INBOX INSPIRATIONS
May 31, 2023
Mary – 1
Dear Friends,
Traditionally May has been the month when we Catholics especially honor Mary. Today is the last day of May, but I decided some weeks ago that I wanted to do some Inbox Inspirations on Mary. So, here goes – better late than never!
Our devotion to Mary finds its roots in Scripture. Some passages are particularly significant. First, at one point, the family of Jesus comes looking for him. He is in a house speaking with a crowd of people. Someone tells him: “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside and they wish to see you.” Jesus responds: “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it” (Luke 8:19-21). Placed in context of Luke’s entire gospel, it becomes clear that the evangelist sees Jesus as lifting up his mother as a model disciple.
Following upon the above, Luke shows Mary gathered with the disciples on that first Pentecost – the feast that we just celebrated this past Sunday and that marks the beginning of the Church (Acts 1:14). So, in a very patriarchal culture where it is difficult to imagine a woman respected by or gathered with men, Mary is present. Why? Because she is so transparently a disciple of the One to whom she gave birth. She knew what it meant to hear the Word of God. Just think of her response to the angel Gabriel: “Let it be done to me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). With that hearing of the word, she acted. She bore and gave birth to God’s Son.
The final passage of Scripture that I will cite is in John’s Gospel. Jesus, dying on the cross, speaks to his mother and the disciple to whom he was especially close. They are standing at the foot of the cross. Jesus says to his mother: “Woman, behold your son.” And then he said to the disciple: “Behold your mother” (John 19:25-27). With these words, Mary is given a central part in the community of faith, the Church.
The above Scriptural basis became the foundation for much devotion to Mary and for our giving her such a special place in our faith and spirituality. I will continue with these thoughts on Mary in next week’s Inbox Inspirations.
Fr. Michael Schleupner
Mary – 2
Dear Friends,
All things considered, the canonical gospels give us little information about Mary. We looked at that last week, May 31, in the first of this series on Mary. However, there is a mid-second century document called the Protoevangelium of James which is not included in the orthodox Scriptures. This work gives us some more biographical information about Mary which our Church has at least implicitly accepted.
For example, it names Mary’s parents, Ann and Joachim. We have declared them as saints and their liturgical feast day is on July 26. The Protoevangelium of James also mentions the presentation of Mary in the temple. Mary’s parents would have taken their daughter to the temple and dedicated her to God. This probably happened when Mary was about three years old. We celebrate this liturgically on November 21. Belief in the virginal conception and birth of Jesus was also reinforced by this work and became part of the faith and devotion of the Church from these early centuries. This devotion seems to have strengthened and grown out of a sense of asserting the uniqueness of Jesus as Son of God and also out of a sense of recognizing in a more and more extraordinary way the woman who had such a unique role in bringing God’s Son into the world.
All of this reached a highpoint in the year 431 at the Council of Ephesus. Here the Church proclaimed Mary as Theotokos, the Greek word for God-Bearer. The idea here is that “the affirmation of both the full humanity and divinity of Jesus led to the conviction that the woman who bore him can appropriately be called not only Mother of Jesus but Mother of God.” In our Catholic liturgy, we celebrate Mary, the Mother of God every year on January 1, the octave day of Christmas, which is of course the celebration of the birth of Jesus, Mary’s Son.
Various prayers and devotions to Mary developed during the Middle Ages, roughly from the 5th to the 15th centuries. I will refer to some of these in future columns. Next week we will look at the two major Marian dogmas of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Fr. Michael Schleupner
Quotation above from Mary by Mary E. Hines in The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, edited by Michael Downey.
Mary – 3
Dear Friends,
The first two Marian dogmas stemmed from early ecumenical councils of the Church. The Council of Ephesus in 431 declared Mary as the Mother of God. The Second Council of Constantinople in 553 affirmed Mary’s perpetual virginity with the words ever-virgin. These teachings and beliefs thus became a deeply embedded part of the Church’s tradition. Some of our scholars note that the intent of these two dogmas is largely Christological. This means that they are about our understanding and theology of Christ. They are “…an affirmation that Jesus is the Son of God and Son of David, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
With these two dogmas in place, for the next millennium and even for the next fifteen hundred years, devotion to Mary continued to grow. The beautiful hymn to Mary, Star of the Sea, the Ave Maris Stella, probably dates from the 8th century. In the centuries following, the Salve Regina emerged, the hymn that calls on Mary to assist us on our earthly journey. The Hail Mary, Marian litanies, and the rosary all became widespread in the Middle Ages. This eventually led to some writings on Mariology (the theology of Mary), especially by some French theologians in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Some authors have stated that the intensity of devotion to Mary may have occurred in relation to the image of Christ. “Jesus appeared more and more distant in the theology of the period, as well as in the popular imagination, and was often viewed as stern king and judge. Mary became the gentle intercessor. Her mercy was often contrasted with Christ’s harsh justice. She became a mediator between a sinful humankind and a distant and sometimes vengeful Christ, a kind of idealized human, but more than human. No excellence was considered too great to attribute to this powerful intercessor and queen.” We might also say that Mary’s perfect, pure, and pristine image was in contrast to the sometimes ugly and dangerous realities of everyday life. Mary was needed to lift up hope in true beauty and goodness.
In next week’s Inbox Inspirations, we will look at the third and fourth of the Marian dogmas. In future weeks, we will reflect on some of our Marian prayers.
Fr. Michael Schleupner
Quotations above from Mary by Mary E. Hines in The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, edited by Michael Downey.
Mary – 4
Dear Friends,
The last two of the four Marian dogmas of the Church can be viewed as something like bookends around which all Marian beliefs and devotion are held.
The dogma of the Immaculate Conception was proclaimed in 1854. Often people think that this is about the miraculous conception of Jesus and that it refers to the virgin birth. However, the Immaculate Conception is about Mary’s own conception by her parents Anne and Joachim. This teaching is that Mary’s life was completely caught up with God’s grace from the first moment of her conception. Put another way, she was freed from sin, including Original Sin, from the very beginning of her existence. This happened in anticipation of the salvific action of Christ and makes Mary absolutely singular and preeminent among all human beings. We celebrate the Immaculate Conception on December 8.
Then, in 1950, the Church proclaimed the Assumption of Mary. This fourth Marian dogma teaches the same thing about Mary at the end of her earthly life as the Immaculate Conception taught about its beginning. The belief is that Mary’s whole person, body and soul, went to God at the moment of her death. Her whole person is now with God. The Assumption conveys that she has been totally accepted by God. We celebrate the Assumption of Mary on August 15.
One author says this about the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. “These two dogmas offer us the conviction and the hope that our lives, too, are graced from beginning to end, that ultimately grace will triumph over sin and we, too, will find God’s ultimate gracious acceptance. Thus Mary’s life offers a paradigm and a hope for all human life.”
Finally for today, we can say that Mary always leads us to Jesus. She was a woman of faith, and her response to God’s word brought Jesus into the world. The four Marian dogmas, as well as the high place of veneration we give to her, all lead us to Jesus and to do our part to bring him into the world today.
More on Mary in next week’s Inbox Inspirations.
Fr. Michael Schleupner
Quotation above from Mary by Mary E. Hines in The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, edited by Michael Downey.
Mary – 5
Dear Friends,
The Hail Mary was the second prayer I learned as a child. The Our Father was, of course, the first. I want to try to give us some understanding of the origin and history of this prayer as a way to appreciate it more fully.
This prayer is based on two passages in the gospel of Luke. The first is the Angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary where the angel greets her with these words: “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). The second passage is Elizabeth’s greeting to Mary who comes to visit her: “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb” (Luke 1:42). There is evidence that by the mid thirteenth century in Europe, the prayer that we know as the Hail Mary consisted only of the above two passages put together and with the insertion of the word “Mary” after the first word “Hail.” The insertion of Mary’s name was done to make it clear that it was a prayer praising her. Similarly, it seems that at about this same time, the word “Jesus” was inserted into the prayer after the word “womb.” Obviously, this was to make explicit that Jesus is “the fruit of your womb.”
The words “full of grace” are from a Greek word that has more of the meaning of having been filled with grace. So, the idea is that God acted in a very special and extraordinary way with Mary and filled her with his presence.
To the above greeting and prayer praising Mary, a petition was eventually added. This petition was incorporated in the Catechism of the Council of Trent in 1566. Pope Pius V then included this as part of the full form of the Hail Mary in the Roman Breviary in 1568. As we know, this petition is: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
The translation of the Hail Mary that I am using here is the one included in the current Roman Missal. It is the very last prayer of the last appendix of the Missal. Here is the full prayer, very familiar to most of us.
“Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you;
blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
More on Mary in next week’s Inbox Inspirations.
Fr. Michael Schleupner
Mary – 6
Dear Friends,
The rosary is one of our Catholic treasures. It is a Marian prayer, a prayer honoring Mary and seeking her intercession. Maybe some background on its origin and development will be helpful.
First, an interesting fact is that praying with beads or knots pre-dates Christian times and has been used by those in other faith traditions. Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and Sikhs have used beads as a way of counting the repetition of the same prayer. Then, as early as the third century, Christian desert monks were using stones or knots in prayer ropes to keep track of their daily praying of the 150 psalms.
In the centuries and millennium that followed (approximately from the 400s to the 1400s), the use of prayer beads developed. Many people would use these beads as a way to count the repetition of the same prayer – maybe the Jesus Prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”) or the Our Father. Interestingly, the Latin words for the Our Father are Pater Noster, and so Christians in those centuries began to refer to their string of prayer beads as their Pater Noster.
During these centuries, devotion to Mary kept growing and eventually a Marian antiphon instead of the Our Father was used with the prayer beads. This antiphon was pretty much the first half of the Hail Mary as we now know it. As shared in last week’s Inbox Inspirations (June 28), our prayer the Hail Mary did not fully come together until the year 1568. At any rate, this focus on Mary with the prayer beads seems to have caught on and been in place by the 12th century. It is the origin of the form of the rosary that is familiar to us. By the way, the word bead in English is derived from an Old English word bede that means prayer. So, a rosary is really a series of prayers represented by beads.
I will conclude these comments on the rosary in next week’s Inbox Inspirations.
Fr. Michael Schleupner
Mary – 7
Dear Friends,
As last week’s column showed, the rosary slowly but clearly developed over centuries, even over a millennium. By the 12th century, Christians were using beads to keep track of the number of Marian antiphons that they were praying. They prayed these antiphons as a substitute for praying all 150 psalms each day, as members of monastic communities used to do. Some people used a string of 150 prayer beads. Others seem to have used a string of 50 prayer beads which were prayed three times.
A Carthusian monk, Dominic of Prussia (1382-1460), is credited with initiating the practice of meditation during the praying of the Hail Marys. The meditations were focused on the life of Jesus and Mary. This was the origin of the 15 mysteries of the rosary which were in use probably by the mid sixteenth century. By the end of that century, the rosary as we pray it was in place.
Our rosary is divided into five decades. There are smaller beads on which we pray the Hail Mary. There are five usually larger beads for praying the Our Father at the beginning and the Glory be at the end of each decade. A chain with a crucifix and five beads joins the two ends of the rosary. The Apostles’ Creed, then an Our Father followed by 3 Hail Marys and a Glory be are prayed on the crucifix and these beads as an introduction to the first mystery.
The three sets of five mysteries each have been used from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. Certain days of the week are specified for the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries. In 2002, Pope John Paul II added the Luminous Mysteries. All four sets of mysteries help us to deepen our relationship with Jesus and Mary, and in them we also seek the intercession of Mary for our needs. The repetition of prayers is something like a mantra and draws us out of ourselves and our immediate concerns into a closeness and oneness with God.
The rosary remains a valuable prayer either for our private or group devotion. It is an important part of our Catholic spiritual toolbox.
More on Mary in next week’s Inbox Inspirations.
Fr. Michael Schleupner
Mary – 8
Dear Friends,
This Inbox concludes the series on Mary by reflecting on the prayer called the Angelus. This prayer was first introduced to me in the seminary. In case some of you may not be familiar with the Angelus, let me begin by sharing it.
“The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.
And she conceived by the Holy Spirit.
Hail Mary full of grace…
Behold the handmaid of the Lord.
Be it done unto me according to thy word.
Hail Mary full of grace…
And the Word was made flesh.
And dwelt among us.
Hail Mary full of grace…
Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.
That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Let us pray:
Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord, your grace into our hearts, that we to whom the incarnation of Christ, your Son, was made known by the message of an angel, may, by his passion and cross, be brought to the glory of his resurrection. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.
The title of this prayer – the Angelus – comes from its first word in Latin, Angelus, which means angel. The angel referred to is Gabriel who announced to Mary that she would conceive a son by the action of the Holy Spirit.
There are three couplets or verses from Scripture, and each is followed by the Hail Mary. Then there is a final verse asking Mary’s intercession and a concluding prayer.
The Angelus finds its origin as far back as the 11th century. Monks in monasteries would pray what we know as the first half of the Hail Mary three times as part of their night prayer. Soon pastors encouraged all people to do this. Over the following centuries, the custom grew – with papal encouragement – of praying the Hail Marys and then the full Angelus three times a day, at 6am, noon, and 6pm. The full prayer as we know it was probably in place by the end of the 16th century. It seems to have been first published in its modern form in a catechism around 1560 in Venice.
Finally, the use of bells with the Angelus started in an unusual way. Originally, bells were used by the invading Normans to signal a nighttime curfew in England. These bells got associated with the praying of the Hail Marys and eventually the Angelus at night, and then this practice was connected with the praying of the Angelus at each of the three times of the day. Bells had also been used in monasteries as a call to prayer and it is that sentiment that continues to inspire the ringing of the bells at Angelus time in many churches today. In the busyness and stress of modern life, the bells still serve as a call to prayer.
Fr. Michael Schleupner
