August 15: St. Mary, the Mother of Our Lord

In their prayers and thoughts, many Christians make mention of St. Mary, the mother of Our Lord, both indirectly and directly. Perhaps in your journey, you too have a special place for St. Mary. If your Evening Prayer includes "The Song of Mary," perhaps better known as the Magnificat, you are praying Mary's prayer-song, joining your heart-felt with her heart-felt song of praise. You are with Mary in spirit--quietly, indirectly. So also you may be with Mary quite explicitly. For example, in our home after our thanksgivings and intercessions in our Evening Prayers, June and I conclude up our daily petitions with these words:

In communion with the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Our Lord, and with all the saints, let us rejoice and commend ourselves, one another, and our whole life to Christ, our Lord.

Near the conclusion of Evening Prayer, we remind ourselves that we are with Mary because she is with Christ and we are with Christ. Inasmuch as our ever-present Lord Christ is the Head of the Church, the Body of Christ, the whole Church of all times and all places is always with us too, along with all the angels and archangels, the seraphim and cherabim. As a consequence, we never ever pray alone. Always and always--and especially in prayer--we are surrounded with a great cloud of witnesses, as the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews tells us.

In our Christian faith, we give Mary special honor because she said Yes to God as a very young woman and nurtured within her body the growing fetus of the Son of God. On the night we call Christmas, she labored to deliver Jesus as our Savior. She nursed the Creator of the world at her breasts and changed his diapers. She cooked breakfast for him and made sure his clothes were washed. She home-schooled Jesus and taught him to read and write. She showed the little boy Jesus how to pray the Psalms. She introduced Jesus to synogogue worship and took him annually the great feasts held in the temple at Jerusalem. Later in life, she listened to him teach and preach. She watched him die. And she was there with the apostles after the Resurrection. We can well imagine the respect and honor the Apostles gave to her during their meetings after the Ascension.

Timothy George, a Southern Baptist theologian and senior editor of Christianity Today, has written an exellent essay, "Evangelicals and the Mother of God," that you may wish to read about the place of St. Mary in the life of the Church and in the prayer lives of Bible-believing evangelical, orth0dox and catholic Christians.

During your prayers on Wednesday, you may wish to thank God for St. Mary's life and witness with a prayer or prayers something like this one:

Grant, we humbly pray, O Lord,to your servants the gift of your heavenly blessing that, as the Son of the virgin Mary has granted us salvation, we may daily grow in your favour; through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.