How can Mary be our hope?, Mary: Day 017

How can Mary be our hope?

St. Alphonsus responds to those who object to speaking of Mary as our hope.

Some cannot bear to hear us salute and call Mary our hope: “Hail, our hope!” They say that God alone is our hope, and that he curses those who put their trust in creatures, as the prophet Jeremiah says: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man” (Jer 17:5). Mary, they exclaim, is a creature; and how can a crea- ture be our hope? St. Thomas Aquinas notes that we can place our hope in a person in two ways: as a principal cause or as an intermediate one. For example, those who hope for a favor from a king, hope for it to come from him as lord; but they hope for it to come through his minister or favorite as an intercessor. If the favor is granted, it comes primarily from the king, but it comes also through the instrumentality of the favorite. In this case, then, whoever seeks the favor is right in calling his intercessor his hope.

The King of heaven, being infinite goodness, desires in the highest degree to enrich us with his graces. But because confidence is required on our part, and in order to increase it in us, he has given us his own mother to be our mother and advocate, and to her he has given all power to help us. So he wills that we should rest our hope of salvation and blessing in her.

Those who place their hopes in creatures alone, independently of God, as sinners do; those who, in order to obtain the friendship and favor of a man, don’t fear to outrage his divine Majesty: such are most certainly cursed by God, as Jer- emiah says. But those who hope in Mary, who as Mother of God is able to obtain graces and eternal life for them, are truly blessed and acceptable to the heart of God. For God desires to see that greatest of his creatures honored, for she loved and honored him in this world more than all men and angels put together.
—St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Glories of Mary

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .
When a carpenter uses a hammer to drive a nail, we say that both the carpen- ter drives the nail and the hammer drives the nail. When God uses Mary to bring us hope through her Son, isn’t it appropriate, then, to say both that God gives us hope, and that Mary gives us hope?

CLOSING PRAYER
From a prayer of St. Ephraem: Hail, Mary, hope of my soul! Hail, certain salvation of Christians! Hail, helper of sinners! Hail, fortress of the faithful and salvation of the world!

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