Why is Mary Most Holy?

 

Why is Mary Most Holy?

Once we have established that Mary is our true Spiritual Mother, we must ask what this means for us in our everyday lives. What is a mother, anyway? What does a mother do? Why did God arrange it so that every human person would come into the world through a mother? There must be a reason. Does a mother simply give birth to a child only to abandon him or her? Of course she does not. A mother not only gives birth, but she also is given by God so that she might nurture, feed, teach, guide, and protect her child. God entrusts her with these tasks.

 

God empowered her to love his Son as much as he deserves to be loved. In the human family, a mother is not optional. So too, in the spiritual family of the Mystical Body of Christ, Mary, our Mother is not optional. Christianity is not an all male frat house or exclusive boys club. Any person who studies the history of the early Christian Church will easily discover the solid witness of how lovingly and faithfully these first believers in Christ, and countless others who went after them down through the ages, turned confidently with love and devotion to the Mother of Jesus for protection, guidance, and assistance in their hours of gravest need.

 

Why did they do this? It seems safe to assume they did so because they wished to obey Jesus. And, after all, she had given birth to Him, nurtured, fed, guided, and protected Him. As a baby, he needed a mother to hold him. If we choose to ignore the mother, we can't see the Child. If God allowed Himself to be born of her and chose her as His Mother, can we do anything but accept her as ours? To put our trust and confidence in her will always be pleasing to God because everything she does will always lead us closer to Him. There is only one person in all humanity of whom God has one picture, and in whom there is a perfect conformity between what He wanted her to be and what she is, and that is His Own Mother. The model and the copy are perfect. As Eden was the Paradise of Creation, Mary is the Paradise of the Incarnation. The closer one gets to the fire, the greater the heat; the closer one is to God, the greater the purity.

 

But since no one was ever closer to God than the woman whose human portals He threw open to walk this earth, then no one could have been more pure than she. We do not start with Mary. We start with Christ. The less we think of Him, the less we think of her; the more we think of Him, the more we think of her; the more we adore His Divinity, the more we venerate her Motherhood. It may be objected: 'Our Lord is enough for me. I have no need of her.' But He needed her, whether we do or not. God, Who made the sun, also made the moon. The moon does not take away from the brilliance of the sun. All its light is reflected from the sun. The Blessed Mother reflects her Divine Son; without Him, she is nothing. With Him, she is the Mother of Men.