Mary, The Mother Of God and My Mother
If you lose a friend, you are sad. If a child loses its mother, it is desolate. The one all-consoling human relationship in life is gone. And yet you, my non-Catholic friends, have lost a Mother, in the Mother of Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary. She it was, who of all the daughters of Eve, was chosen to be the mother of God. She it was who bore the infant Jesus in her womb nine months. He who honors and loves the mother pays honor to the Son. You a non-Catholic know this as well as I a Catholic. The honor and love and respect and devotion paid to the Mother of God is one of the most reasonable and comforting practices of the Catholic Church.
You cannot think of the Blessed Mother of God without thinking of her divine Son. She is associated with Him always, from the moment of His birth in Bethlehem to the moment of His death on Calvary. When Christ, your Savior, hung upon the Cross, she stood beneath that cross. His sacrifice, she made her own. It was a complete sacrifice in which the divine Redeemer of the world gave everything he possesed, even life itself, to save mankind. But when He hung there, stripped of all earthly possessions, He still found something He could give to the children of men. Looking down from the Cross upon St. John, the beloved disciple, Christ said: "Son, behold thy Mother." And then transferring His gaze to His Mother Mary, He said: "Woman, behold thy son" He did not make use of the fond title mother in addressing His Mother on this occasion. He called her 'woman', to signify that He was giving us also the right to call her Mother, in order that henceforth she should consider herself in a special way, the mother of mankind.
Christ, you know, was our Brother. He made Himself our Brother when He took upon Himself our flesh becoming a man like us. Now again by another title he makes us all His brothers, by sharing the love and affection of His own Mother with us. In these little chapters I hesitate to argue. My sole intention was to put before you the great blessings you will reap by embracing the Catholic faith. Yet there is a constant temptation to point out how reasonable are the practices of the Catholic faith, what a tragedy it is for anyone to abandon them. Now one of the most reasonable and tender of all the practices of the Catholic faith, is its devotion to the Mother of God.
Oh! how ardently did all the English people love her in days gone by when Merry England was Mary's England. How warmly and tenderly did all Germany and France and Norway and all Christendom love her and sing hymns in her praise. It is said that many of the Protestants in Holland and in Germany in recent years have begged their pastors to restore to them the practice of honoring her, the privilege of resting once again under the mantle of her motherly love. That privilege will be yours again once you return home. You will again be a child of Mary, with her love and protection hovering over you. You need not fear that you will love her too much, that she shall love you too little. This Mother, who was Mother to the Son of God, you cannot love too much to suit her divine Son. You will know as Catholics know, that she is human like yourself. She is but one of God's creatures and precisely because she is human like we are, you will have greater confidence in approaching her. There is an infinite distance between God and the Blessed Mother; hence we cannot give her the worship we give God Himself. But we can praise her for the high office she, of all womankind, was chosen to fill. We can love her for the Son she gave us. We can feel comforted in this vale of tears for her heavenly protection. The mark of the true Christian should ever be a love and veneration for the Mother of Christ.
I like to ponder at times over the Gospel that narrates the story of Mary Magdalene. I like to consider how even after a life of sin, when at length she did find Christ, out of a sense of shame and sorrow she shed copious tears, and with her very tears, she bathed the feet of her Lord and with her hair she dried them. I like to remember at the same time, the scene I once witnessed. A convert had just been received into the Church. The practice of devotion to the Mother of God had just been explained to him. And when he realized the loving devotion he could have given to the Mother of God and the loving care he could have expected from her in return, he also wept tears of mingled grief and joy, to think as he exclaimed: "that I have missed the love of the Mother of God for so long."
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