Mary - Saturday Special

It is hard to believe that today is the first day of July.  It just seems like yesterday that I was writing about the new year and her we are starting the Third Quarter. Time really flies and you only get older, never younger. The readings for today's Mass are both really good readings.  The first is one of my favorites where Abraham recognizes God in the three traveling strangers and he runs into Sarah and tells her to, "Quick make some rolls."  I can imagine what Sarah was thinking as she received her command and she may have been planning where to put those rolls.  The Gospel reading is the one where the soldier asks to have his servant healed and Jesus starts to walk with him to his house when the soldier says that he is not worthy to have Jesus enter his house, just command that the servant be healed and he will be healed.  Jesus went on to say that He had seen no greater display of faith in Israel and immediately the servant was healed.  Both of these passages lend themselves to making great reflections and I promise, next time these readings come up I will amaze you with my commentary!  Today, however, since it is Saturday, I want to use this space just to write a little bit about Mary, the Mother of God and the Catholic view of her. 

The anti-Catholic bigots out there always list on their inditement of the Church is that we Catholics worship Mary.  We know that we have never and will never worship Mary.  It is just not something Mary herself would approve of.  We reverence and honor her both as the Mother of God and because we are adopted sons and daughters, we honor her as our spiritual mother and the mother of the Church.  They also find great fault in that we pray to Mary and ask her to intercede for us.  They find this Catholic behavior paganistic and offensive to the dignity of Jesus who after all is the one mediator between God and man.   What they fail to understand is the concept of the communion of saints.  We are baptized into the family of God and we are members forever because our souls receive a mark that can never be effaced.  As brothers and sisters we, as a family, do good things for each other.  One of these things is to pray for one another.  I pray for you that the test results come back negative, you pray for me that the ache in my back heals.  Not even Jack Chick would find fault with this type of praying for one another, it is what Christians do.  It follows then that if we can pray for one another here on earth, then the saints in heaven can and do hear our prayers and offer them to Jesus for us, becoming in effect a mediator between us and God. This in no way harms the dignity of Christ as the One Mediator who died on the cross for us.  It also follows that Mary too is a member of the communion of saints and like any other member can pray to Jesus for us.  Since Jesus has the special love a son should have for His mother, her prayers to Him are always heard and considered most carefully because of who she is.  So, on this first Saturday of July, spend a moment or two thinking about your spiritual mother in heaven. Thank the Lord for her and follow her example.  She never ever points to herself.  No, in all of her words and actions she points the way to Jesus.  

"My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior."