The figure of the Faith, Mary: Day 028

The figure of the Faith

The celebrated English convert to the Catholic faith, G. K. Chesterton, tells what Mary meant to him before his conversion.

The unconverted world . . . has a very strange notion of the collective unity of Catholic things or thoughts. Its exponents . . . give the most curious lists of things which they think make up the Catholic life; an odd assortment of objects, such as candles, rosaries, incense . . . vestments, pointed windows, and then all sorts of essentials or unessentials thrown in in any sort of order; fasts, relics, penances, or the Pope.

But even in their bewilderment, they do bear witness to a need which is not so nonsensical as their attempts to fulfill it; the need of somehow summing up “all that sort of thing,” which does really describe Catholicism and nothing else except Catholicism. . . . Men need an image, single, colored, and clear in outline, an image to be called up instantly in the imagination, when what is Catholic is to be distinguished from what claims to be Christian or even what in one sense is Christian.

Now I can scarcely remember a time when the image of Our Lady did not stand up in my mind quite definitely, at the mention or the thought of all these things. I was quite distant from these things, and then doubtful about these things; and then disputing with the world for them, and with myself against them; for that is the condition before conversion. But whether the figure was distant, or was dark and mysterious, or was a scandal to my contemporaries, or was a challenge to myself—I never doubted that this figure was the figure of the Faith; that she embodied, as a complete human being still only human, all that this Thing had to say to humanity. The instant I remembered the Catholic Church, I remembered her; when I tried to forget the Catholic Church, I tried to forget her. —G. K. Chesterton, “Mary and the Convert,” The Well and the Shallows

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .
Have I had an experience similar to that of Chesterton, in that Mary embod- ies and sums up in some way all that is distinctive about the Catholic faith? Why does Mary play that role for so many Catholics and non-Catholics alike?

CLOSING PRAYER
From a prayer of Venerable Pope Pius XII: O Virgin, fair as the moon, delight of the angels and saints in heaven, grant that we may become like you and that our souls may receive a ray of your beauty, which does not decline with the years but shines forth into eternity.

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