Take Heart

May is the month of Mary, and since Our Lady has been such a powerful person in my life, it seems only fitting to begin the journey of this blog during her month.

My journey with Mary has not been the most typical one. I have always honored and respected Mary, and I always thought it was beautiful that so many people had loving devotions to her. I knew Mary was worthy of high honors, but she was not a primary figure in my life. I did not feel like a special devotion to her was “my thing.” I knew devotions to her were a good thing, great even, but I saw them as somewhat optional. This changed when my younger sister began a little book called 33 Days To Morning Glory by Fr. Michael Gaitley. You may have heard of it. If not, what you need to know is that it is a book which takes you on a self-led retreat, leading up to making an act of personal consecration to Mary (an offering of your life to her which any person can make – lay or religious.) It was inspired by St. Louis De Montfort’s Marian Consecration, and it was written in a way that the author hoped would be accessible to those who found St. Louis’ book too dense, as well as the large number of prayers in it hard to fit into their day.

I did not know what a Marian consecration was, except that it sounded like another demanding devotion I was not interested in; however, the fact that my sister started reading it piqued my interest (not for the right reasons, I am afraid.) You see, I had always loved the Catholic Faith. It meant the world to me, and I had volunteered in many capacities over the years at my parish. My sister, on the other hand, typically was not as interested in “church stuff” as me. She did not want to have long conversations about faith all the time or take part in many of the Parish activities around our church. I did not see her as the most faithful Catholic, so when I saw she was reading the book I had heard so much about and that I, myself, had not even read – Basically, I did not want to be shown up. I thought to myself, “If she can read it, then I certainly can.” Ah, pride. It’s a nasty thing, but thankfully, God can raise good things out of bad ones.

While I initially saw reading one chapter of the book each day (which is how it is meant to be read) as a competition between my sister and I to see who would keep up with the readings, to my surprise, my sister kept on reading the chapters, and so did I. I thought she would drop it as she was not one to finish books, and I wasn’t sure that I’d keep up with it either as I was only following halfheartedly in the beginning. However, before I knew it, the book had captured my interest, and I realized that my pride was not the only thing that had spurred me to read it – the Holy Spirit had been at work too.

It was not what I had expected. It was not the demanding consecration full of lifelong, daily litanies and prayers like I had thought. It was more simple and more profound than that. It was offering everything I had and everything I was to Mary, but it was not burdensome. It was simply having a relationship with her based on trust. Furthermore, it spoke not just of the promises I would make to Mary (E.g., In summary, to live a good life and ask Mary for help in all things and to entrust all things in my life to her), but it spoke of the promises Mary would also make to me as a result. This astonished me as I read the promises she offered me. E.g., “To give of her spirit and heart, to share with me her experience of prayer and praise, to provide for my spiritual and material needs, responsibility for all that befalls me…” – among many other things. (33 Days to Morning Glory by Fr. Michael Gaitley)

I was a bit of a hard case when it came to placing my full trust in anybody, and a small intervention from God finally convinced me that Mary was the most trustworthy being (after God, of course) to place my full trust in.

I had been let down by people in my life many times before. I had been used to promises being made to me and to those same promises not being kept. To place my trust in anyone was a big deal, so I had a conversation with God about it. I did not know how to do it, and I told Him so. I told God that I had friends who had difficult relationships with their own mothers. As such, they had fostered a deep appreciation and dependence on Mary as a spiritual mother. I, on the other hand, had an extremely close relationship with my biological mother, so I had never felt the need to search for any other mother. My own mother had been with me through countless hardships, and she had always lovingly stood by my side. I will never forget God’s response to me. He replied clearly, “How much MORE should you understand the importance of a mother [compared to your friends]?” His words struck me to the heart. I did know the importance of a mother. I had experienced it in my life. In other words, I had no excuse. After that, I firmly set out to foster my relationship with Mary. I was finally able to start truly seeing her and relying on her as a mother.

My life was starting to change. I never could have guessed how much.