A devotional cult to a head of garlic? Tell me more!

Excellent article.

Thank you for this excellent article. Probably my one of my favorite articles I have ever read on IC.

Thank you for this lovely article - as someone who has only recently come to the Catholic faith and since I had a troubled relationship with my own mother, I cannot get enough of Mary - in fact it is she, The Virgin of Guadalupe, who brought me into the Catholic faith...I am grateful beyond words for her intervention - now I have an eternal mother and have learned to appreciate and love my own earthly mother [who passed a few years ago]in new way - the miracle of Mary is incredibly profound -

The problem is that many treat Mary not only as necessary, but as sufficient.

"The problem is that many treat Mary not only as necessary, but as sufficient."

Very true. Many people think that way about the scriptures, too.

What a great article!!! Thank you Arturo Vasquez.

Thanks for a lovely piece. I, too, am grateful to Mary; she brought me back to the faith.

Mary had (has) a much greater presence in the old Mass. She was featured prominently in the Confiteor every week; 3 Hail Marys and a Hail Holy Queen (plus a Saint Michaels prayer) used to end every Mass; there were processions into Mass on her feast days; May crownings; the Stabat Mater during Stations of the Cross, etc. These practices gave the Blessed Mother a natural place in our lives. She wasn't someone we had to seek out, her loving presence was always there.

For many American Catholics she is now optional; they are estranged from her, or never knew to love her in the first place. They miss so much and don't even realize it. How unfair to them!

No quibble at all with the major premise of this well-written piece: Mary matters. I would be interested to see concrete examples of "some in the Church criticiz[ing] certain Catholic societies for being too 'hung up' on Mary." I know of no serious and reputable thinkers who accept any longer the charge that we worship Mary instead of God.

Thanks for an excellent piece.
Mary leads us to Jesus...and woe to those who don't know our Blessed Mother.
Montfort's "True Devotion" is the most enlightening and nourishing book I've read on Mary.

If one prays the rosary as it meant to be prayed - with attention to the life of Jesus that will never happen - and if this is taught as should be taught then those who pray will always be contemplating the proper relationship between Mary and her Son - this is the way I learned to pray from EWTN - where the rosary is prayed everyday in this manner... so I respectfully disagree with your statement - because the Catholic church at least to my limited knowledge, has never taught the "sufficiency" you refer to...

That's right, Melinda, the Church doesn't teach that Mary is sufficient. I was just stating my impression that many treat her as such - in defiance of doctrine.

Good words about the rosary. As Fr. Corapi says, the rosary rightly approached is the prayer of the Gospel, which is of course focused on Christ.

Great article. Thank you. For me, it comes down to this: if you believe that the Incarnation matters, then you have to believe that Mary matters.

Speaking for myself, pregnancy and motherhood have opened my own eyes to Mary in ways I would not have expected. I have experienced the intimacy of pregnancy, birth, and nursing ... and any woman who had that relationship with Jesus was (IS!) someone truly special. She nurtured God. That's pretty profound.

I love this prayer, attributed to St. Jerome:


Oh Mary,

Nourisher of Him who nourished all,

Pray for us.

Jitpring,

I am not here accusing you of anything. I say that upfront because I do not know you. Still, it must be said that in your comment, I smell a whiff of something unpleasant.

I've had opportunity to travel around the world a good amount, and really enjoyed observing cultures as an outsider, in. I've got a knack of getting invited into peoples' homes, even occasionally for weddings, funerals, birthday parties, etc. The breadth of human expression amazes me - very often there are analogies that lead one to say, "Oh, we do something very similar back home! Only, like this..." There are also experiences for which one can find no analogy - events that are totally foreign to one's experience. I remember watching in Cambodia as a boy was caned by a police officer for stealing something from a vendor, there on the spot, and then set loose again. A crowd formed and cheered and spat at the boy. The cop whacked him three, four, five times. Each time a cheer and screams. Then it was over. People kicked or shoved him as he fled through the crowd. And it was over, and I was stunned. The temptation was to take something that was horrible to me and say, "What horrible people!" In his book "What I Saw in America," G. K. Chesterton, interestingly enough, advises against foreign travel for people who are unable to start their observations by saying "They must have some reason," but who can only say, "What horrible people!"

Where am I going with all this? When people say things like, "The problem is that many treat Mary not only as necessary, but as sufficient," they very often are speaking about *other* people, people who are strange to themselves - either from a strange culture, or from across some other continental divide. They do not understand the thing about which they are speaking - in the case of Mexican devotion to Guadalupe, for instance, there is usually a clear language barrier. There are strange customs: old women scraping on bloody knees across the plaza of the Basilica, merely to glimpse the tilma with the image of the Virgin. There are extravagances that cannot be comprehended: TEN pictures of the Virgin in ONE house!

I am not going to culturally relativize anything here by pointing out how extravagant the zeal for politics is in Washington, D.C., or how odd it is for all those northern moms and dads to get up every weekday at 3:30 or 4:00 a.m. to take their boys to hockey practice. What I will point out simply is the possibility that the things in question are being questioned before they are understood. That's not very fair. In the worst case, it is ugly. It is the Ugly English tourist (they had the bad reputation before we did!) whose only comment about France is how bad the tea is there, or about Venice that its streets are horribly wet.

If one stops to wonder how many miracles the old Mexican grandmother can attribute to the intercession of the Virgin, her devotion to the mother of her God becomes much less wonderful and much more commonsensical. Is the old Mexican grandmother correct in each attribution? I don't know, because I don't know what miracles she remembers. And that's just the point.

I do not believe that any Catholic has ever said, "I don't need Jesus, because I have Mary," or for that matter has even felt that way. Why do refuse to believe it? Because I've never heard any Catholic with a visible devotion to Mary say they felt that way. I've only heard those Catholics' detractors ascribe the sentiment to them. Once the comment is made by one, it becomes plausible to others because the devotion is so strange to them in the first place. The solution, rather than to repeat the accusation, is to meet the people, learn about them *from* them, get inside their head, and see *why* they are so devoted to so strange a Lady. Others will mock and say, "Oh, that's what Catholics are: mariolators is all." Let them mock. For us it is better to know the reason, and, of course, the Woman.

I highly recommend Fulton Sheen's "The World's First Love," or Scott Hahn's "Hail Holy Queen: the Mother of God in the Word of God."


Meg,

Interestingly enough, except for the old (and beautiful) Confiteor, those traditional devotions weren't tied in particular to the old Latin Mass; they were merely ejected with it. Happily, they are making comebacks in a lot of places. My suburban parish in Maryland has had, in the last calendar year, at least one Eucharistic procession, another with the Virgin of Guadalupe, and another with our patron, St. Martin of Tours. We have had a May crowning and we had a Forty Hours. The rosary is standard fair before the non-obligation fulfilling Masses, and confessions are heard daily after the same Masses.

I am really grateful to the Virgin for bringing you back to our holy Faith, Meg. She has had a deep impact in my desire to live our Faith well. Almost daily I find myself confiding to her care a number of people about whom I care greatly, but about whom I can do little.

Ryan Haber
Kensington, Maryland (originally of Gaithersburg)

We will never be able to thank Mary enough for her
"Ave". After Adam and Eve and countless others sinned,
God still gave the human race a chance with Mary.
Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy..."

Wonderful article! Not having the same heritage, coming to Catholicism after a secular upbringing with a brief, but powerful introduction to the Church while very young. Coming back, at first; my only consistent prayer life involved the Rosary. Which slowly enabled me to overcome my confusion regarding Mary. The rosary prayers are continuously focused on and to Jesus himself in a very beautiful manner. A gift, is what it is.

Recently, I attended the Guadalupe Festival and heard Msgr. Eduardo Chavez speak as well as bishops and countless Knights speak. I highly recommend the book " Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love". Simply put, Our Lady brings us closer to Her Son.

I agree 100%. God is Good and Mary is a loving Mother; I don't think they would allow someone to be distanced from Christ by their love for His Mother.

Incidentally, I think "Fiat" is what Mary said, while the word "Ave" is the "Hail" in "Hail Mary".

In the encyclical ,"Lux Veritatas",issued by Pope Pius XI in 1931, he clearly state why Catholics honor the Virgin Mary and the flawed Protestant rejection of Mary:

42. From this dogma of the divine maternity, as from the outpouring of a hidden spring, flow forth the singular grace of Mary and her dignity, which is the highest after God. Nay more, as Aquinas says admirably: "The Blessed Virgin, from this that she is the Mother of God, has a certain infinite dignity, from the infinite good which is God." (Summ. Theo., III. a.6.) Cornelius a Lapide unfolds this and explains it more fully, in these words: "The Blessed Virgin is the Mother of God; therefore she is far more excellent than all the Angels, even the Seraphim and Cherubim. She is the Mother of God; therefore she is most pure and most holy, so that under God no greater purity can be imagined. She is the Mother of God; therefore whatever privilege (in the order of sanctifying grace) has been granted to any one of the Saints, she obtains it more than all" (In Matt. i. 6).

43. Why, therefore, do the Reformers(Protestants) and not a few nonCatholics bitterly condemn our piety towards the Virgin Mother of God, as though we were withdrawing the worship due to God alone? Do they not know, or do they not attentively consider that nothing can be more pleasing to Jesus Christ, who certainly has an ardent love for his own Mother, than that we should venerate her as she deserves, that we should return her love, and that imitating her most holy example we should seek to gain her powerful patronage?

Well said. Ratzinger said that the Latin world is often caricatured as having misunderstood Mary to a fault, but instead they have understood her exactly right. It wasn't the Spanish who conquered Mexico; it was the Blessed Virgin.

Thank you, Arturo, for a much-needed reminder of what it is to be Catholic. I have followed your blog for a few months now and I share your concerns.

I am a Catholic convert of 45 years now, and it is only in the last seven years that I have developed a deepening devotion to Our Lady Mary through the Rosary. I was always aware over the years how much further I still had to go to be a real Catholic, that is, a Catholic fully and habitually immersed in the traditional practices of born-Catholics. And now I am discovering among others devoted to the Mother of God, the deep truly Christian gentleness and humility in them that can only come from devotion to her. Fully developed devotion to Our Lady and the Saints is all of a oneness with Christ: there can be no separation.

To aver "necessary but not sufficient" is typical of the rationalizing spirit of today. It castes doubt on Tradition and the Faith of the Church. I taught at a Marist school for many years, and after a while the message from the clergy was that we should "do as she does": obey Christ. What this really meant was to caste doubt on devotion to Mary. In practice, the Rosary was discarded in the school's life. We were meant to see her as a model, an abstraction of motherhood, an example, but one does not place an image or statue in one's room to Motherhood, or to Humility. One kneels in confidence to one's real Mother - Our Lady, Mary - and asks her for favors from Our Lord. And through her, our Mother, we are placed solidly - the Father's children.

In Australia and New Zealand where I live, it is mainly the non-Irish, the non-Anglo and the non-Italian immigrants who still have an abiding family-based devotion to Our Lady: the Poles, the Lebanese Maronites, the Catholic Asians, and the Latin Americans.

So many miracles of Faith and healing are wrought through her prayers and those of the saints. How sad to see such opportunities for grace go amiss among so many.

That is such a beautiful vision of the Church as the Body of Christ. Compare that to the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps and oh so American image of religion: that an individual could conceivably pick up a Bible (or a Catechism) read it cover to cover and single-handedly embody their religion because they believe and do all the right things. The latter vision is untrue but it is first of all ugly when compared to the real historical Body of Christ.

Um, no. It is the tradition and faith of the Church. I've never heard it summed up that way, but (philosophical nuances of necessary vs. sufficient conditions aside) it captures at least two things that absolutely are a part of our faith: 1) that Mary is not 'sufficient' for our salvation. 2) that Marian devotion is not an optional thing in the way that, say a novena to St. Jude is.

That people feel the need to point it out in that way might be a backhanded attempt to downplay devotion to Mary, and if so, might be motivated by a rationalizing spirit of that "Vatican II did away with all that" kind. Or it might be what Arturo Vasquez identified: fear of that imaginary boogeyman, the Catholic Who Actually Flippin' Does Worship Mary. Protestantism in America had pounded that boogeyman into everyone's heads for so long that it's not surprising that even Catholics begin to think that there must be some true instances of that kind of distortion of genine veneration, somewhere.

<i>r it might be what Arturo Vasquez identified: fear of that imaginary boogeyman, the Catholic Who Actually Flippin' Does Worship Mary.</i>

That's because you've made "Catholics don't worship Mary" a tautology. In it appears to me that you all use the Marian cult to define hyperdulia, and latreia (worship) is loosely defined as "whatever is higher than hyperdulia." In other words, when worship is defined as "whatever Catholics don't do to Mary," then your statement, "Catholics don't worship Mary" is merely an axiom, not something that can be proved or disproved.

Hi

As a post-Protestant outsider I have no experience of Marian devotion - it's all a bit alien and weird. Yet a Catholic friend once pointed out to me that talking to the Saints and especially Mary makes sense because to God they're all alive and in God they all share in His perception of us. That made a lot of sense and so I ask St. Paul to intercede for me for understanding and occasionally ask Mary Theotokos to talk to the Father for me. A lot of the words and ritual make no sense to me, but Mary's prayer, as recorded by St.Luke, is very deep waters in surprisingly simple words.

I think a lot of Protestants could do well to get to know the Saints. I went to an Anglo-Catholic parish for a time and our patron Saint's day, St. Faith, was always memorable. A shrine to Mary wouldn't have been out of place either.

I once heard a Norbertine priest in southern California describe Marian devotion. He said that Christ is our example in all things and we should pattern our lives after His. Since He loved Mary with all the force of His Divinity, and He is our example for living, then there's no way we can love Mary enough.

She is happy to always lead us to Christ, our true fulfillment in time and eternity. Thank God for such a wonderful Mother.

Mary, Mary, Mary...

Intercede for all of those who forget that Jesus was born into a human family and that, as His mother, He drew sustanance from you. You replaced the Arc of the old Covenant by becoming the new living arc...with the birth of the new, living Covenant, your dearly beloved Son, Jesus Christ. Your spiritual spouse, the Holy Spirit, is always there when we pray through you to Our Lord and Savior and we beg forgiveness for those whose eyes are not yet opened to the fact that your Son has sent you back to earth in so many locals to beg of us to draw close again to Him...we are to pray, pray, pray and fast, for the time of His return is very near now.

So pray we should, especially the scriptural Rosary and know that in these biblical passages found within those most glorious mysteries there is a depth to the very devotion that You have to your very Son and know that where He is, there you are. The Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of you, our dear Mother are so entwined that only the ignorance of those who forget that you gave birth to our Lord and Savior can be used by the adversary to pull some of us away from you. For it is written in the origional Catholic bible that you, our dear Mother of God, will crush the head of Satan. What a fitting end that will be for the one who hates all humans...to be defeated by the most holy and humble of them all.

"The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. I came that they may have Life, and have it abundantly." (John 10:10).

... for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14)

Read any messasge. They sound so "spiritual". It's always "Come to me, I will take you to my Son" or even "Baby Jesus is sitting on my lap".

We are in the last days and Satan is busy deceiving the world with his lies. The Bible teaches us to "Love the Lord with your WHOLE heart, WHOLE mind, WHOLE soul, and WHOLE strength." (Deut 6:5; Matt 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27). "... the Truth shall set you free".(John 8:32)

What a BEAUTIFUL ARTICLE! How can we EVER have too much of our Heavenly Mother? She brings so many to her beloved son. Thank-YOu so much for clearly defining to those who do not understand what our Mother's role is.

Thought out and written very well. American Catholics need to break the ice with Mary, Queen of Angels and Saints, Mother of the Redeemer.
Please write more essays on Mary, Our Blessed Mother
E. Gamboa (author: Virtuous Healers)

When I pray Rosary and I try every day,while in the car or walking I begin imagining the mysteries and then my mind wanders to daily problems.Are any others out there who experience the same?
I love Holy Mary,but I just don't know if I am doing my prayers the correct way.Honestly I don't like to pray Rosary,but feel that I must,so I pray.
Thank you Arturo for this hart warming article.

Jan, I think that you are having trouble concentrating because you are human just like all of us. I too have trouble concentrating during the Rosary, but God I am sure loves the fact that we are trying and that we are seeking Him out through prayer. No one except Jesus has ever said a "perfect" prayer, but if you keep practicing and trying you will get better and better. I would also recommend trying to say the Rosary when you are not driving or walking, but instead go into your room and shut the door as it states in the bible. Also fasting before prayer can do wonders to clear your mind. This can be fasting from food or from TV, radio, internet etc. for a few hours. When I have trouble concentrating I like to start out with the sorrowful mystery of Jesus praying in the garden, because I can think of no better example of the perfect prayer and concentration than what Jesus had while praying that night. Also Jesus' admonishment to his disciples to stay awake (and alert) can just as easily apply to us when we pray the rosary. Good luck and God bless!

The first thing that our Blessed Mother did after conceiving by the Holy Spirit is that she went in haste to the house of Zachariah and Elizabeth bringing the Lord to them and serving Christ in them. Now what is she doing in her apparitions and her tears? She is exhorting us to stop offending God and disfiguring the image of Christ within us. Yes she is crying for us and at Fatima she is calling to us who claim to be her children when she said " too many souls go to hell because they have no one to pray for them". When we become aware of the sins of others our job is to pray for them and even make sacrifices for them not slander, not gossip and not especially condemnation. Our desire should be Christ's desire for which He died that all souls be brought to Heaven!

I am deeply grateful to the author of this artcle. Devotion to Mary leads us to Jesus. Thank you very much

I love this piece! Mary became my own Mother many years ago. I lost both of my parents at a very young age. She has always been there to comfort me! Always leading to her son, my Savior Jesus! I hope and pray others will open up their hearts to Mary. The Rosary is a great way to get started. It's all about Jesus!

Oh, not so, FP. Not so.

Latreia has a very specific meaning. Latreia is not just "whatever is higher than hyperdulia." It is very clearly, specifically "ministerial service," (see any Greek lexicon) and it refers to the service of the altar - to sacrificial worship.

For Protestants, who have ejected the concept of sacrifice from their acts of worship, one act of reverence and devotion blends with another - prayers, catechesis, song. It is not so among us Catholics, because we have the Eucharist - not merely a memorial, but a re-presentation, a re-manifestation, a re-engagement - of Christ's self-sacrificial oblation. The Eucharistic Sacrifice is the act by which Christ worshiped the Father, and it is the act by which Catholics and the Orthodox worship the Father, because it is the way that he instructed us to do so (). That is latreia, and it is reserved for God the Father alone, in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Singing, prayers, preaching - those are nice, but they aren't what we mean by latreia. At the Mass and in the rest of our lives, they build up to the latreia. That's what they are for, but they are not the "source and summit" of our life - rather, they draw us closer to God. That is why we can devote them safely to the saints - because the saints draw us closer to God as well. It is impossible to learn about their lives and to attempt to imitate them without growing closer to God... because the saints are saints precisely because of their closeness with God.

Mary is the greatest saint because she was the closest to God. She was so close to him that she bore him nine months in her womb, and many more in her arms. He surely followed her example as a child, and she followed his as an adult. She restrained him when adolescent exuberance would have launched his ministry too early, and prodded him before it was too late. She followed him around as he preached, and she met him on the Way of the Cross as he died. She alone among women is named as among those present in the Upper Room at Pentecost - surely not at the periphery of the Apostles, but at their center as the one who knew Him best. The Holy Spirit descended upon her to conceive in her the Messiah of Israel, and descended upon her and the Apostles to bring the Messiah out to the world.

Whoever would denigrate such a relationship has either not thought it through. She is not one among many Christians or saints - she is absolutely unique among God's creatures. If we honor our mothers with dulia, surely something higher is owed the Mother of God.

If you really want to understand and know the importance of Mary, read what Jesus Himself says about His Mother @ www.tlig.org. Do a Search for the message titled "The Woman Adorned with the Sun", dated March 20, 1996. After reading this, if it doesn't melt your heart and show you how much Jesus loves His Mother, I don't know what will. Only Jesus can tell us the words that are in this message, no one else. The perfect love He talks about between Him and His Mother, and how He wants us to have the same with Her, can only be spoken by Jesus Himself. No one else can express this the way it is done here. He says that if we reject His Mother, we are rejecting Him.

For example, He says in a part of the message, "- have you not noticed how My Heart melts and favours always Her Heart? how can this Heart, who bore your King, be denied anything She asks from Me? all the faithful bless Her Heart for in blessing Her Heart you will be blessing Me;".

And again, later, He says "in your devotion for Her you will be devoting yourself to Me; every devotion, honouring Her Heart, will amplify and ascend on Me since Our union is so perfect; in your devotion for Her Heart, all My decrees will be better understood in Her Light, because your steps will be guided by Her Heart since your hand will be taken by the Throne of Graces Herself; how blessed you will be to repeat your devotion to Her Heart!

come to the One, so Blessed, who shows Her Motherly Love to Her children by showing them the way to heaven; come to the Co-Redemptress of your Redeemer whose Heart, burning with Love, was offered to be pierced too for your sake; come and honour this Heart, alight as a Lamp, shining within and without near My Heart;

if you say: "we have no use for Her Heart", know that in reality you are saying: "we have no use for the Lord's Heart!" learn, feeble man, that My Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of your Mother are so united that in their perfect unity those Two Divine Hearts become One; I tell you solemnly: if you acknowledge Her Heart, not only will you be acknowledging My Heart but also the Father's; have I not said that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? if I am in the Father and the Father is in Me, My Heart, too, is in the Father and His Heart is in Mine; to say that We are not inseparable and One, is to deny My Word; do not be the slave of your spirit and do not be won by the arguments of the world;"

Later, He says "oh creation! My Soul is in utter dismay when so many of you deny Her Heart! and My Angels tremble for that day I will pronounce these people, guilty! but for those who honoured Her and loved Her, the Gate of Her Heart will be open for you to step into heaven; and I will say to you who love and honour Her: "come! your love for Her was so great on earth that today you may come to your room and before My Holy Temple (17) bow down;"

creation, this Great Sign (18) in heaven, the Woman adorned with the Sun that holds the demons paralysed with fear, this Great Sign that illuminates the heavens terrifying the Darkness (19) is none other than My Mother; in contrast to the darkness I raised this Most Holy Virgin to be for all of you a Pillar of blazing fire by night to guide your step, and by day a Sun to illuminate your dreadful gloom;".

Footnotes:
17 Our Blessed Mother: The Temple of God.
18 Rv. 12:1.
19 The Devil.

So you see, according to Jesus, there can never be "too much Mary".

WOW! Thanks Tess for posting these beautiful words from Christ regarding how much He loves AND honors His Mother! I will be sure to go to that tlig website and read it!

To know the Heart of Christ is ALSO to love His Mother. If Christians (from ALL denominations) do not honor her, then a person does not REALLY have a personal 'relationship' with Christ ... no matter how much they may love Jesus... when they reject Mary then they only love Jesus on their terms and in a way that is convenient for them. May the Good Lord help us attain that perfect union of love that Mary attained by simply saying "YES" to God!

So simple even and child can understand it!

I think that this quote is actually attributed to St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (ob. 248)

Excellent reflection!

Here's part of the Litany - for a greater understanding of her role -simply put.

Holy, Mary,
pray for us.
Holy Mother of God,
Most honored of virgins,
Chosen daughter of the Father,
Mother of Christ the King,
Glory of the Holy Spirit,
Virgin daughter of Sion,
Virgin humble and poor ,
Virgin gentle and obedient,
Handmaid of the Lord,
Mother of the Lord,
Helper of the Redeemer,


Full of grace,
Fountain of beauty,
Model of virtue,
First fruit of the redemption,
Perfect disciple of Christ,
Untarnished image of the Church,
Woman transformed, Woman clothed with the sun,
Woman crowned with stars,
Gentle Lady,


Gracious Lady,
Our Lady,
Joy of Israel,
Splendor of the Church,
Pride of the human race,
Advocate of grace,
Minister of holiness,
Champion of God's people,


Queen of love,
Queen of mercy,
Queen of peace,
Queen of angels,
Queen of patriarchs and prophets,
Queen of apostles and martyrs,
Queen of confessors and virgins,
Queen of all saints,
Queen conceived without original sin,
Queen assumed into heaven,
Queen of all the earth,
Queen of heaven,
Queen of the universe,


Cheers
Greg

i agree, for the sweetness perpetually there, you can NEVER have "too much Mary!,...(-:

i love her,...& all of you!,...God Bless!

Jeremiah 44