Most of us have an ideal of what a good mother is and what a good mother does. Mary is the prefect mother, tending to all the details of our lives, as long as we are open to letting that relationship grow and we are open to her.
Many a saint has attested to her maternal intercession, her protection, her help, that has never been known to fail. Even the demons speak of her attentiveness to humanity, like these words recorded during an exorcism:
“She is full of light. She blinds me, blinds me, cursed! When she was born, the world stopped for a moment. All creation stopped to look at her, all creation: the stars, the air, the fire, the water, the ground. All creation stopped. No one noticed besides me. I knew it. I knew who she was, and I would not do anything. I could not touch her. She was pure, pure. Enough, enough. Do not make me remember! She is like balsam. She soothes wounds, those that are the deepest. If you only knew how much she loves you, you would live your lives joyfully, without fear, without sin. Through her, you would understand how much hurt sin causes her Son.”
Another demon is reported to have said, “She is on a cloud and is saying, ‘Be calm, I am here with you, and I am helping you.’”
There is a reason why so many of her beautiful titles are about her assistance: Our Lady Help of Christians, Star of the Sea, Mother of Mercy, Mother of the Church, Mother of Charity. She is not a helicopter mother, only buzzing in to move us on from one task to the next, but a true mother who is always with us.
We are invited to have an actual relationship with Our Lady, not just to rotely say our prayers without seeing her engaging in our lives in a real, tangible way. Certainly, we won’t know what she is doing behind the scenes, but we can draw nearer to her through the Mass and the sacraments, as well as through the Rosary and through Marian consecration. Padre Pio (St. Pio) has called the Rosary “the weapon” for our times. Over and Over again, in Marian apparitions, Our Lady as asked for the faithful to pray the Rosary. Even the demons are keenly aware of its power:
“If you all knew it, I would be destroyed in less than a second. If you all said the rosary, this bastard thing here, with faith! Do you know what she does when you say this chain? She takes your hand. She extends it toward heaven and takes the hand of your God. And through this prayer, this chain of (swear words follow), she approximates the two hands and brings them together so they touch. When these two hands meet, she exults, exults, exults, and gets on her knees and prays. Only a few men touch that hand because many times they take their hand away from hers because they do not want to do it. They do not want to di it thanks to me who am their god. But those who succeed, but those who succeed, they are fully aware of it and she exults. You see that she kneels down and kisses the pierced feet of her Son.”
The fruitfulness of the Rosary is hard to exaggerate, especially when looking at the history of the Church and the many ways in which Our Lady has helped those who have prayed it devotedly. . .
The beads of the rosary, like the tiny stones used by David to vanquish Goliath, have much more power than we might ever know.
This excerpt from The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity by Carrie Gress is reprinted here with the kind permission of Tan Books.
Carrie Gress will be presenting at this year’s Women of Grace® retreat in Malvern from July 12-14. It’s not too late to register. Click here for more information!
