Scripture Sunday: a Marian morning

This morning I was reminded why I am so blessed to be exactly where I am.

We were sitting in our regular pew at church, and by some miracle it has begun to be the norm that my two youngest simply fall asleep. This is a major grace, because we are in a parish that has no nursery and is very, very small, and my two youngest are at the ages of impossibility when it comes to sitting still in pews-- they do a pretty decent job, but it's still rough!
My oldest, though, she not only sits up and sits still but she hangs on every word, sings, and fully participates in the mass for the most part, even if it's just in her mind at this stage- she is mulling all of it over. She is four, so her main focus at this point is to try to figure herself out.

Which is why I was so amazed at what happened today! Our Parish priest, who is the nicest man and the most solid of Catholics, decided to give a homily on the Blessed Mother, because it is the month of the holy rosary. And like many priests, he opened with a joke- in this case a joke about a lady who was praying quietly before a Marian shrine when she heard the voice of the Parish custodian, who was playing a joke on her by sitting behind the shrine. "This is Jesus," he says in a booming voice. The woman sits quietly, reflecting, and then composes herself and begins to pray again. He repeats his antics three times until finally, exasperated, the Woman booms back: "Would you please be quiet? I'm trying to talk to your Mother."

This joke, while relatively funny in an irreverent sort of way, CAN go over just fine in circles where people understand what Mary's role as Mediatrix of graces entails-- which is NOT to supercede Jesus or even intercede for us as a necessity. Yes, it is true that we may go directly to the Father, THROUGH the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. We don't NEED Mary, but isn't it nice that she CAN pray for us, and that's the point. God CHOSE her to dispense His graces, but she could have said no... by virtue of her "Fiat," her "yes," she is given the honor and glory that heaven has crowned her with, and we honor that, and God when we accept His Mother as our own surest advocate.

I guess what I'm saying is that the joke is misleading to ill-formed Catholics and to us former protestant reverts and converts can be FATAL... Imagine the carnage if a Baptist, perchance, were to be sitting in the pews. The major Marian issue is that Protestants think we think as much or more of her than we do of Our Lord. This joke only seems to confirm that for people who are looking out for that sort of thing.

Now, my daughter is a child of Mary. She sleeps with a little plastic statue of Mary, prays the Rosary and teaches her friends to, tells the Baptists at the door (and anyone who will listen, really) about Mary and NEVER passes a statue of Mary without dropping by some flowers or rocks she likes. At night when she's scared, she asks Mary for her mantle, and before bed she sits at Mary's table in her mind, across from the child Jesus, eating Mary's chocolate chip cookies and talking with Jesus about her life.
She's a Marian bean. And I admit, I winced when the joke was made--because I'm trying to raise these kids here, and I want them to learn the PURE truth, which is NOT that Mary is somehow more important than our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

The truth is that Mary is VERY important, but she is not Jesus, and that a person can and often does go their entire lives without the blessing of a personal relationship with the Mother of God and that's OK-- Catholics need to know that these people STILL get to heaven.

At the same time, I wasn't too upset because, let's face it, my four year old is not going to get the joke.

So I was completely taken aback when she turns to me and says: "That is NOT Funny. She needs to talk to Jesus." And then repeated it to her dad on the other side of her. Not only was my four year old actually listening to the homily, she was correcting our priest for inaccurate representation of Catholic theology. How totally cool is that? My kids rock.

If you are interested in reading more about the Catholic answer to the Mediatrix of Graces question: click HERE.