Mary’s honors defend the truth about her Son, Mary: Day 037

Mary’s honors defend the truth about her Son

Blessed John Henry Newman observes that God allowed Mary to remain in the background until the divinity of her Son was challenged in the early centuries of the Church. At that time, the attention of the world turned to her as the “Mother of God,” for that title defended the truth about his identity.

I have shown you how full of meaning are the truths which the Church teaches concerning the Most Blessed Virgin. Now consider how full of mean- ing also has been the Church’s dispensation of them. You will find that, in this respect, as in Mary’s prerogatives themselves, there is the same careful consider- ation of the glory of him who gave them to her.

You know, when first her Son went out to preach, she kept apart from him; she interfered not with his work. Even when he had gone up on high, yet she, a woman, went not out to preach or teach, she seated not herself in the apostolic chair, she took no part in the priest’s office. She only sought her Son humbly in the daily Mass of those who, though her ministers in heaven, were her superiors in the Church on earth. Even when she and they had left this lower scene, and she was a queen upon her Son’s right hand, she didn’t ask him to publish her name to the ends of the world, or to hold her up to the world’s gaze. But she remained waiting for the time when her own glory should be necessary for his.

He indeed had been from the very first proclaimed by holy Church and enthroned in his temple, for he was God. It would have ill befitted the living Ora- cle of Truth to have withheld from the faithful the very object of their adoration. But it was otherwise with Mary. It was fitting for her, as a creature, a mother, and a woman, to stand aside and make way for the Creator, to minister to her Son, and to win her way into the world’s homage by sweet and gracious persuasion. So when his name was dishonored, then it was that she did him service. When Emmanuel was denied, then the Mother of God came forward. When heretics said that God was not incarnate, then was the time for her own honors.
—Blessed John Henry Newman

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .
If Mary was concerned for the honor of her Son—and he, for hers—then so should we be. What is the best way to honor Jesus and Mary, and to cause them to be honored by others?

CLOSING PRAYER
My Lord and my Lady, let there never be cause for someone to say of me, as they once said of your people whose conduct brought scandal, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Rom 2:24).

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