One of the main players in the Incarnation story is Mary, Mother of God. Despite the key roll she played in bringing Jesus to us, devotion to the Blessed Mother is a contested subject between Protestants and Catholics. Protestants often see devotion to Mary as a form of worship and accuse Catholics of idolatry. Catholics would certainly be guilty of idolatry if devotion to Mary was in fact worship, but the truth is devotions to Our Lady are not acts of worship but acts of respect towards the woman who allowed herself to be used in God's plan for the salvation of the world. It might be confusing and difficult to separate worship of God and devotion to Mary, so I hope to bring some light to the conversation that might foster understanding between Christians.
Let's start with devotion to saints in general. What's the deal with Catholics always asking different saints for their intercession about different things? First, we have to understand who a saint is, and then we can better understand the Catholic relationship to them. In the Catholic Church, a saint is a Catholic who has died and who the Church knows lives in heaven with God. The Church knows the saint is in heaven, because different miracles have happened after the individual's death in connection to that person. In other words, God has given us divine signs that the saint is upstairs, not down or somewhere in between (aka purgatory, but that's a whole other blog post). Saints are people who lived holy lives, lives so holy that God has chosen to set them up as examples to us. Since we know the saints are in heaven, the saints are the closest people we know to Jesus. There is not a moment that they do not behold the glorified Christ, so they can constantly lift up prayers to Him.
Okay, now I hope we are all on the same page as to who a saint is for a Catholic (Or anyone else. We will share, but I'm expecting anyone on the fence about saints is not ready to go all in just because of an amateur's definition.), so I'm going to ask you to keep that in the back of your mind for a minute.
Now let's talk about devotion to saints by way of an example. When Christians have a problem in their lives, like an ill family member or losing a job, they often will go to their friends, neighbors, and fellow church goers and ask for their prayers. Our instinct is to ask more people to present our petition to God, so that the power of prayer can be magnified. Devotion to saints is just like that, except instead of asking your friend down the street, you ask your friend in heaven. Remember the part about saints always presenting prayers to the glorified Christ? Saints are perfect friends to ask for prayers because they stand before Jesus every second of every day. They have a unique opportunity to talk to Jesus face to face. And Jesus likes to listen to the prayers of the saints, because not only are they our friends, but His friends as well. Prayers that invoke saints then are not worship, but prayers of intercession. We ask for saints to intercede for us which is more like asking a favor than worship. We recognize that saints have lived holy lives and have already made it to heaven, and we honor their lives by asking them to spend their heavens praying for us. The saints have made it, and they want us to make it too, so they pray for us as a way to cheer us on through the race of life.
I'll address one final general problem I've known Protestants to have with devotion to saints. After discussing how saints are just friends in heaven we ask to pray for us, I've seen some real understanding come to my Protestant friends. If they buy that premise, their next question is usually, "But do you still have a personal relationship with Jesus?" I'll continue using my example to explain. When you ask your friends to pray for your ill relative or pray that you can find a new job, do you stop praying yourself? Of course not! If you are asking others to lift you up in prayer, you're most likely lifting up the same intention yourself. Just because I ask Saint Anthony to pray that I can find my lost car keys, doesn't mean I won't send one up to the Big Man myself when I'm running late in the morning. Catholics still have a personal relationship with God, because we come to Him in prayer as well.
Okay, so maybe now you understand the difference between asking for intercession and worshiping the One True God, but I'm sure you're still wondering why we pay so much attention to Mary. Well, if heaven is a Kingdom, then Mary is the Queen (and it just so happens that conditional statement is true). The Lord crowned Mary Queen of Heaven, because Jesus has a special place in His heart for his mom. Mary is the greatest of all the saints, because she submitted in perfect obedience to God and His plan for the Incarnation. The saints are holy, but Mary is the only saint to live her whole life without sin. Because of the immense grace Mary was filled with and her closeness to Jesus, prayers from Mary are especially powerful. I once read a story about a saint who was asking Jesus for the conversion of one of her friends while she was alive. Jesus told her that He couldn't do that, and the saint replied with something along the lines of "Fine, I'll just ask your mother," to which Jesus replied "In that case I cannot refuse." If our prayer intentions are pure and we ask Mary to deliver them to her Son, then Jesus will not refuse them. Because Mary's intercession is so important, Catholics ask for her help A LOT. Maybe our frequent pleas for her intercession are what make the difference between devotion and worship so confusing. To help dispel the confusion further, let's take a look at the Hail Mary, a written prayer Catholics say to ask for Mary's intercession.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee. This line of the Hail Mary comes from Scripture. These were the words that the Angel Gabriel greeted the soon to be Mother of Our Lord with when he delivered the news of the Incarnation and asked for Mary's yes, or fiat (no, not her car) . If you recall, the greeting confused Mary, probably because the Angel had addressed her with "hail." Hail is a word that we use to honor someone or something higher in authority than us. We'd hail the Queen of England or in Mary's day Caesar. But here was an angel, a higher being than humans, using a royal address to her, a poor Jewish girl. Because the higher being used this greeting for Mary, it is certainly fitting for us, sinners, to address the perfect woman with this salutation. But wait, how do we know Mary is perfect? I'm glad you asked, because that brings us to the second part of the Angel's greeting, "full of grace." The phrase full of grace signifies that Mary was without sin. She couldn't be full of grace if part of her had the stain of sin, instead she would have been "half-full of grace", or "with some grace", or "I mean I guess you're okay." We say full of grace, because we acknowledge that God saved Mary from the stain of original sin (the Immaculate Conception, also a whole other blog post) and she remained perfect all her life so that she could be a worthy mother of Jesus. The Angel also told her that the Lord was with her. From the beginning of time, God had known Mary and set her apart to be His Mother. Someone can't have all that grace without the Lord being with her.
Blessed are thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. This part of the prayer also comes from scripture. This was the greeting of Elizabeth to Mary when Mary went to stay with her elderly, pregnant cousin. John the Baptist leaped for joy in Elizabeth's womb when Mary came to greet Elizabeth, because he could feel the presence of Jesus in her. Mary is blessed among women, because she was chosen to be the mother of our Lord. The fruit of her womb is blessed, because, well that's Jesus, and I can't give a better explanation than Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity, of course He's blessed.
Jesus. We name the fruit of Mary's womb in the middle of the prayer. I wanted to separate this out, because when you do it this way, you see that Jesus is in the center of the prayer. Even when we praise the holiness of Mary, we recognize that she only merits praise because of her Son. Mary needed salvation too (getting saved from original sin can't happen without salvation).
Holy Mary, Mother of God. In the second half of the prayer, we begin by naming titles of Mary. She was indeed holy, because as we've already discussed she lived her life without sin. Mary is the Mother of God, because she birthed the Second Person of the Trinity in the person of Jesus Christ.
Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Here is the key to understanding this prayer. We are asking Mary to pray for us. We are not offering up praise to Mary to worship her, we are honoring her role in salvation and finishing by asking for her intercession. The Hail Mary is like a formal letter we write to Our Lady asking for her assistance. We ask her to pray for us now, because we have needs in the present, but we also ask for her prayers at the moment of our death, because the only way we get to heaven is if we have found favor with God. Mary can ask God to find that favor on us at the time of our death, which sounds like a pretty awesome gift to me.
Amen! The Hail Mary is a short, but important prayer Catholics use to ask for the intercession of Mary. It's not the only prayer that asks for the intercession of Our Lady, and of course you can ask Mary for help free style, but it's a beautiful treasure of the Church, and something Catholics (and anyone else who wants to) should consider saying every day. As I've said, Mary's intercession is powerful and important, and it's definitely something you want on your side.
This blog post is only the tip of the iceberg for the beauty of Mary and the other saints. There are so many aspects of Mama's life that deserve special attention, so I'll have to come back to her in future blog posts. (In the mean time, I encourage anyone with questions to look up answers from professionals who know their stuff better than I do.) I'll use this space to say one more thing: I love Mary. She is an incredible friend to me, and while I love Jesus and talking to Him, sometimes you just need to talk to a mom. I don't intercede to Mary just because I think her prayers are a tool to use, and that's not what I want to encourage anyone to do. I want to encourage people to discover the potency of Our Lady's prayers by entering into a relationship with her. It's important to have a relationship with her, because knowing her changes your life. She is powerful, yes, but she wields the power kindly.
Mary, Queen of All Saints, pray for us.
Let's start with devotion to saints in general. What's the deal with Catholics always asking different saints for their intercession about different things? First, we have to understand who a saint is, and then we can better understand the Catholic relationship to them. In the Catholic Church, a saint is a Catholic who has died and who the Church knows lives in heaven with God. The Church knows the saint is in heaven, because different miracles have happened after the individual's death in connection to that person. In other words, God has given us divine signs that the saint is upstairs, not down or somewhere in between (aka purgatory, but that's a whole other blog post). Saints are people who lived holy lives, lives so holy that God has chosen to set them up as examples to us. Since we know the saints are in heaven, the saints are the closest people we know to Jesus. There is not a moment that they do not behold the glorified Christ, so they can constantly lift up prayers to Him.
Okay, now I hope we are all on the same page as to who a saint is for a Catholic (Or anyone else. We will share, but I'm expecting anyone on the fence about saints is not ready to go all in just because of an amateur's definition.), so I'm going to ask you to keep that in the back of your mind for a minute.
Now let's talk about devotion to saints by way of an example. When Christians have a problem in their lives, like an ill family member or losing a job, they often will go to their friends, neighbors, and fellow church goers and ask for their prayers. Our instinct is to ask more people to present our petition to God, so that the power of prayer can be magnified. Devotion to saints is just like that, except instead of asking your friend down the street, you ask your friend in heaven. Remember the part about saints always presenting prayers to the glorified Christ? Saints are perfect friends to ask for prayers because they stand before Jesus every second of every day. They have a unique opportunity to talk to Jesus face to face. And Jesus likes to listen to the prayers of the saints, because not only are they our friends, but His friends as well. Prayers that invoke saints then are not worship, but prayers of intercession. We ask for saints to intercede for us which is more like asking a favor than worship. We recognize that saints have lived holy lives and have already made it to heaven, and we honor their lives by asking them to spend their heavens praying for us. The saints have made it, and they want us to make it too, so they pray for us as a way to cheer us on through the race of life.
I'll address one final general problem I've known Protestants to have with devotion to saints. After discussing how saints are just friends in heaven we ask to pray for us, I've seen some real understanding come to my Protestant friends. If they buy that premise, their next question is usually, "But do you still have a personal relationship with Jesus?" I'll continue using my example to explain. When you ask your friends to pray for your ill relative or pray that you can find a new job, do you stop praying yourself? Of course not! If you are asking others to lift you up in prayer, you're most likely lifting up the same intention yourself. Just because I ask Saint Anthony to pray that I can find my lost car keys, doesn't mean I won't send one up to the Big Man myself when I'm running late in the morning. Catholics still have a personal relationship with God, because we come to Him in prayer as well.
Okay, so maybe now you understand the difference between asking for intercession and worshiping the One True God, but I'm sure you're still wondering why we pay so much attention to Mary. Well, if heaven is a Kingdom, then Mary is the Queen (and it just so happens that conditional statement is true). The Lord crowned Mary Queen of Heaven, because Jesus has a special place in His heart for his mom. Mary is the greatest of all the saints, because she submitted in perfect obedience to God and His plan for the Incarnation. The saints are holy, but Mary is the only saint to live her whole life without sin. Because of the immense grace Mary was filled with and her closeness to Jesus, prayers from Mary are especially powerful. I once read a story about a saint who was asking Jesus for the conversion of one of her friends while she was alive. Jesus told her that He couldn't do that, and the saint replied with something along the lines of "Fine, I'll just ask your mother," to which Jesus replied "In that case I cannot refuse." If our prayer intentions are pure and we ask Mary to deliver them to her Son, then Jesus will not refuse them. Because Mary's intercession is so important, Catholics ask for her help A LOT. Maybe our frequent pleas for her intercession are what make the difference between devotion and worship so confusing. To help dispel the confusion further, let's take a look at the Hail Mary, a written prayer Catholics say to ask for Mary's intercession.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee. This line of the Hail Mary comes from Scripture. These were the words that the Angel Gabriel greeted the soon to be Mother of Our Lord with when he delivered the news of the Incarnation and asked for Mary's yes, or fiat (no, not her car) . If you recall, the greeting confused Mary, probably because the Angel had addressed her with "hail." Hail is a word that we use to honor someone or something higher in authority than us. We'd hail the Queen of England or in Mary's day Caesar. But here was an angel, a higher being than humans, using a royal address to her, a poor Jewish girl. Because the higher being used this greeting for Mary, it is certainly fitting for us, sinners, to address the perfect woman with this salutation. But wait, how do we know Mary is perfect? I'm glad you asked, because that brings us to the second part of the Angel's greeting, "full of grace." The phrase full of grace signifies that Mary was without sin. She couldn't be full of grace if part of her had the stain of sin, instead she would have been "half-full of grace", or "with some grace", or "I mean I guess you're okay." We say full of grace, because we acknowledge that God saved Mary from the stain of original sin (the Immaculate Conception, also a whole other blog post) and she remained perfect all her life so that she could be a worthy mother of Jesus. The Angel also told her that the Lord was with her. From the beginning of time, God had known Mary and set her apart to be His Mother. Someone can't have all that grace without the Lord being with her.
Blessed are thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. This part of the prayer also comes from scripture. This was the greeting of Elizabeth to Mary when Mary went to stay with her elderly, pregnant cousin. John the Baptist leaped for joy in Elizabeth's womb when Mary came to greet Elizabeth, because he could feel the presence of Jesus in her. Mary is blessed among women, because she was chosen to be the mother of our Lord. The fruit of her womb is blessed, because, well that's Jesus, and I can't give a better explanation than Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity, of course He's blessed.
Jesus. We name the fruit of Mary's womb in the middle of the prayer. I wanted to separate this out, because when you do it this way, you see that Jesus is in the center of the prayer. Even when we praise the holiness of Mary, we recognize that she only merits praise because of her Son. Mary needed salvation too (getting saved from original sin can't happen without salvation).
Holy Mary, Mother of God. In the second half of the prayer, we begin by naming titles of Mary. She was indeed holy, because as we've already discussed she lived her life without sin. Mary is the Mother of God, because she birthed the Second Person of the Trinity in the person of Jesus Christ.
Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Here is the key to understanding this prayer. We are asking Mary to pray for us. We are not offering up praise to Mary to worship her, we are honoring her role in salvation and finishing by asking for her intercession. The Hail Mary is like a formal letter we write to Our Lady asking for her assistance. We ask her to pray for us now, because we have needs in the present, but we also ask for her prayers at the moment of our death, because the only way we get to heaven is if we have found favor with God. Mary can ask God to find that favor on us at the time of our death, which sounds like a pretty awesome gift to me.
Amen! The Hail Mary is a short, but important prayer Catholics use to ask for the intercession of Mary. It's not the only prayer that asks for the intercession of Our Lady, and of course you can ask Mary for help free style, but it's a beautiful treasure of the Church, and something Catholics (and anyone else who wants to) should consider saying every day. As I've said, Mary's intercession is powerful and important, and it's definitely something you want on your side.
This blog post is only the tip of the iceberg for the beauty of Mary and the other saints. There are so many aspects of Mama's life that deserve special attention, so I'll have to come back to her in future blog posts. (In the mean time, I encourage anyone with questions to look up answers from professionals who know their stuff better than I do.) I'll use this space to say one more thing: I love Mary. She is an incredible friend to me, and while I love Jesus and talking to Him, sometimes you just need to talk to a mom. I don't intercede to Mary just because I think her prayers are a tool to use, and that's not what I want to encourage anyone to do. I want to encourage people to discover the potency of Our Lady's prayers by entering into a relationship with her. It's important to have a relationship with her, because knowing her changes your life. She is powerful, yes, but she wields the power kindly.
Mary, Queen of All Saints, pray for us.
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