Milestones with Mary

Caryll Houselander said it best when she wrote, “I faced a blank future . . . it was still impossible to imagine Our Lady doing anything that I would do, for the very simple reason that I simply could not imagine her doing anything at all.”

I marked the passage in red. It was 2007. And I knew Mary was the Immaculate Conception, the Queen of Heaven and Earth, Our Lady of Grace. I believed in the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption and the Coronation. And I knew that she was my mother. I knew all these things because I had been Catholic for two years.

But I did not feel her. I knew her. I believed in her. But I did not feel – or perhaps I felt her but only a tiny bit.

My mentor and sister-in-the-faith sent me two books in May 2007. Reed of God by Caryll Houselander and True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin by St. Louis de Montfort (and that one was a little like jumping from grade school into college). From May until August 2007, I read. I prepared.

And on the Feast of the Assumption 2007, I consecrated myself to Jesus Through Mary.

In the fall of 2012, I renewed that consecration, this time reading Fr. Gillespie’s book Preparation for TOTAL CONSECRATION.

The following spring (2013), I began attending Legion of Mary.

About that same time, an editor at Ave Maria Press contacted me and asked me to send her a book proposal – if I was interested in doing that – and she would take a look at it. I did. Together, we reworked the proposal three times. The final proposal was quite different than the first. But all three were centered on Mary – because, by then, I had come full circle. I not only knew. I knew.

Somewhere in the years between 2007 and 2013, I had come to know . . . to feel . . . to experience Mary as my Mother. The journey from knowing it with the head and knowing it with the heart took many years (if you consider that I began RCIA in 2004).

Like a true mother, she waited. She helped. She showed up when I needed her.

She came to me when I didn’t sense her beside me, like a mother who slips into her child’s room while she’s sleeping and checks to see if the girl’s forehead is cool, if she needs the covers to be pulled up, if she is sleeping or staying up too late to finish a good book.

She came to me.

And waited.

There have been milestones along the way. And tonight, there will be another.

Tonight, I make the Promise. I officially enter the Legion of Mary.

If you are just beginning to encounter this Mother, I suggest reading these books (in order):

• 33 Days to Morning Glory by Fr. Michael E. Gaitley
• The Reed of God by Caryll Houselander
• Preparation for TOTAL CONSECRATION by Fr. Hugh Gillespie
• True Devotion by St. Louis de Montfort

We have a mother, thanks be to God! Even if you are in the early stages of discovering this spiritual reality, keep going, keep seeking, keep reading.

Oh, and keep praying! Definitely keep praying!