3.1 Commitment
STAGE 3: In Communion with Mary
MARY AND THE INCARNATION
THE NECESSARY WAY
COMMITMENT
Aim: To commit ourselves to the “necessity” of Mary in the journey of our human/spiritual growth.
Reading
Mary is necessary to us (TD 1.39):
“It was through the Blessed Virgin Mary that Jesus Christ came into the world, and it is also through her that he must reign in the world”.
“Being necessary to God, the Blessed Virgin is all the more necessary for believers to attain their final end. Consequently, we must not place devotion to her on the same level as devotion to the other saints as if it were merely something optional”.
Comment
If God wants Mary to be necessary to us, then who are we to reject such an offer? Who are we not to welcome Mary in our life?
According to Montfort, in order to make the world realise and feel the necessity of Mary, God the Father “has gathered all the graces in her and has made her his treasurer” (TD 23). God the Son “transmits his merits, virtues and graces to his disciples through her” (24). And God the Holy Spirit has chosen her to “distribute his gifts to whom she wills, as much as she wills, how she wills and when she wills” (25).
Our best response and expression of gratitude to such a gift is to make home to Mary in our life, as the “beloved disciple” did (Jn 19:27). Indeed, “Blessed are those people who, at all times and in all things, trust in Mary, and lose themselves in her. They belong to Mary and Mary belongs to them. With David they can boldly say, ‘She was created for me’, or with the beloved disciple, ‘I have taken her for my own’, or with our Lord himself, ‘All that is mine is yours and all that is yours is mine’” (TD 179).
The experience of St. John, who took Mary “into his own home”, informs us that Mary’s influence is particularly necessary for the growth of our interior world: “As the kingdom of Jesus Christ exists primarily in the heart or interior of persons, according to the words of the Gospel, ‘The kingdom of God is within you’, so the kingdom of the Blessed Virgin is principally in the interior of Christians, that is, in their soul. It is principally in souls that she is glorified with her Son more than in any visible creature. So we may call her, as the saints do, Queen of our hearts” (TD 38).
The encouragement to take Mary home in our hearts is endorsed by the official teaching of the Church, which commends Marian devotion “to the hearts of the faithful, so that, influenced by Mary’s maternal help, they may more intimately adhere to the Mediator and Redeemer” (LG 62).
Montfort concludes: “How comforting and how consoling when a person can say, ‘Mary, the treasury of God, where he has placed all that he holds most precious, is also my treasury’” (TD 216).
Personal Reflection and Sharing
In Marialis Cultus 37, Pope Paul VI writes: “Mary can be considered a mirror of the expectations of the men and women of our time. Thus, the modern men and women, anxious to participate with decision-making power in the affairs of the community, will contemplate with intimate joy Mary who, taken into dialogue with God, gives her active and responsible consent, not to the solution of a contingent problem, but to that ‘event of world importance’, as the Incarnation of the Word has been rightly called”.
When I consent to the “necessity” of Mary in my life, I participate in the continuation of an “event of world importance”, i.e., the Incarnation. How active and responsible is my consent to “such” necessity and what does it entail concretely?
[3-1] CALL RESPONSE COMMITMENT PRAYER