An open letter to the Blessed Virgin Mary
By Anna Laughery
Dearest, sweetest Mother Mary, help of Christians, tower of David, mystical rose, I really, truly want to love you, but I don’t know how. I see all around me women with strong devotions to you. They trust your motherly love and intercession with total abandon. They have a deep love for the rosary and always feel the warmth of your mantle. I know comparison is the thief of joy, but it is painful to hear everyone around me to wax eloquent about their love for you, when I struggle simply to relate to you. Your perfection sometimes seems unattainable.
Your femininity sometimes seems foreign. Your fiat seems impossible to comprehend. I have done the consecration to you. I wear the chain around my wrist in attempt to remember I belong completely to your son through you. I say my rosaries faithfully. I try to trust your intercession for those I love. So what am I missing? Why can’t I love you well, and through loving you love your son? St. Louis De Montfort says that “he who does not have Mary for his mother does not have God for his Father.” The intensity of this scares me, mother Mary. What am I missing that would allow me to see you as you are, the mother of all Christians?
Perhaps it is simply humility. St. Augustine wrote that we, the world, were unworthy to receive Jesus straight from the hands of God, and so God gave him to us through the hands of Mary. But do I accept the necessity of Mary? Do I accept my own littleness, my sinfulness and need for a mediator? Do I accept the “admirable and incomprehensible dependence of God” through which he allowed himself to be dependent on a human woman for the very milk of life?
Do I accept my own dependence on a woman whom God chose to be worthy to partake in my salvation?
I don’t know if I do.
Morning star, tower of ivory, gate of heavenly rest, this is my prayer this Advent. Reveal to me my neediness. We live in a world where we are told to be strong, independent women, but I don’t want to be independent anymore. I want to be completely dependent on the incomprehensible reality of grace. I want to be a child again, who needs her mother’s help to be fed, cleansed and carried to her Father. As the beautiful prayer Ave Maris Stella says, “show thyself a Mother.” Please show thyself my mother this Advent. Help me to accept my dependence as your son perfectly accepted the dependence of an infant so many years ago.