A Further Sunday Thought About a More Mature Relationship with Our Blessed Mother

A few weeks ago we posted some thoughts by Father E.J. Cuskelly about cultivating a more mature relationship with Our Blessed Mother. A more mature relationship means, among other things, a deeper one. Just as our devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus can help us deepen our relationship to Our Lord, so too will a devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary deepen our relationship to His Mother.

Father Cuskelly leads us to that deeper relationship by reminding us how we grow to appreciate our own mother.

    “Our devotion to her will thus be more deeply personal: as the devotion of an adult toward the mother whose wisdom, self-sacrifice, and understanding he has come to appreciate over the years. It is precisely because it is more deeply personal, because it is a more supernatural contact with the Mother of God in faith and charity, that we can no longer, in praying to Our Lady, go through all the old reasoning and emotional reactions to truths about her. … Our seeking after further knowledge of Mary will not be so much a search for new truths about her, but rather an effort to penetrate more deeply into the supernatural realities of her relationship with Christ and the Body of Christ. And this – since it is supernatural – can come only from the light of God’s grace. Thus does our devotion grow more perfect, in its ontological reality and in its deeper personal level – simpler and more unified because more centrally contained in the simple reality of our union with God in Christ.

Our devotion to Our Lady should not begin and end with our devotions, e.g., our recitation of the rosary and the many beautiful Marian prayers most of us have come to know and love. We want to know and love Mary personally, as our true Mother. We need to dig deep and establish a real, loving relationship. 

    “Not infrequently, there comes a stage in which a person reacts against his earlier use of all the accidentals of devotion; he rejects many of his old practices in honor of Our Lady – novenas, kneeling before statues, medals, etc. (One of the main causes of this can be overzealous insistence by the devotees of Mary on the ‘value’ of these things.) Later, he may resume some or many of these practices, as the simple expression of his deeper, more theological devotion. But his devotion to Mary can never be ‘what it used to be.’ He is still ‘Mary’s child,’ but the child has become a man, and his devotion will have matured with him.”

We don't have to reject those devotions and pious practices. But now they're no longer the full measure of our devotion, of our love for Mary.

In this month dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we focus on that Heart, human and divine, that so loves us, each one of us. We pray for the grace to grow in our closeness, in our intimacy with Jesus Christ, Who has done and continues to do all He can to be not only our Savior, but our closest, dearest Friend. In the same way, we seek to grow close to His Mother, our Mother. How much more full, how much richer our lives will be as we grow in intimacy with Our Lord and Our Lady.