Is Mary important?


Is Mary important?

-         Mario D’Couto Sdb

            In the very first place, we must note that Mary is a human person like us, yet She occupies a special place of honour as She had brought forth Our Lord into this world.
            It is interesting to see how some Catholics bow at the statue of Our Lady and forget Our Lord Jesus. Such a thing would be a blasphemy! In fact Mary Herself says in the Gospel of St. John, “Do as He tells you” (John 2:5) not what She tells. Thus, one could raise the question, why should one honour Mary at all as the Mother of God?
            To begin with, we should note that when we pray to Our Blessed Mother, it is through Her intercession that we come close to Her Son Jesus. Besides, I suppose that She Herself would not want that to happen as She Herself declares, “I am the Lord’s servant” (Luke 1:38). It is therefore obvious that all praise is to be directed to Our Lord Jesus. Yet as St. Augustine would say, “When the Father wanted to give the human race the gift of His Son, He found the human race unworthy of receiving the Gift directly; so He gave His Son to Mary and through Her to our race”. In praying the Rosary, we are actually welcoming Jesus, the Father’s Gift, through Mary with Joy, gratitude and acceptance of His will.
            For nine months, a mother and the child She carries in Her womb live the same life- a symbiosis. The health of the foetus depends on the health of the mother. Its heart and brain and muscle are all formed from the substance of the mother and nourished by it. Biologically and affectively the greatest and the closest relationship is the one that exists between the mother and her child.
            Applying this to the relationship between Mary and Jesus, we can say that He learnt His first lessons of life from His Mother. The same Jesus has given His Mother to be our Mother (John 19:27), Mary is indeed, after Jesus, the most beautiful manifestation of God’s love and mercy towards the human race.
            I would like to conclude with the words of one of the greatest theologians of recent times, Karl Rahner, who wrote in his book, “Prayers for a lifetime”,
Holy Virgin, truly Mother of the eternal Word who has come into our flesh and our life, Lady who conceived in faith and in Your blessed womb the salvation of us all, and so are the Mother of all the redeemed…in a moment that never passes, but remains valid for all eternity, Your voice became the voice of all humankind, and Your ‘Yes’ was the ‘Amen’ of all creation to God’s irrevocable decree… Just as we are not only built up on the cornerstone Jesus Christ but also on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, so too our life and salvation is ever dependent on Your consent, on Your faith and the fruit of Your womb…We come to You, then, because in You our salvation came to be, was conceived by You…Show to us Jesus Our Lord and Saviour, the Light of Truth and the advent of God into this world of time”. 

Popular posts from this blog

In the world yet not of the world

Image
  IN THE WORLD YET NOT OF THE WORLD MARIO D’COUTO           Being in the world and yet not of it is something that can be a struggle, at least for me and what I mean by that is in as much as we desire to be good and to do good, God is not going to put a glass jar over us and say that just because we choose to love Him and follow Him more closely, that He is going to shield us from the temptations of this world. To make things clear though, this is not to say that the world in itself is bad or evil nor are the things found in the world either but how we deal with it is what will make us or break us. We all have responsibilities and important things that need our attention. If we are not careful though, our hearts and minds can be consumed with the task of keeping them afloat. Rather than centering ourselves in Christ and letting the other elements of our lives take their rightful place around that center, we can end up shifting our attention fr...
Read more

The Gift of Life

  THE GIFT OF LIFE  Mario D’Couto  The above video may seem to put human existence in a rather pessimistic way as if to say that our lives did not really matter and while no doubt there is some element of truth in it, I still feel that if lived well, there is meaning and purpose to our lives and that none of our lives is some sort of haphazard creation.  As I celebrate my gift of life tomorrow, I suddenly began to think that if we compare ourselves to the vastness of the universe and everything else that exists in it, we may perhaps be nothing more than a tiny dot floating on the surface of the earth and yet in as much as such a thing may appear insignificant, the One who created everything chooses to have a personal relationship with that tiny dot, that is, ourselves. This is something truly uplifting, which gives meaning and purpose to our lives and our existence. At the same time, it is also a reminder for us to stay grounded especially in those moments when w...
Read more

Are you creative?

Image
  ARE YOU CREATIVE? Mario D’Couto                         Can you imagine a world without creativity? What would the world look like if there was no creativity? Well, for all we can expect, it would be pretty boring and dull. There would be no speech, no songs, no tools, no ideas such as love, freedom or democracy. It would be an existence so mechanical and impoverished that none of us would want to be a part of.             To achieve the kind of world we consider human, some people had to dare to break the thrall of tradition. Next, they had to find ways of recording those new ideas or procedures that improved on what went on before. Finally, they had to find ways of transmitting the new knowledge to the generation to come. Those who were involved in this process we call creative. What we call culture or those parts of our selves that we internalized from the social...
Read more