Mary the surest way to Jesus

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

IT’S good to keep this spiritual and ascetical formula in mind as we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12. Mary, the Mother of Jesus is also our Mother. How she cared and identified herself completely with her Son is also how she cares and identify herself completely with us.

If we would just have a bit of common sese, we would know that it is always wise to go to Mary in order to get to Christ. As a saint once said, Mary is the shortest, surest and safest way to be with Christ.

Let’s see to it that our devotion to her grows. And if it is practically dormant if not dead, then let’s stir it up to life again. She is important to us. In fact, she is indispensable to us. She cannot be treated as an optional feature in our spiritual life, nor something decorative or appendical only.

While she is not God and, therefore, not to be accorded with the worship that is only due to God (latria), she rightly deserves to be given the highest form of veneration (hyperdulia) among all the saints who are already with God in heaven.

She never undermines our relationship with God. If anything, all she does is to bring us to God and to help us fulfill the will of God. Thus, in that episode of the wedding at Cana where she noticed that the hosts were running out of wine, she told the servants, “Do whatever he (Christ) tells you.” (Jn 2,5)

She is the epitome of motherhood who knows how to be a mother even to God and to all of us. All that because of her perfect identification of her will to the will of God, giving us a concrete example of how a human being can be so identified with God’s will that she becomes God’s perfect image and likeness as God wants her and also us to be.

We are often incredulous, even skeptical, about this possibility. But she managed to do it. Obviously, she was given the necessary graces for that. But she also corresponded to those graces with everything that she had, reflecting in the most perfect way the redemptive mission full of suffering of her son. How our Lady was and continues to be should also be how we should be.

And she is all there to help us achieve that dignity of being true children of God who can even be a mother of God and a spouse of God as our Lady was the most dutiful daughter of the God the father, mother of God the Son and spouse of God the Holy Spirit.

Let us just imitate our Lady’s perfect faith shown especially when she said, “Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum,” (Be it done to me according to your word) during the Annunciation. With that faith which for sure she could not understand completely, she put herself entirely under the designs and dynamics of God’s will of love, of redemption, toward mankind.

As mother, she would really take care of us the way she took care of Jesus. She will always be with us, ever solicitous of our needs, always ready to help and intercede on our behalf.

These are basic truths about Our Lady that should never be missing in our mind and heart. On the contrary, they should always be made to be felt more deeply so as to give the pertinent impulses and motivations to our thoughts, words and deeds.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com