|
Mother Mary Comes to Us
Favorite Titles of Mary for Mother’s Day and Beyond
BY JOSEPH PRONECHEN May 11-17, 2008 Issue |
Posted 5/6/08 at 1:19 PM
It’s not for nothing that Mother’s Day is a May event, for
May is the very Month of Mary. There are Mary statues to be crowned, Mary
gardens to tend, and Marian prayers to send up seeking the Blessed Mother’s
intercession under a multitude of titles.
With that last thought in mind, the Register put out the
call to some Catholics familiar to its readers. We wanted to know: What is your
favorite title for Mary, and why? Here’s what we heard back.
Bishop Robert Baker of the Diocese of Birmingham, Ala.,
co-founder of Our Lady of Hope Farm (Communita Cenacolo America) in St.
Augustine, Fla., has two favorites. “The first is Our Lady of Hope,” he says.
Not only did Bishop Baker compose a “Litany of Our Lady of Hope” for Prayers
for Prisoners (OSV, 2002), but for a year he led others praying a novena to her
for help in establishing the farm offering hope and help (see “Drug Rehab
Community to Add Third House,” March 9).
“As a spinoff from that is a devotion we established in the
Diocese of Charleston — Our Lady of Joyful Hope,” says Bishop Baker, its former
ordinary, crediting Father Stan Smolenski for helping develop it. “There’s no
history of that devotion in the Church. We came up with an icon created for
this devotion of Our Lady holding both a rosary and Christ her son in terms of
the Eucharist. This was inspired by Pope John Paul II’s strong emphasis on the
Eucharist and his Year of the Rosary.” Before leaving the Charleston Diocese
Bishop Baker established and dedicated the Shrine of Our Lady of Joyful Hope in
Kingstree, S.C. (OurLadyofSouthCarolina.net).
Mary Beth Bonaccci, chastity speaker and founder of Real
Love Inc. (online at reallove.net), remembers during May everyone praying the
Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary after the family’s Rosary. “Reflecting on it
as I’ve grown up,” she says, “the title I love is Cause of Our Joy. It’s really
not something we normally think of when we think of Mary. We may picture her as
quite demure, wearing a robe, looking down. But she is the cause of our joy.
She brought us the Savior. She advocates for us to him. And she loves us like a
mother. That’s a pretty good cause of joy for me.”
Rosalind Moss, apologist for Catholic Answers and co-host of
EWTN’s “Household of Faith,” chooses Mother of Israel’s Hope, a title she
fashioned when founding her new religious order. She explains, “Who is
‘Israel’s Hope’ but he who is the hope of the whole world? Jeremiah
cried: ‘O Hope of Israel, Its Savior in time of distress.”
Moss also looks to Our Lady of Fatima and Our Lady of
Lourdes, who “utterly transformed the heart of this previously
anti-Catholic evangelical Protestant and drew me irresistibly to that
Lady, that Jewish Lady, through whom God sent his Son to redeem the world — and
me.”
Marians of the Immaculate Conception Father Anthony
Gramlich, rector of the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Stockbridge,
Mass., favors the Immaculate Conception “because it’s pro-life. Someone can’t
say they’re a Catholic and at the same time say they don’t believe life begins
at conception because it would be contradictory. It would deny the existence of
Mary’s soul at the moment of her conception — and deny Church dogma.”
2 Qualities
Father Andrew Apostoli of the Franciscan Friars of the
Renewal, an EWTN series host and the vice-postulator for the canonization cause
of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, says he always invoked Our Lady as the Immaculate
Heart of Mary. “More recently,” he adds, “I came across the private revelation
to a great mystic and victim soul named Bertha Petit. Jesus told her, ‘My
mother has two qualities to her heart — immaculate, which is what I gave her,
and sorrowful, what my mother did for me in willingly sharing all my sufferings
and sorrows. I would like her to be invoked as the Sorrowful and Immaculate
Heart of Mary.’”
Christopher West, research fellow and faculty member of the
Theology of the Body Institute near Philadelphia says, “My favorite title of
the Blessed Mother is what Jesus called her: ‘Woman.’ There is a rich
theological meaning behind this. Mary is the woman of Genesis 3:16. Through her
‘Yes’ the knot of Eve’s ‘No’ is untied. ... Just as the first Adam called the
bride ‘Woman,’ so too from the Cross and at Cana the New Adam calls the bride
‘Woman.’ When Jesus calls her ‘Woman,’ it speaks to the bridal dimension of her
mystery.”
Colleen Carroll Campbell, a fellow at the Ethics and Public
Policy Center, EWTN host, and former White House speechwriter, says the Virgin
of Guadalupe caught her attention as a Catholic schoolgirl in Corpus Christi,
Texas, where she “saw her warm and welcoming image everywhere: in homes and
shops, in restaurants and churches, on medals and rosaries and rear-view
mirrors.” Her connection to Our Lady of Guadalupe later intensified at her
chapel in Washington, D.C.’s Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate
Conception.
“The Blessed Mother is a powerful intercessor under each of
her titles,” she explains, “but I believe she is particularly powerful under
this title when petitioned for the defense of innocent human life and the
transformation of culture for Christ — two causes in which she has helped
Christians prevail on our continent for the better part of five centuries.”
Mother’s Heart
Danielle Bean, mother of eight, author and senior editor of
Faith & Family magazine, loves Our Lady of La Leche. “It’s easy to get
caught up in the idea that Mary and Jesus, in their perfection, are somewhat
inaccessible to the rest of us,” she says. “Our Lady of La Leche reminds us
that they were human. Mary nursed baby Jesus and cuddled him, just like all
mothers do with their babies. ... I have always loved having Our Lady of La
Leche to call on, not only during nursing woes, but in all the trials of motherhood.
Many people also turn to Our Lady of Leche to intercede in asking for another
child or for healing after a miscarriage. Our Lady of La Leche is a special
gift to Catholic moms.”
Sister of Life Mary Elizabeth, director of the Family
Life/Respect Life Office of the Archdiocese of New York, chooses Morning Star.
“It’s very hope-filled,” she says. “While we’re on our earthly pilgrimage our
days are mixed with joys and sorrows. … The title of ‘Morning Star’ always
gives us a sure hope that there will be a definitive new day in which there is
no end. In times of suffering and darkness in our lives, the hopeful light of
the Morning Star rises in our heart to comfort us and guide us.”
“I love Star of the Sea,” says Matthew Pinto, author and
president of Ascension Press. “On the natural level, whenever I’m at an
oceanside resort that has a Catholic church named Star of the Sea, it has
brought great comfort to my heart, reminding me Mary can bring peace to the
storms of our life through her intercession. … When I hear any reference to
‘Star,’ whether Morning Star or Star of the Sea, I’m reminded she is the one
who leads us most expediently and directly to the Heart of Jesus.”
Staff writer Joseph Pronechen
writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.
Make a Donation now!
Insightful. Informative. Uncompromisingly faithful. The National Catholic Register is more than a newspaper. It’s a cause. Your support for the Register funds important journalism that helps to build a Culture of Life in our nation, and throughout the world. Help us promote the Church’s New Evangelization by donating to the National Catholic Register right now.
Click here to donate
| 
.
