”
Today, Catholics celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We do not know the day, year or manner of the Blessed Mother’s death but we do believe she was ‘assumed’ into heaven with spirit and body. I’m not a theology major so I won’t try to go into an explanation of this belief. But when I sat in Mass today and listened to our priest’s homily explaining the Magnificat and how Mary not only embraced the blessing the angel delivered but she enveloped the world into the blessing recognizing at once the baby she carried would be not just her savior but our savior.
Often when I say a “Hail Mary” or meditate by saying a Rosary I envision the Blessed Mother with her arms out wide, her large shawl covering her shoulders and then bringing me and sometimes my entire family into her embrace wrapping her arms around us, her shawl magically covering us, protecting us from harm. Within this embrace we are close to her bosom and within this embrace we are drawn into the heart of Jesus.
I know the subject of Mary will continue to be one of debate and questioning between Catholics and other Christian denominations but I felt compelled to do my best at giving a ‘layman’s’ answer. To embrace Christ as both God and man, as our savior who bled on the cross, dying for our sins and resurrecting so that we might live a life eternal in heaven…then I find it’s important to know who helped bring him into our world.
Blessings
Shannon
I want to clarify that my love for Mary, like my love for my husband, does not in any way detract from my love for God. I want to be very clear because a concerned reader who did not understand my point and was worried that I was perhaps slipping away from Jesus and authentic Worship of God alone.
Furthermore, to add to what I’d included within my post (as reviewed again above) almost every group of Christians are comfortable with asking other people to pray for them. Intercessory prayer then does not violate the unique role of God. The problem comes in that if you think the dead are ‘dead’, then they do not pray for us. Revelation 5:8 seems clear that they in fact pray for us. This is also part of the Great cloud of witnesses that surround us. Hebrew 12:1-2, which follows in Chap 11 the identifying of a number of great witnesses that have gone before us.
