by Carrie Gress
While Fr. Feuillet was referring to the Church in the immediate aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, his remarks extend well beyond the 1970s and can be applied equally to today. We are experiencing a passion unlike any other, particularly as it is directed at women, the soil of society, which is why the solution must start with women.
Mary, Mary, and Mary
As we saw in the previous chapters, there are strong desires in the female heart. Most of what is wrong in the world today is an effort by women to meet those desires, but in misguided ways. It is only when we tap into God, into the Trinity, that these desires can be met—and not just met, but exceeded in ways beyond our comprehension.
Getting to that point happens when we follow closely in the footsteps of Our Lady. Women are all called, whether we know it or not, to imitate Mary. In Scripture, at the foot of the cross, Mary is there, along with two other women named Mary. For years, I had just found this confusing, “Couldn’t the Evangelists have used different names?” Finally, in a moment of clarity, it occurred to me that they are all named Mary for a real reason: our salvation comes at the foot of the cross when we are present to Christ like Mary was. All women are called to be like her at the foot of the cross, to be present to him. Out of this great mystery flows the “blood and water” that brings real fruitfulness to our lives.
Rediscovering Mary’s Virtues
While it is easy to suggest that women should just “be like Mary,” working out the practical bits of how to do this is vitally important, particularly when we lack good role models to show us the way to do it. One of the biggest obstacles to imitating Mary is that, in order to be like her, we have to understand her virtues. As we saw in chapter 7, Mary’s virtues aren’t always easily accessible for contemporary women. It shouldn’t surprise us, then, when women say, “I just don’t feel a connection with Mary.” I have heard this over and over again from women. “Yes, I understand,” is always my response. For years and years, this is exactly how I felt. In my mind, I could clearly comprehend why Mary was important, and I had a deep fascination with places like Lourdes and Fatima. But in my heart, all my emotions felt cold and unengaged. And it wasn’t because I had an unloving mother; I have a wonderful mother. There was something more to it that I could never put my finger on.
Despite the coldness of my emotions, I always knew on an intellectual level that Mary was close. I kept her at the fore of my mind, consecrating myself to her and praying the Rosary daily: during long drives, long runs, or before sleep at night. But no matter how much I prayed, there was always that missing piece.
I prayed for a long time about this, wishing to have that emotional spark or connection. Eventually, I resigned myself to thinking that perhaps when I became a mother, once I experienced what it was like to have my own child, I would feel and “know her from the inside.” So I waited. And waited. Finally, at a few weeks shy of my thirty-sixth birthday, I had my first child. And, yes, suddenly, I understood what it was like to give until you could give no more, to love with a ferocious love, and to want to suffer everything with your child just to help him or her carry burdens. I finally understood how Mary must love us.
One of the things I didn’t realize, however, was that my quest to understand Our Lady started even before I was married with children. It came to my attention that most of the things promoted by women in our culture—being outspoken, assertive, independent, and ambitious—weren’t producing the kind of happiness I expected. I started paying attention to music, poetry, and movies, anywhere I could find evidence of what made for truly timeless and great women, not just those propped up by our culture.
And what did I find? Remarkable and beautiful portrayals of women using interior capacities I had never thought about before: kindness, compassion, listening, anticipating the needs of others, sincerity, and goodness. Getting married and having children only made me go deeper to find and live these newly discovered virtues. I marveled at the fruits—my friends got closer; my children grew contented; my husband became more loving—all because I turned from self-absorption to looking to the needs of others. Living these virtues was the missing piece of the puzzle I couldn’t see. I needed to live Mary’s virtues to understand her from the inside. We see them in Scripture: silence, obedience, kindness, meekness, and tenderness. I couldn’t find comfort in Our Lady before this realization because her virtues were foreign to me. Our comfort generally resides in the familiar, and Marian values simply aren’t that for most of us. It might take some time, lots of prayer, and plenty of time in silence, but these virtues don’t have to remain foreign to us.
Rely Upon Your Mother
Another struggle many people face is the reality that we can’t see Mary, so how do we know that she is with us? This is where faith comes in to play. Most of us have an ideal of what a good mother is and what a good mother does. Mary is the perfect mother, tending to all the details of our lives, so long as we are open to letting that relationship grow and we are open to her. Many a saint has attested to her maternal intercession, her protection, her help, that has never been known to fail. Even the demons speak of her attentiveness to humanity, like these words recorded during an exorcism:
She is full of light. She blinds me, blinds me, cursed! When she was born, the world stopped for a moment. All creation stopped to look at her, all creation: the stars, the air, the fire, the water, the ground. All creation stopped. No one noticed besides me. I knew it. I knew who she was, and I could not do anything. I could not touch her. She was pure, pure. Enough, enough. Do not make me remember! She is like balsam. She soothes wounds, those that are the deepest. If you only knew how much she loves you, you would live your lives joyfully, without fear, without sin. Through her, you would understand how much hurt sin causes the Son.2
Another demon is reported to have said, “She is on a cloud and is saying, ‘Be calm, I am here with you, and I am helping you.’”3 There is a reason why so many of her beautiful titles are about her assistance: Our Lady Help of Christians, Star of the Sea, Mother of Mercy, Mother of the Church, Mother of Charity. She is not a helicopter mother, only buzzing in to move us on from one task to the next, but a true mother who is always with us.
We are invited to have an actual relationship with Our Lady, not just to rotely say our prayers without seeing her engaging in our lives in a real, tangible way. Certainly, we won’t know what she is doing behind the scenes, but we can draw nearer to her through the Mass and the sacraments, as well as through the Rosary and through Marian consecration. Padre Pio (St. Pio) has called the Rosary “the weapon” for our times. Over and over again, in Marian apparitions, Our Lady has asked for the faithful to pray the Rosary. Even the demons are keenly aware of its power:
If you all knew it, I would be destroyed in less than a second. If you all said the rosary, this bastard thing here, with faith! Do you know what she does when you say this chain? She takes your hand. She extends it towards heaven and takes the hand of your God. And through this prayer, this chain of (swear words follow), she approximates the two hands and brings them together so they touch. When these two hands meet, she exults, exults, exults, and gets on her knees and prays. Only a few men touch that hand because many times they take their hand away from hers because they do not want to do it. They do not want to do it thanks to me who am their god. But those who succeed, but those who succeed, they are fully aware of it and she exults. You see that she kneels down and kisses the pierced feet of the Son.4
The fruitfulness of the Rosary is hard to exaggerate, especially when looking at the history of the Church and the many ways in which Our Lady has helped those who have prayed it devotedly. Blessed Alan de la Roche had a vision of Mary in which she told him about how the world looks when the Rosary is prayed devotedly by the multitudes:
Through the rosary, hardened sinners of both sexes became converted and started to lead a holy life, bemoaning their past sins with genuine tears of contrition. Even children performed unbelievable penances: devot
ion to my Son and to me spread so thoroughly that it almost seemed as though angels were living on earth. The Faith was gaining, and many Catholics longed to shed their blood for it and fight against the heretics. Thus, through the sermons of my very dear Dominic and through the power of the rosary, the heretics’ lands were all brought under the Church.
People used to give munificent alms; hospitals and churches were built. People led moral and law-abiding lives and worked wonders for the glory of God. Holiness and unworldliness flourished; the clergy were exemplary, princes were just, people lived at peace with each other and justice and equity reigned in the guilds and in the homes.
I must not fail to mention the signs and wonders that I have wrought in different lands through the holy rosary: I have stopped pestilences and put an end to horrible wars as well as to bloody crimes, and through the rosary people have found the courage to flee temptation.5
The beads of the rosary, like the tiny stones used by David to vanquish Goliath, have much more power than we might ever know.
Be a Daughter to the Mother
For as much discussion as there is about Our Lady being our mother, we must also be daughters to her, open to being taught and directed by her maternal care. Von Le Fort says, “Mary stands for her daughters, but her daughters must also stand for her.”6 St. Faustina, who had many engagements with both Christ and his Mother, wrote down the words of Mary in her dairy: “Before Holy Communion I saw the Blessed Mother inconceivably beautiful. Smiling at me, She said to me, My daughter, at God’s command I am to be, in a special and exclusive way your Mother; but I desire that you, too, in a special way, be My child.”7 Mary told her daughter about the three virtues she wanted her to practice that are most pleasing to her and to God: “The first is humility, humility, and once again humility; the second virtue, purity; the third virtue, love of God. As My daughter, you must especially radiate with these virtues.” St. Faustina continues, “When the conversation ended, She pressed me to Her Heart and disappeared. When I regained the use of my senses, my heart became so wonderfully attracted to these virtues; and I practice them faithfully. They are as though engraved in my heart.”8
Mary’s ways may seem foreign to us, but through a real relationship, she will help us to imitate and follow her and her Son more closely.
Not a Victim
Despite living in an age of victimhood, I’ve never come across a book recognizing the victim status of Our Lady. It is a curious thing to consider that here is a woman, the Mother of God, no less, who watched her Son be unjustly tortured and killed in the most barbarous of circumstances because of our sins, and yet nary a feminist has honored her special place as a victim.
I realize it’s ridiculous to expect this since feminists rarely warm up to Our Lady. (Why just go with “the woman” when you can worship a goddess?) But what it should remind us of is that this is a woman whose Son died for our sins. If she were not perfect, if she were stained with sin, or was open to the devil’s tempting, she would be the one pointing her finger at all of us. The rage and anger of a mother in this situation would be entirely justified.
What is truly miraculous, and what tells us she is better than we could ever imagine, is that rather than expressing justifiable rage toward us, she comes to us, the guilty, as a tender mother offering her love, protection, wisdom, and guidance. She knows well what the crucifixion cost her Son. She doesn’t want his bloody sacrifice to be in vain. What she wants is mercy, love, sacrifice, prayer, and to bring each of us closer to him. This is how she guides us. Not in the path of rage, anger, vengeance, and victimhood. The reality that she has not only forgiven us but loves us as her own children is a great reminder that she is a wonderful gift and the intense model of mercy that we are to follow.
____________________
1Feuillet, 239.
2Bamonte, Virgin Mary and Exorcism, 87–88.
3Ibid., 69.
4Ibid., 111.
5As quoted in St. Louis de Montfort, The Secret of the Rosary, 119. Our Lady’s Word to Blessed Alan de la Roche (Calloway, Appendix B)
6von le Fort, Eternal Woman, 108.
7Maria Faustina Kowalska, Diary: Divine Mercy in my Soul (Marian Press, 2005), 1414–15.
8Ibid.
CHAPTER 11
Six Ways to Combat the Anti-Mary
“Pray, trust, and don’t worry.”
—St. Pio of Pietrelcina
Beyond imitating Mary, there is more that can be done to rebuild our culture and combat the anti-Mary, the culture of people “who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Is 5:20). People sometimes suggest that we should just return to the 1950s for the answer to our struggles, but if the 1950s had been so idyllic, the 1960s would never have happened; as we saw before, there were already deep wounds within the faith and society as a whole that opened the door to the anti-Marian culture. So, while returning to that time (as if that were even possible) might bring back some of the innocence and integrity we once had, it won’t solve all our problems. Instead of trying to turn back the clock, here are six specific ways we can combat the anti-Marian culture moving forward.
1. Become a Spiritual Adult
In 1906, a sociologist pointed out that a civilization can’t regenerate itself without spiritual adulthood. Without parents who pass on to their children the keys to spiritual maturity, a civilization simply cannot thrive or survive. Part of the current popular appeal of Jordan Peterson, particularly for men, is that he tells them to grow up, to do things that adults have always done in the past, instead of coddling them and allowing them to remain adolescents for the rest of their lives.
There are generations of people who don’t know what it means to even be an adult, much less a spiritual adult. Spiritual adulthood usually depends on a basic level of maturity. One priest who forms seminarians confided to me that the first thing he has to teach many of them is how to be adults. Basic attitudes and habits like taking responsibility for one’s actions, being considerate of others, using good manners, and punctuality are taught first. Grace builds upon nature, so there must be a functioning adult before there can be spiritual adulthood.
There are, of course, plenty of examples among the saints of children who showed remarkable spiritual maturity, such as St. Maria Goretti and Fatima seer St. Jacinta Marto. These children certainly would not have needed “adult schooling.” Jacinta, at her tender age of nine, was already well equipped to live in the adult world, having worked long hours as a shepherdess. And Maria took over running her household at nine after her father died and her mother had to work in the fields to support the family. The classroom of struggle and suffering go a long way in transforming a child into a grown-up.
The on-ramp to spiritual maturity isn’t easily found in the old familiar places—from the pulpit, Catholic schools, or in our homes. Our penchant for avoiding pain and suffering at any cost hasn’t helped. Part of being an adult is to stop complaining, whining, and blaming others for what is wrong and seek out real solutions.
The problem of spiritual immaturity will only be solved through our own prayer, sacrifice, service, selflessness, and seeking—through our own concerted effort to grow into spiritual adulthood. Part of that process means passing it on to others, particularly our children, but we can only give what we have. There is a reason airlines suggest putting your own oxygen mask on first before assisting your child, and the same applies in the realm of the spiritual. You aren’t much use unconscious.
The biggest irony, of course, is that the responsible adult finds the key to spiritual maturity in childlike trust. Like the Magi following that star, even with all their pomp, intellectual acumen, and riches, they too had to become like trusting children by following a star. In their humility, they were led to find the Christ Child.
2. Strive for a Holy Family
The first thing we have to recognize is the damage that has been done to the family. Jennifer
Roback Morse says, “The women’s liberation movement, in particular, gave us more things to quarrel about, more grievances and grudges, more permission to focus on ourselves, and easier exit options. What we really needed was more love, all of us. More love from parent to child, from child to parent, and above all, between husbands and wives.”1 Our problem is not over-nurturing but under-nurturing our relationships. Reclaiming meals together, more time away from screens, and listening to each other can go a long way. Remember that Satan likes division, disunity, and confusion. Combatting these at home is critical.
We also need parents to see that they have a common mission to sanctify each other and their children. It isn’t just the mom’s job, or the school’s job, but it is the job of both parents first and foremost. This was one of the troubles with the 1950s: faith became more threadbare and women were left at home without the spiritual sustenance they needed. Rather than doubling down and saying, “I need my husband and I to grow closer spiritually to raise up a holy family,” they ended up opting for the easier option: to just leave home and do what their husbands were doing.
Without a common mission, a great division can happen between husband and wife. “The husband can grow to see his family as a burden getting in the way of his higher purpose which is his career,” Noelle Mering explains. Meanwhile, “the mother’s mission is trivialized. She begins to sense her own work at home is not their common life’s work but merely her burden to endure in service of a higher mission that is his alone and for which she has not acquiesced.”2 When there is no unity of purpose, Mering continues, “these duties seem merely menial and heavy—and merely menial and heavy work will quickly feel suffocating and oppressive for whomever shoulders it. Resentment calcifies like a tumor as husband and wife become competitors rather than allies.”3 Beyond a common purpose, there are other ways to sanctify your home, such as having your home blessed, and using sacramentals regularly, like holy water and blessed salt. Decorating with icons or religious art serves as a reminder of our final purpose, while offering the quiet support of the saints and Our Lady. Hospitality, hosting others and creating community through good meals and great conversation, is also an important way to build up your own family and bring community together.