Mary, St. Timothy Church, Chantilly, VA
What do you know of Mary, Mother of God, a saint deeply venerated and dearly loved by people all around the world?
In his Homily for the feast of the Assumption of Mary at the Church of San Tommaso da Villanova in Castel Gandolfo on August 15, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI spoke extensively on Mary, and her life as a servant of God. He said, “The whole of life is an ascent, the whole of life is meditation, obedience, trust and hope, even in darkness; and the whole of life is marked by this "holy haste" which knows that God always has priority and nothing else must create haste in our existence.”
St. Bernard said,
When you follow Mary you will not go astray;
When you pray to her, you will not despair;
When your mind is on her, you will not wander;
When she holds you up, you will not fall;
When she protects you, you will have no fear;
When she guides you, you will feel no fatigue;
When she is on your side, you will arrive safely home.
When speaking of Mary, Thomas A Kempis said, “Our love for a mother is always an impulse of the heart.”
Mary is beauty and grace. The Catholic Church teaches that Mary, unique in all creation, is full of grace, (Luke 1:28) a perfect human being preserved from her birth from all sin, even original sin. Conceiving by the power of the Holy Spirit, (Luke 1:35) Mary is the Virgin Mother, truly the Mother of God (in Greek: Theotokos) and also the Mother of men (in Latin: Mater viventium). She is the Mother of the Church, for, when he was dying on the cross, Jesus gave his mother Mary to the disciple saying, “Behold your Mother,” (John 19:27) thereby creating the relationship of Mother to John and the nascent Church. In 1847, the American Bishops united in Council at Baltimore, dedicated the United States of America to Mary Immaculate.
One way to learn more about Mary is to pray the rosary and meditate on the mysteries. Or, visit the campus of the University Of Dayton, Ohio, that serves as home to the Marian Library/International Marian Research Institute, a Catholic and Marianist institution of higher learning. At this international center of study and research on Mary, the Mother of Jesus Christ, is the world’s largest collection of printed materials on the Blessed Virgin. The goal of the Marian Research Institute is to gather and present information about the Virgin Mary and to lead people to a loving knowledge of her and develop a fuller knowledge of Christ, his Church and Christian life.
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