a year of prayer: 365 Rosaries

Marian Mondays is a weekly post focusing on Our Blessed Mother, Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth. In this post, we explore her life, her special mission, her sanctity, and the Biblical bases for the beliefs of the Church.


We pray with Mary. We experience her practically, emotionally, and rationally. We feel confident in the truth of her existence. We realize that she is unique, chosen for a special purpose by the Lord. We recognize the importance of her name. But what of her Christian virtues? We hold Mary, the Mother of God, up as the first disciple of Christ, as in her agreeing to serve as the vessel of the Incarnation, she became the first Christian. She believed in her Son. And as we will see, she lived His teachings, even before He taught them, such was her connection to the Lord. In the next three weeks, we will look at Mary, in light of her faith, hope, and charity—at first only small glimpses of these virtues contained in her visitation with Elizabeth, but necessary to set the stage for a further exploration of the virtue of the Mother of God.

Mary demonstrated a life of faith that few of us can even begin to understand. As we consider her life, given her unique role in the redemption of mankind, it would be easy to assume that her day to day experiences were those of angelic visitations and miracles. But these are just moments in the vastness of her approximately fifty years of life! The majority of her days were spent in ordinary tasks, tasks that we each undertake every day—but the extraordinary aspect of her life was the faith with which she undertook these tasks, the faith with which she heard and answered the call of the Lord.

When the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary, announcing the grand plan the Lord would reveal in her, she was disturbed and troubled. But her faith was stronger than her doubt, and she accepted the Lord’s will. We have to imagine that this acceptance, this leap of faith, was at once extremely gladdening but also distressing. She had no one to speak of such miracles with (not even Joseph!), and suffered humiliation and judgment at the hands of her family and neighbors. It was with this faith, the faith that the Lord would provide for her, that she set off on a treacherous journey over the mountains to visit Elizabeth, a woman she trusted.

Of course, we know that the same faith that filled Mary, also came to rest on Elizabeth—so much so that she knew the truth of the promise of the Lord long before Mary appeared on the horizon. “Blessed are thou among women, and blessed it the fruit of your womb!” she cried out, running to greet her.

Faith.

Mary lived the life of faith—faith in the Father in heaven, and faith in her yet unborn Son, Jesus Christ. For her entire life, she clung to her faith, following her Son-made-God on the road to his public ministry, his Passion, and his death, not fully understanding the message of God, but bowing before Him nonetheless. Only at Pentecost, where the grace of the Lord descends in tongues of fire and opens the eyes of those in the Upper Room, does the Blessed Virgin finally understand the Word of God fulfilled in her Son. Only then does her faith become the reality of the kingdom of heaven that we all long for.

Without faith, we are lost. We can’t possibly begin to navigate the struggles and trials of everyday life—we are like a toy boat being tossed about on the great waters of the ocean. With faith, by bowing before the Lord, by accepting His will and His call, by placing our simple, fragile, and flawed lives in His hands, are we able to continue our journey toward heaven. We look to Mary, the Mother of God, whose faith never wavered, as a model of virtuous living.