By Karen Edmisten

     It was November, just before Thanksgiving and I was at the doctor’s office.  I was pregnant, and cautiously hoping I would carry this baby to term.  Though we had two beautiful children, after multiple miscarriages I took nothing for granted.  The image on the ultrasound screen was not what it should have been.      

     “I’m concerned it may be an ectopic pregnancy,” said my obstetrician, “but this early, an ultrasound can fool us.”  He told me to come back in five days: “A few days can make a huge difference in what we see.”  He did his best to assure me that all would be well.      

     I left the office feeling frightened and terribly sad.  I was seven weeks along; we should have seen a heartbeat.  The possibility that all was well seemed remote.  I prayed; I hoped; but I feared.

     Five days later, the picture did look different.  There was no sign of trouble in the fallopian tube, and the baby was indeed in the womb.  Still, we could not detect a heartbeat.  My doctor wanted to try one more ultrasound in a few more days — couldn’t we have miscalculated the date of conception, he wondered?  Not likely, I said, for a couple who knows the fine points of Natural Family Planning as well as we do. Given my history, I feared the worst.  I reported the news to my closest friends with great sadness.  “No heartbeat,” was all I could say.  My friends offered me prayers, comfort and shoulders to cry on. 

     But I had one friend who remained upbeat.  “Hang on until the next ultrasound,” she urged.  “We have no idea what God has in store for your little one.  Pray to Our Lady of Guadalupe, the protector of the unborn.”     

     Of course — Our Lady of Guadalupe! And so began the rosaries, asking for her intercession.  A few days later, I received a beautiful rosary in the mail — it was a gift from a pro-life organization to which we had donated, and it bore the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  My heart jumped, and I dared to hope this was a sign of an impending miracle.     

     The next day, on our way out of the house to go to the doctor’s office, my four year old begged to hold the pretty rosary.  I handed it to her as we drove to the home of a friend who would watch the kids during my appointment.  When we arrived at my friend’s, the rosary was in pieces.  “I’m sorry, Mama,” my little girl said.  “It broke.”  She clutched a few beads and links and looked at me sadly.      

     “It’s okay,” I told her.  “Things break.  You didn’t mean to.”

     But inside, I feared that my “sign” had broken too.  I had been hoping and trusting in my prayers to Our Lady of Guadalupe and now the rosary, that unexpected gift that prompted me to hope for a miracle, was in pieces.    

     Later, at the doctor’s office, the final news came.  No growth… no heartbeat… no sign of life.  Blood tests over the next week confirmed that the levels of pregnancy hormone had dropped; the baby had died.    

     In my grief, I forgot for a time about my broken rosary, but then a strange thing happened.  Though I mourned our lost child, circumstances surrounding the miscarriage led to some resolution regarding an old and very painful emotional wound.   In other words, had I not miscarried, I would not have been healed of this old wound.  What an amazing grace, I thought, and I thanked God for what He had done for me through the short life and the death of my child.      

     It was then that I remembered the rosary.  As I pieced it back together, I found that I had been able to save nearly all of it.  One decade was missing two beads, and my tinkering with the links left it looking a bit crooked, but it was repaired.     

     Gazing at it, I was struck by the incongruity.  This once-perfect thing was now bent, crooked and imperfect, yet still beautiful.  It was like us, like our lives.  Though we were made in the perfect image of God, we are bent and crooked with original sin; even after baptism we are still crippled by its after-effects.  We stumble through this life tarnishing the perfect image, while our Lord repeatedly tinkers with us, repairs us, and heals us.       

     I remembered my sinking feeling when I saw that the rosary had been broken, how I felt all my hopes instantly dashed.  I had imagined that the gift of the rosary meant that I would receive the gift of my baby.  What I received instead — the healing — was a great gift that I could not have predicted.  I couldn’t have known how beautifully the Lord would use my child to heal me; I couldn’t have known how this unexpected rosary would become the symbol of God’s work in a  broken part of my life. Now, when I pray with my broken rosary, I think of my baby and I know that my friend was right — we had no idea what God had in store for my little one.  He is always, ineffably, and so unexpectedly, making crooked ways straight.

It has to be one of the strangest things in the world: So many Christians who love Jesus with all their hearts recoil in fear at the mention of His mother’s name, while many who do love her find themselves tongue-tied when asked to explain why.

Most of the issues people have with Mary are really issues about something else. “Where is the Assumption of Mary in the Bible?” isn’t really a question about Mary. It’s a question about the validity of Sacred Tradition and the authority of the Church. “Why should I pray to Mary?” isn’t really about Mary, either. It’s actually a question about the relationship of the living and the dead in Christ. “Do Catholics worship Mary?” isn’t a question about Mary. It’s concerned more with whether or not Catholics countenance idolatry and what the word “honor” means. And curiously enough, all these and many more objections both pay homage to and completely overlook the central truth about Mary that the Catholic Church labors to help us see: that her life, in its entirety, is a referred life.

Mary would, after all, be of absolutely no consequence to us if not for her Son. It is because she is the mother of Jesus Christ that she matters to the world at all. If He hadn’t been born, you never would have heard of her. John, with characteristic economy of expression, captures this referred life in her own words: “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5). And, of course, if this were all the Church had to say about her, Evangelicals would be more than happy to let her refer us to Jesus and be done with it. What baffles so many non-Catholics is the Church’s tendency to keep referring us to her. “Ad Iesum per Mariam!” we say, to which many non-Catholics nervously respond, “Isn’t Christianity supposed be about a relationship with Jesus Christ? Why do Catholics honor Mary so much?”

That question sounded reasonable-right up until another question began to bother me: If Catholics honor Mary too much, exactly how do we Evangelicals honor her “just enough”? For the reality was that my native Evangelicalism recoiled from any and all mention of Mary.

This was odd. After all, Evangelicals could talk all day about Paul and never feel we were “worshipping” him or giving him “too much honor.” We rightly understood that God’s word comes to us through St. Paul, and there’s no conflict between the two (even though Paul exhibits more character flaws than Mary).

Yet the slightest mention of Mary by a Catholic immediately brought a flood of warnings, hesitations, scrutinies of her lack of faith (allegedly demonstrated in Mark 3:21), and even assertions that Jesus was less pleased with her than he was with his disciples (because he called her “Woman,” not “Mom”; and because he commended his own disciples as “my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:35)). And all this was despite the fact that not just God’s word (e.g. the Magnificat), but God’s Word, came to us through Mary (John 1:14). As Evangelicals we could say, “If not for Paul, the Gospel would never have reached the Gentiles.” But we froze up if somebody argued that, “If not for Mary, the gospel would never have reached the earth.” Suddenly, a flurry of highly speculative claims about how “God would simply have chosen somebody else!” would fill the air, as though Mary was a mere incubation unit, completely interchangeable with any other woman on earth. “No Paul, no Gospel for the Gentiles” made perfect sense. But “No Mary, no incarnation, no death, no resurrection, no salvation for the world” was just too extreme.

Indeed, from Evangelical piety and preaching as it is actually practiced, one could be forgiven for getting the sense that Jesus didn’t really even like his mother (like a teenager irritated because Mom just doesn’t understand him). Having “Mary is No Big Deal” hammered home whenever her name was raised tended to give you the feeling that-after her brief photo-op for the Hallmark Christmas card industry-Jesus was glad to spend time away from the family, in the Temple discussing higher things. The position in Evangelicalism was more or less that we should do likewise and not lavish any attention on the mother who was too dim to understand who He was, and whom he “rebuked” by saying, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

And so, our claims to honor her “just enough” effectively boiled down to paying no shred of positive attention to her beyond singing “round yon Virgin, mother and child” each Christmas. The rest of the time it was either complete neglect or jittery assurances of her unimportance and dark warnings not to over-emphasize the woman of whom inspired Scripture said, “From this day all generations will call me blessed.”

It was a startling paradigm shift to realize we treated her so allergically-and one which, I have since noticed, isn’t unusual for converts. Dale Ahlquist, President of the American Chesterton Society, told me once that when he was still hanging back from the Church because of Mary, a blunt priest he knew asked him, “Do you believe her soul magnifies the Lord? It’s right there in Scripture.” Ahlquist reflexively answered back, “Of course I do! I know the Bible!” But even as he replied he was thinking to himself, “I never really thought of that before.” It can be a disorienting experience.

But, in fact, it is right there in the Bible. Her soul magnifies the Lord, and from that day to this all generations have called her blessed. So why, when we Evangelicals looked at Jesus, did we never look at Him through the divinely appointed magnifying glass? Why were we so edgy about calling her “blessed” and giving her any honor? That realization was my first clue that it was, perhaps, Catholics who were simply being normal and human in honoring Mary, while we Evangelicals were more like teetotalers fretting that far too much wine was being drunk at the wedding in Cana.

The Cultural Obstacles

Part of the problem, I came to realize, was that Evangelical fears about Mary are visceral and not entirely theological. Indeed, much of the conflict between Catholics and Evangelicals is cultural, not theological. Evangelical culture (whether you’re a man or a woman) is overwhelmingly masculine, while Catholic culture (again, whether you’re a man or a woman) is powerfully feminine. And the two groups often mistake their cultural differences for theological ones.

The Catholic approach tends to be body-centered, Eucharistic, and contemplative. Prayer, in Catholic culture, is primarily for seeking union with God. Evangelical approaches to God tend to be centered on Scripture, verbal articulation of belief, mission, and on the Spirit working in power. Prayer, in such a culture, is primarily for getting things done. Both are legitimate Christian ways of approaching the gospel. Indeed, they should both be part of the Catholic approach to the gospel. But because of these unconscious differences Evangelicals and Catholics often clash about culture while they think they’re debating theology. The feminine spirituality of the Catholic can regard the masculine Evangelical approach as shallow, noisy, and utilitarian, lacking an interior life. Meanwhile, Catholic piety can be seen by Evangelicals as a cold, dead, ritualistic, biblically ignorant, and cut off from real life. Thus, Evangelicals frequently criticize the Catholic life as a retreat from reality into rituals and rote prayers.

Not surprisingly, the heroes of the two camps are (for Evangelicals) the Great Human Dynamo of Apostolic Energy, St. Paul; and (for Catholics) the great icon of Contemplative Prayer Issuing in Incarnation, the Blessed Virgin Mary. As an Evangelical, I found Paul much easier to appreciate, since he was “biblical”-he wrote much of the New Testament, after all. You could talk about Paul since he’d left such a significant paper trail. Not so with Mary. Apart from the Magnificat and a couple remarks here and there-plus, of course, the infancy narratives-she didn’t appear to occupy nearly as much psychic space for the authors of the New Testament as she did for Catholics. Marian devotion looked like a mountain of piety built on a molehill of Scripture.

Looks, however, can be deceiving. For as I got to know the Bible better, it became obvious to me that the authors of Scripture were not nearly as jittery about Mary as my native Evangelicalism. Furthermore, they accorded to her honors which looked a great deal more Catholic than Evangelical.

Luke, for instance, likens her to the Ark of the Covenant in recording that the Holy Spirit “overshadowed” her. The same word in Greek is used to describe the way the Shekinah (glory of God) overshadowed the tabernacle in Luke 1:35. Likewise, John makes the same connection between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant when he announces in Revelation 11:19-12:2:

Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, voices, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery.

The chapter goes on to describe the woman as giving birth to a male child who rules the nations with an iron scepter and who is almost devoured by a great red dragon.

As an Evangelical, my own tradition found it remarkably easy to detect bar codes, Soviet helicopters, the European Common Market, and the Beatles encoded into the narrative of Revelation. But when Catholics suggested that the woman of Revelation might have something to do with the Blessed Virgin occupying a place of cosmic importance in the grand scheme of things, this was dismissed as incredible. Everyone knew that the woman of Revelation was really the symbolic Virgin Daughter of Zion giving birth to the Church. A Jewish girl who stood at the pinnacle of the Old Covenant, summed up the entirety of Israel’s mission and gave flesh to the Head of the Church saying, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word”-what could she possibly have to do with those images? Why, that would suggest that she was the Virgin Daughter of Zion and the Flower of her People, the Model Disciple, the Icon of the Church, the Mother of Jesus and of all those who are united with Him by faith and…

Come to think of it, Scripture was looking rather Catholic after all.

The Heart of Marian Doctrine

That was the revolutionary thought that made it possible for me to press on, as a new Catholic, to find out what the Church was trying to get at with her Marian teaching. In coming to understand this, it seemed to me, I’d come a long way toward understanding why Mary figures so prominently, not merely in the heads, but in the hearts of Catholics.

The first question that arises, of course, is, “Why Marian dogma at all?” Why not just dogmas about Christ and let Catholics think what they like about Mary? Why bind consciences here?

The answer is that Catholics do think what they like-not only about Mary, but about lots of things. And sometimes they think deeply erroneous things. When they do, and that thought imperils some revealed truth to the point it threatens the integrity of the Church’s witness, the Church will, from time to time, define its doctrine more precisely. This is a process that’s already at work in the New Testament (cf. Acts 15), and it continues until the return of Christ.

So, for instance, in the fifth century there arose (yet again) the question of just who Jesus is. It was a question repeated throughout antiquity and, in this case, an answer to the question was proposed by the Nestorians. They argued that the mortal man Jesus and the Logos, or Second Person of the Trinity, were more or less two persons occupying the same head. For this reason, they insisted that Mary could not be acclaimed (as she had been popularly acclaimed for a very long time) as Theotokos, or God bearer. Instead, she should only be called Christotokos, or Christ bearer. She was, they insisted, the Mother of Jesus, not of God.

The problem with this was that it threatened the very witness of the Church and could even lead logically to the notion that there were two Sons of God, the man Jesus and the Logos who was sharing a room with Him in His head. In short, it was a doorway to theological chaos over one of the most basic truths of the Faith: that the Word became flesh, died, and rose for our sins.

So the Church formulated its response. First, Jesus Christ is not two persons occupying the same head. He is one person possessing two natures, human and divine, joined in a hypostatic union. Second, it was appropriate to therefore call Mary Theotokos because she’s the Mother of the God-Man. When the God-Man had His friends over for lunch, He didn’t introduce Mary saying, “This is the mother of my human nature.” He said, “This is my mother.”

Why did the Church do this? Because, once again, Mary points to Jesus. The dogma of the Theotokos is a commentary on Jesus, a sort of “hedge” around the truth about Jesus articulated by the Church. Just as Nestorianism had tried to attack the orthodox teaching of Christ through Mary (by forbidding the veneration of her as Theotokos), now the Church protected that teaching about Christ by making Theotokos a dogma. That is a vital key to understanding Marian dogmas: They’re always about some vital truth concerning Jesus, the nature of the Church, or the nature of the human person.

This is evident, for instance, in the definition of Mary as a Perpetual Virgin (promulgated in 553 at the Council of Constantinople). This tradition isn’t so much explicitly attested as reflected in the biblical narrative. Yes, we must grant that the biblical narrative is ambiguous in that it speaks of Jesus’ “brothers” (but does it mean “siblings” or merely “relatives”?). However, other aspects of the biblical narrative strongly suggest she remained a virgin.

For instance, Mary reacts with astonishment at the news that she, a woman betrothed, will bear a son. If you are at a wedding shower and tell the bride-to-be, “You’re going to have cute kids” and she responds “How can that be?” you can only conclude one of two things: she either doesn’t know about the birds and the bees or she’s taken a vow of virginity. In short, the promise of a child is an odd thing for a betrothed woman to be amazed about… unless, of course, she’d already decided to remain a virgin even after marriage.

Likewise, Joseph reacts with fear at the thought of taking Mary as a wife. Why fear? Modernity assumes it was because he thought her guilty of adultery, but the typical view in antiquity understood the text to mean he was afraid of her sanctity-as a pious Jew would be afraid to touch the Ark of the Covenant. After all, think of what Mary told him about the angel’s words: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.”

I’m not even a pious Jew, but with words like that echoing in my ears about my wife, I’d find it easy to believe that Joseph, knowing what he did about his wife, would have chosen celibacy.

“But nothing is sure, based on the text alone. It’s still ambiguous,” says the critic. Right. The biblical text alone doesn’t supply an unambiguous answer to this or a myriad of other questions, including “Is the Holy Spirit God?,” “How do you contract a valid marriage?,” and “Can you be a polygamist?” But the Tradition of the Church in union with the biblical text does supply an answer: Mary had no other children, a fact so commonly known throughout the early Church that when Jerome attacks Helvidius for suggesting otherwise, nobody makes a peep. In a Church quite capable of tearing itself to pieces over distinctions between homoousious and homoiousious, you hear the sound of crickets in response to Jerome, punctuated with the sound of other Fathers singing hymns to “Mary, Ever-Virgin.” The early Church took it for granted and thought Helvidius as credible as Dan Brown.

But why a dogma about it? Because, again, Mary’s life is a referred life. Her virginity, like Christ’s, speaks of her total consecration to God and of our call as Christians to be totally consecrated as well. Her virginity is not a stunt or a magic trick to make the arrival of Messiah extra-strange. It is, rather, a sign to the Church and of the Church. And that matters for precisely the reason I’d thought it did not matter when I was an Evangelical: because Christianity is indeed supposed be about a relationship with Jesus Christ. But a relationship necessarily involves more than one person.

What it comes down to is this: Jesus can do a world of wonderful things, but there is something even Jesus cannot do-He cannot model for us what it looks like to be a disciple of Jesus. Only a disciple of Jesus can do that. And the first and best model of the disciple of Jesus is the one who said and lived “Yes!” to God, spontaneously and without even the benefit of years of training or the necessity of being knocked off a horse and blinded. And she continues to do so right through the agony of watching her Son die and the ecstasy of knowing Him raised again.

This is why the Church, like the gospels, has always called Mary our Mother: because Mom is the best model for training children. The command to call her “Mother” comes, of course, from Jesus himself. John doesn’t record the words “Behold your mother” (John 19:27) because he thought his readers might be curious about domestic arrangements for childless Jewish widows. Rather, as with everything else John writes, “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). In other words, he doesn’t record everything about Jesus, only those things that have a significant theological meaning. This includes Christ’s words to the Beloved Disciple. For the Beloved Disciple is you and not merely John. Mary is your mother and you are her child. And so we are to look to her as mother and imitate her as she imitates Christ.

Defeating Destructive Ideologies

This brings us to the last two (and intimately related) Marian dogmas. Given that Marian dogma is always a commentary on Christ and his Church, what is the Church saying in its dogmatic teaching that 1) Mary was preserved at the moment of her conception from the stain of all sin, both original and actual; and 2) Mary was assumed bodily into heaven at the end of her earthly existence?

The great crisis that faced the Church in the 19th century (when the Holy Spirit, doing his job of leading the Church into all truth, led the Church to promulgate the dogma of the Immaculate Conception) was the rise of several ideologies-still very much with us-that called into question the origins and dignity of the human person. Darwin said the human person was an unusually clever piece of meat whose origins were as accidental as a pig’s nose. Marx said humans were mere ingredients in a vast economic historical process. Laissez-faire capitalism saw people as natural resources to be exploited and thrown away when they lost their value. Eugenics said human dignity rested on “fitness.” Much of Protestantism declared humans “totally depraved,” while much of the Enlightenment held up the myth of human innocence, the “noble savage,” and the notion of human perfectibility through reason. Racial theory advanced the notion that the key to human dignity was the shape of your skull, the color of your skin, and your membership in the Aryan or Teutonic tribe. Freud announced that your illusion of human dignity was just a veil over fathomless depths of unconscious processes largely centering in the groin or emerging out of issues with Mom and Dad.

All these ideologies-and many others-had in common the degrading rejection of human beings as creatures made in the image of God and intended for union with God (and the consequent subjection of the human person to some sort of creature). In contrast to them all, the Church, in holding up the icon of Mary Immaculate, held up an icon of both our true origin and our true dignity. That she was sinless was a teaching as old as the hills in the Church, which had hailed her as Kecharitomene, or “full of grace,” since the time of Luke and saluted her as Panagia, or all-holy, since the early centuries of the Church. So then why did the Holy Spirit move the Church to develop and focus this immemorial teaching more clearly?

Because what needed to be said loud and clear was that we were made in the image of God and that our fallenness, though very real, does not name or define us: Jesus Christ does. We are not mere animals; statistical averages; cogs in a machine; sophisticated primordial ooze; or a jangling set of complexes, appetites, tribal totems, Aryan supermen, naturally virtuous savages, or totally depraved Mr. Hydes. We were made by God, for God. Therefore sin, though normal, is not natural and doesn’t constitute our humanity. And the proof of it was Mary, who was preserved from sin and yet was more human than the lot of us. She wasn’t autonomously innocent, as though she could make it without God. She was the biggest recipient of grace in the universe, a grace that made her, in a famous phrase, “younger than sin.” Because of it, she was free to be what Irenaeus described as “the glory of God”: a human being fully alive. And as she is, so can the grace of Christ make us.

The 19th-century ideologies didn’t, however, remain in libraries and classrooms. In the 20th century, they were enacted by the powers of state, science, business, entertainment, education, and the military into programs that bore abundant fruit in such enterprises as global and regional wars, the Holocaust, the great famines, the killing fields, the “great leap forward,” the sexual revolution, and the culture of death, which is still reaping a rich bounty of spiritual and physical destruction. In short, as the 19th-century philosophies assaulted the dignity and origin of the human person, so the working out of those philosophies on the ground in the 20th century assaulted the dignity and destiny of the human person.

So what did the Holy Spirit do? Once again, in 1950, in the middle of a century that witnessed the biggest assault on the human person and on the family that the world has ever seen, the Church again held up Mary as an icon of who we really are and who we are meant to become by promulgating the dogma of the Assumption of Mary. Just as the Immaculate Conception held Mary up as the icon of the divine dignity of our origins, so the Church, in teaching “that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory” was now holding her up as the icon of the divine dignity of our destiny.

The Church is repeating, in effect, that the God Who loves the world does not will that our fate be the oven, the mass grave, the abortuary, the anonymity of the factory, the brothel, the cubicle, or the street. The proper end of our life is supposed to be for us, as it already is for her, the ecstatic glory of complete union with the Triune God in eternity. Once again, God shows us something vital about our relationship to Himself through her, His greatest saint.

And that, in the end, is the point of Marian devotion and theology. Through Our Lady, we see Jesus Christ reflected in the eyes of His greatest saint. But we also see “what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great might” (Ephesians 1:18-19). For what He has already done for her, He will one day do also in us.

Copyright 2004 – Mark P. Shea

You can visit Mark P. Shea’s website, and view his new book at:  http://www.mark-shea.com and  http://www.mark-shea.com/books.html

I used to think praying a daily rosary was too hard, but I got started with it anyway. I’m glad I did, too, because it turns out that it’s one of the best therapies a high-strung Type A personality could happen upon!

There’s definitely room for improvement in my rosary-praying. Often, I get distracted at some point, or I lose count, or I don’t meditate well on the mystery. I agree that it’s better to pray one good decade than a hurried rosary. The thing is, I need the whole thing. It takes five decades of whatever I can give it to get me in a state of mind that makes life bearable.

I find that praying the rosary is a way of slow breathing my inner self to a state of calm. In going to Mary for her intercession, I think of how my daughter comes to me sometimes and just lays her head on my shoulder, for what seems to be no good reason. So many times, that’s what I’m doing with the rosary. I’m going to my Mother, and I’m laying my head on her shoulder. She does what I do: she reaches over and pats my back, and the effect of this is to give me strength and courage to face my day.

It’s not like I’m battling dragons or saving the world in my daily encounters. But, like everyone else, I am called to be Christ to all I meet, and that can be bad enough for me. I have to bite my tongue, or ponder long and hard before I shoot out a scathing email, or pray and reflect before making a decision. I have to step back from my first inclination to fly off the handle and remain calm in the heat of the moment.

So the rosary is really like a secret weapon I have to deal with the challenge of everyday life. In the repetition, I find the rhythm of life—and not just any life, but Christ’s own life! In the prayers themselves, I find the comfort of the words—I’m asking Mary, who is Up There, to pray for me, and if anyone has God’s ear, it’s Mary! In the discipline of praying a rosary, whether all at once, or scattered throughout my morning, a decade here and a decade there, I find a routine that points me to my purpose. In the mysteries, I am daily reminded of what that purpose is and who my model is supposed to be.

Visit Sarah’s blog at:  www.snoringscholar.com

I discovered the rosary when I became Catholic, and I was duly intimidated by it. I mean, look at the rosary, and it’s a pretty huge thing. You have to remember what everything is and where everything goes, and, being a new Catholic, I was pretty sure it was going to take me at least two hours. And where would I find two hours? I think it was after the Easter when I joined the Church that I first prayed the rosary. My future mother-in-law had given me a rosary as a gift, and I still have that rosary. It was one of the wooden ones, and she told me that she got me a wooden one in part because she couldn’t afford the fancy sparkly ones and in part to remind me of the wood of the cross. I am really fond of wooden rosaries to this day, for both of those reasons. Spending a lot of money on a rosary just doesn’t ring true to what I try to focus on as I pray the rosary.

I remember sitting on my bed, hunched over the little booklet with instructions on how to pray the rosary. I knew the Our Father already, having learned it in the varied non-Catholic churches we’d attended while I grew up. The Glory Be was familiar too, because at the Methodist church where we spent my junior high years, it was part of the service, set to music. But that Hail Mary, that was a toughie. (That sounds so silly to me now, when I can rattle it off as easily as my name, but it is a reminder to me of where I started, and of other people who don’t know it yet.)

I ended up learning the rosary thanks to an audio version that I played in my car. I had a special prayer intention and had decided a daily rosary was the ONLY way I could properly pray about it. Since then, drive time has been a special time to pray the rosary, and sometimes I picture Mary sitting in the front seat, praying along with me. There’s a comfort in praying the rosary that’s like none other for me. Here I sit, humbly asking my mother for help. There stands she, waiting to take my request to her Son and my Father. I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes: “Sometimes the answer to prayer is not that it changes life, but that it changes you.” (James Dillet Freedman)

Visit Sarah’s blog at:  www.snoringscholar.com

I never thought I could do it. The rosary is a whale of a prayer (I thought then); it’s so hard to remember the mysteries; I just don’t have the time. Oh, my list of reasons was impressive, but looking back, I realize now that it wasn’t a list of reasons at all: it was a collection of excuses that made me feel better about not even trying.

I’ve tried a lot of different devotions, floundering here and there. Life changes fast, and just when I think the routine is ironed out, life changes radically or something comes up. Usually, these changes open new windows of opportunity for me, although I don’t often see it that way right out of the gate. No, I’m usually kicking and screaming in my head, resisting the change just like I always do, scrunching my eyes shut as I clamp my hands over my ears. “You can’t make me!” Well, yes, actually, He can. But He never does. No, He just shrugs and says, “OK, if that’s how you want it,” with raised eyebrows and a sad look in His eyes. Then, when I’ve regained some of my composure, I open my eyes and blink in the dawning light of “it’s not so bad and in fact might be better than before” that is waiting for me to discover it.

The rosary has been a devotion I come back to time and again. My goal is to pray one every day…but I’ve had to get creative as to how that happens. The hurdle I face is that I’m just no good at sitting down to do one thing, especially with a burgeoning to-do agenda and a tendency to oversleep and douse out quickly in the evenings. Mother Mary, not to be outdone in the arena of motherhood, has helped me, and maybe that’s why I keep coming back to the rosary.

How can I make the time to pray a rosary every day? One decade at a time.

As I’m getting out of bed and puttering to the coffeemaker, eyes still crusted shut: the intro (Apostles Creed, Our Father, three Hail Marys). As I’m in the bathroom, doing the various and sundry things there: one decade (on a good day, two – but that’s asking a lot!). As I’m in the kitchen, making lunches and maybe doing dishes: one decade. As I’m driving to work: one or two decades. As I’m putting Toddler-tron down for her nap: one decade. As I’m putting Toddler-tron to bed at night: one decade. As I’m doing dishes, folding laundry, hanging out clothes: one decade. As I’m vacuuming, dusting, cleaning: one decade.

If you’re counting, there’s room in my day for a lot more than five decades! And so I encourage you to try it. Yes, I know you’re busy, and I’m not asking you to make yourself busier. Think about your time as God’s first, and try out giving it first to him, even as you putter around doing your everyday tasks. Think of your time as a gift, one that multiplies when you give it back to He who gave it to you in the first place. Think of Mary, standing beside you throughout the whole day, hugging you when you need it and propping you up when you falter. Think of your Mother smiling at you and helping you remember and keep track of the prayers on your fingers. Think of your Father, and how proud He will be of you for trying.

How can you make time to pray a rosary every day? One decade at a time.

Visit Sarah’s blog at:  www.snoringscholar.com

I have always used the rosary as the center of my daily prayer. Sometimes it is difficult to speak to Jesus spontaneously and I rely upon the time-honored words of the prayers of the Church.  However, the rosary is not merely words, it is based on mysteries.  And those mysteries begin with motherhood.  Mary’s acceptance of the Incarnation changed the history of the world.  My motherhood changes the world too, as I accept the role of raising souls for heaven. The rosary helped me to see the parallels between the two.

After two little girls were born to us, my husband and I thought our life as parents was complete.  But unexpectedly, another life began, and we were surprised by joy.  We were unprepared for the loss of that life, and two more.  I was laid low with unspeakable grief.  I could not pray the Joyful Mysteries of the rosary, bringing to mind the joy of conception, since my last three had ended in tragedy.  My calendar was dotted with days of loss, which sprung up whether I was consciously remembering them or not,

 like the seasons. My son, Theodore had died on my Grandpa Theodore’s birthday in September, Patrick died on St Patrick’s Day, and Dolores died on Good Friday.  I prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries with the Sorrowful Mother, who watched her only Son die a slow, painful, ignominious death on the cross.  The loss of a child tears a mother’s heart, so I could relate to the image of the Immaculate Heart, pierced with a sword at her son’s death.  I could also feel the anguish of Our Lord who asked for the cup of suffering to be taken away from the Heavenly Father, and when it was not said, “Lord, into Your Hands, I commend my spirit.”  The rosary taught me to unite my pain with the Cross and offer it to God as a sacrifice.

Soon, my life was to change.  I was able to find a book, which explained the root cause of

 my secondary infertility (Fertility Cycles and Nutrition by Marilyn Shannon).  I conceived again, and suddenly I could not stop praying the Joyful Mysteries.  The season of sorrow was over for me.  I meditated on Mary’s pregnancy, at the Annunciation

 at first a secret she hardly dared breathe to anyone, then a joyful Visitation with her cousin Elizabeth as they discussed their coming births.  No less than eight of my friends were expecting babies within two months of one another. We attended a baby shower, and stayed late into the night, sharing our joyful anticipation.  We weathered 9/11, praying for the husbands of one of our friends who was a firefighter in the World Trade Center, and rejoiced when he came out alive to raise his new daughter.  In the spring, we met in the halls of the local Catholic hospital, celebrating our nativities. Our Lady may have given birth to Jesus in a strange land, but God sent shepherds and Wise Men to worship her Son and share her joy.

The Presentation in the Temple is akin to our sacrament of Baptism.  We had 100 guests attend the ceremony in our parish church that rainy Mother’s Day in 2002. Our daughter Christina had Down syndrome, and like our Lady our celebration was tinged with fear for our child’s future, as nurses in the hospital gave me frightening statistics about congenital defects which often accompany Trisomy 21.  Christina had a small hole in her heart, which kept us going to the Cardiologist for a year until it healed spontaneously. Simeon had issued a dire warning about her heart being pierced with a sword, yet

Our Lady, watching Jesus grow up strong and healthy, must have found it hard to imagine her Son dying a horrible death in the three decades of their peaceful hidden life.

When Jesus was 12, He frightened His parents by disappearing from the Passover Pilgrims and, when at the Finding in the Temple, they were stunned to see how the elders of the Temple sat at His feet to hear His wisdom. He gently reminded them of His role in the world, serving God not them, some day in the future.  Little by little, Christina is doing the same to me, displaying signs of independence and a desire to embrace the world beyond our safe home. I have to undergo a gradual process of letting go, and  proudly watch her achievements at school.  God knows me well,  I do not have the spiritual strength to let go in an instant as Our Lady did. It’s hard enough to let go of her little hand as her aide takes her down the hall to her Kindergarten class.

As I walked through these mothering mysteries in my own life, I grew closer to Our Lady whose experiences paralleled mine.  As a reward for my devotion, she helped me to grow closer to her Son. Just before I met my husband, I wrote Mother Teresa a letter discerning my vocation. Her response was “put your hand in Mary’s hand and she will lead you to Jesus”. The rosary has been her method of drawing me toward her Son.

My vocation to motherhood was ennobled with the daily contact with Heaven, and the reason for the rosary is becoming clearer. It is not about how many times you tell Mary that she is “Blessed among women.”  It’s about allowing Our Lady to show you that being a mother is a blessing, and that she, whose unique role in salvation was to give birth to the Lamb of God, though it broke her heart, was the most blessed of all of us. 

I have always used the rosary as the center of my daily prayer. Sometimes it is difficult to speak to Jesus spontaneously and I rely upon the time-honored words of the prayers of the Church.  However, the rosary is not merely words, it is based on mysteries.  And those mysteries begin with motherhood.  Mary’s acceptance of the Incarnation changed the history of the world.  My motherhood changes the world too, as I accept the role of raising souls for heaven. The rosary helped me to see the parallels between the two.

After two little girls were born to us, my husband and I thought our life as parents was complete.  But unexpectedly, another life began, and we were surprised by joy.  We were unprepared for the loss of that life, and two more.  I was laid low with unspeakable grief.  I could not pray the Joyful Mysteries of the rosary, bringing to mind the joy of conception, since my last three had ended in tragedy.  My calendar was dotted with days of loss, which sprung up whether I was consciously remembering them or not,

 like the seasons. My son, Theodore had died on my Grandpa Theodore’s birthday in September, Patrick died on St Patrick’s Day, and Dolores died on Good Friday.  I prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries with the Sorrowful Mother, who watched her only Son die a slow, painful, ignominious death on the cross.  The loss of a child tears a mother’s heart, so I could relate to the image of the Immaculate Heart, pierced with a sword at her son’s death.  I could also feel the anguish of Our Lord who asked for the cup of suffering to be taken away from the Heavenly Father, and when it was not said, “Lord, into Your Hands, I commend my spirit.”  The rosary taught me to unite my pain with the Cross and offer it to God as a sacrifice.

Soon, my life was to change.  I was able to find a book, which explained the root cause of

 my secondary infertility (Fertility Cycles and Nutrition by Marilyn Shannon).  I conceived again, and suddenly I could not stop praying the Joyful Mysteries.  The season of sorrow was over for me.  I meditated on Mary’s pregnancy, at the Annunciation

 at first a secret she hardly dared breathe to anyone, then a joyful Visitation with her cousin Elizabeth as they discussed their coming births.  No less than eight of my friends were expecting babies within two months of one another. We attended a baby shower, and stayed late into the night, sharing our joyful anticipation.  We weathered 9/11, praying for the husbands of one of our friends who was a firefighter in the World Trade Center, and rejoiced when he came out alive to raise his new daughter.  In the spring, we met in the halls of the local Catholic hospital, celebrating our nativities. Our Lady may have given birth to Jesus in a strange land, but God sent shepherds and Wise Men to worship her Son and share her joy.

The Presentation in the Temple is akin to our sacrament of Baptism.  We had 100 guests attend the ceremony in our parish church that rainy Mother’s Day in 2002. Our daughter Christina had Down syndrome, and like our Lady our celebration was tinged with fear for our child’s future, as nurses in the hospital gave me frightening statistics about congenital defects which often accompany Trisomy 21.  Christina had a small hole in her heart, which kept us going to the Cardiologist for a year until it healed spontaneously. Simeon had issued a dire warning about her heart being pierced with a sword, yet

Our Lady, watching Jesus grow up strong and healthy, must have found it hard to imagine her Son dying a horrible death in the three decades of their peaceful hidden life.

When Jesus was 12, He frightened His parents by disappearing from the Passover Pilgrims and, when at the Finding in the Temple, they were stunned to see how the elders of the Temple sat at His feet to hear His wisdom. He gently reminded them of His role in the world, serving God not them, some day in the future.  Little by little, Christina is doing the same to me, displaying signs of independence and a desire to embrace the world beyond our safe home. I have to undergo a gradual process of letting go, and  proudly watch her achievements at school.  God knows me well,  I do not have the spiritual strength to let go in an instant as Our Lady did. It’s hard enough to let go of her little hand as her aide takes her down the hall to her Kindergarten class.

As I walked through these mothering mysteries in my own life, I grew closer to Our Lady whose experiences paralleled mine.  As a reward for my devotion, she helped me to grow closer to her Son. Just before I met my husband, I wrote Mother Teresa a letter discerning my vocation. Her response was “put your hand in Mary’s hand and she will lead you to Jesus”. The rosary has been her method of drawing me toward her Son.

My vocation to motherhood was ennobled with the daily contact with Heaven, and the reason for the rosary is becoming clearer. It is not about how many times you tell Mary that she is “Blessed among women.”  It’s about allowing Our Lady to show you that being a mother is a blessing, and that she, whose unique role in salvation was to give birth to the Lamb of God, though it broke her heart, was the most blessed of all of us.

by Pat Gohn

Dashing out of the rain, I hastened down the wet chapel steps trying not to be late for midday Mass. Seconds later, missing two of the steps, I landed with a thud in the narthex. Excruciating pain in my ankle momentarily blinded me to the reality of where I was sprawled on the floor… I lay at Mary’s feet, as she looked down at me from the Lourdes grotto built into the alcove.

I whimpered a prayer: Here I am again at your feet, Mary, and, as usual, it’s not pretty. Please help me!

Three months ago I had my hip replaced. This fall might be a serious setback in my recovery.

Remarkably, I took comfort in the fact I took my fall in front of Mary. (Of course, I realize her statue had no power of its own to help me, but its presence reminded me of the Mother who did.) My meager prayer was heard. With faith in her maternal protection, I assessed the damage, and slowly stood, hobbling into the last pew. After Mass I limped back to my car and drove myself to the hospital for x-rays.

I sat in the ER contemplating my crash at Mary’s feet. This was not the first time I have found myself looking to her in desperation.

This points to my thesis: all of us should fall for Mary. Not that I’m suggesting personal accidents, but rather, we should fall in love with Mary, and not wait for tragedy to strike before we invite Mary into our lives.

As a younger woman, I avoided the suggestion that Mary should be a part of my life or, worse, a role model for me. To my way thinking, with a feminism formed-by-the-culture and not necessarily by the Gospel, Mary was a weak role model for me. Despite this bias, I never doubted Mary’s role in God’s plan. I just didn’t include her in any of mine.

Back then, for me, Mary was more of a historical character — necessary for God to take on flesh — an iconic reminder of the Jesus story. I knew she showed up at Christmas and at Calvary, but I didn’t appreciate much beyond that.

My Catholic education taught me Mary was the mother of Jesus, the mother to the Church, and a mother to me. I accepted the first two titles fine, but I denied she had any connection with me. I had no “relationship” with her, other than praying the “Hail Mary,” and an occasional rosary.

As a teenager, I had a dynamic conversion to Christ. But even with a growing faith, outside influences still swayed me. I confused staid depictions of Mary with the truth about her nature as a human person brimming with grace. I was influenced by prevalent skepticisms about Mary. My false impressions were not rooted in Scripture or Church teaching.

Two events in my adult life drew me toward love of Mary. The first was my first pregnancy. At the time, I was so sick I vomited around the clock. My life was in tatters. My only prayer was “Lord, help me!”

Jesus answered my prayers by sending me his Mother, armed with the “girl talk” and strong feminine connection I needed. And I was desperate enough to accept Mary’s help and example.

It wasn’t pretty, and I often faltered but, for the first time, I asked Mary to pray for me.

Over those nine months, I began to see what was missing. I traced Mary’s life through the scriptures, discovering the many lessons she had for me. The rosary and its meditations on the life of Christ and Mary became sources of inspiration.

I no longer kept Mary on a distant shelf — like a statue. Now she became a living, holy presence in my life. She never diminished my relationship with Jesus; she only increased it. And I began to trust the wisdom of the Catholic Church — not outside opinions — about Mary and Marian devotions.

Mary took me in — the one who denied her for so long — mothering me as I entered motherhood, forgiving my years of neglect. I trusted her. She wanted the best for me: faith, hope, and love in the Holy Trinity. After all, she is Daughter of the Father, Mother to the Son, and Spouse of the Holy Spirit.

Ten years later, a second event deepened my relationship with Mary. At 36, as a mother of three small children, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I faced my own kind of Calvary.

Recall John’s Gospel:

[At Calvary,]… standing by the cross of Jesus [was Mary]… When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home(John 19:25-27).

Mary, who stood at the foot of her Son’s cross, and later embraced His broken body, now stood by me. I was broken. It wasn’t pretty. But there she was… filling me with her gifts of grace-filled power… a mother at Calvary beside the child she loves.

Twelve years later, I still take my cue from Jesus’ words, and the action of St. John: I have made a place for Mary in my home. More important, I have embraced being Mary’s daughter.

My falling for Mary continues… I still have messy stuff in my life that needs cleaning up. I still fall and Mary picks me up and dusts me off. With her help, I’m becoming a better woman, a stronger Christian.

The ankle x-rays reported a sprain. No other damage; none to my newly replaced hip joint. You could say that I had the best possible fall, given my circumstances. I believe Mary had a hand in that.

If you haven’t already, let yourself fall for Mary, our Mother. But don’t just drop in on her “by accident,” call on her today!

© Copyright 2009

Pat Gohn is married to Bob and together they have raised three young adults. Pat holds a Masters degree in Theology and Christian Ministry from Franciscan University of Steubenville. She writes from her home in Massachusetts. Pat also hosts Among Women, a weekly podcast for Catholic women. Find the link at the bottom of Today’s Catholic Woman homepage. Visit her website at http://www.patgohn.com. Pat can be reached at ">.  Also, you can visit her website at:  www.patgohn.com

A Place for Mary in My Home
It took a prayerful friend and a good cup of coffee to change my experience of the rosary.

Nearly 18 years ago, I met a new friend at church. She had three boys. Her baby was the same age as my only child at the time. As I got to know her, I learned her coffee pot was always on and her prayer of choice was the rosary. Her love for the Blessed Virgin Mary had a profound effect on me.

We two began praying the rosary together. Then we had coffee as our children played or napped.

Soon a powerful yet simple idea percolated alongside the coffee we’d brew: why not pray the rosary with other mothers? We met for four weeks to pray and figure out if we should do this. We were novices in discernment and needed a little courage to step out. Knowing that Jesus often sent His disciples in twos, we gained confidence in this plan.

Along the way I stopped just reciting the rosary, and began truly praying it. I needed to make a more personal connection with Mary so my prayer would grow. While praying the fifth Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary, I reflected on applying Jesus’s words to my own life: “Behold your mother!” as well as the subtle phrase, “And from that moment the disciple made a place for her in his home” (Jn 19:27).

Up to that point, I had never made a place for Mary in my home. Suddenly it all clicked. The rosary was something well suited to my stay-at-home life. I could pray it while nursing a baby, or while driving doing errands, or standing at the sink up to my elbows in dishes. I could teach it to my children and tell them the stories of Jesus and Mary. God’s blueprint for salvation was all there in the mysteries!

Prayer First, Fellowship Second

After four weeks, we asked other moms to join us. Two more came. For nine months once a week, we gathered around kitchen tables to pray, share special intentions, and have coffee — all while our toddlers played together. The gestation period was over: Mothers’ Morning of Prayer was born.

With our pastor’s permission and blessing, we took the next step. We placed an announcement in the church bulletin. The model was simple: prayer first, fellowship second.

Mothers’ Morning of Prayer (MMOP) grew season by season. Once we totaled 12 mothers plus children, home settings got crowded. We had management issues, but it was a joyful problem to have! Prayerfully, carefully, the group devised ways to meet the needs of the mothers and the needs of the children week after week. The group matured and moved into the formal setting of parish meeting rooms. It took more coordination, but there was much answered prayer, not just in the lives of those women, but in their families, the parish and beyond!

Often I would visualize Mary sitting as a member of our prayer circle every week. One year someone donated a beautiful statue of Our Lady of Fatima to the group. Mary then had a prominent place during prayer time. When the meeting ended, her statue wasn’t put away; “she” was sent home with a different family each week — given “a place” — before returning next week.

“Prayer first, fellowship second” mirrored a spiritual reality. The more Mary became a model of prayer for these women, the more they became models of service. The MMOP women did what women do: they cared, nurtured, cooked, empathized, cheered, cried, mourned, rejoiced, loved and hugged. They nursed babies and nursed hearts. Experienced moms welcomed newer moms. They poured coffee and listened. They did it all with a sublime holiness that I attributed to the power that comes from praying first. Thousands of prayers prayed on hundreds of beads. One bead at a time, immersed in the mysteries, yields great grace.

Kindred Spirits

When I moved out of state, I took the vision of MMOP with me. Actually, my MMOP group “sent” me to my new church backed by their prayers. I didn’t know a soul in my new town, but that’s a minor detail for God. Within months of moving in, I needed a babysitter. Someone at the church knew a mother who could recommend one. It was a very providential phone call. The young mother who called with the babysitter’s information was also a devotee of the rosary! Who but God could prepare and bring together two women for the same ministry, unknown to each other and hundreds of miles apart? Who but Mary would understand about traveling to a distant “hill country” in search of a kindred spirit (cf. Lk 1:39)?

A rosary and a pot of coffee later, Mothers’ Morning of Prayer took root in my new parish.

A helpful resource for these rosary groups has been the pocket-sized book Scriptual Rosary. We used it to let group members take turns leading the decades of the rosary. The scriptural meditations keep one’s mind on the spiritual richness of the mysteries of the Rosary. Practically speaking, it allows moms to take a break to tend to their children’s needs and then get back into the flow of prayer. Using a book provided a non-threatening “no experience necessary” approach for newcomers.

Home and work obligations have since taken me away from the ongoing MMOP. My children are teenagers now; my at-home time has a different rhythm. Yet my heart is always gladdened whenever I meet a woman with whom I have shared the weekly rosary. When I pray the rosary on my own, I see the faces and remember the special intentions of those I know and have known through the years.

Lately, a small group of “alumni” from MMOP have reconnected. We’re forming an Evening Rosary Group that meets once a month in someone’s home.

And so the circle of the rosary continues, bead by bead.

©2005 Patricia W. Gohn

Pat Gohn has been married to Bob for 23 years and has three children. Known to her friends as “majoring in carpooling and minoring in theology,” she is currently pursuing a Masters in Theology. She lives in Massachusetts and can be reached at ">. Her monthly column “Ordinary Time” appears at www.catholicmom.com.  Also, you may visit her website at  www.patgohn.com.