On the second day of Christmas, my family and I sat down for a restaurant breakfast before driving home from visiting relatives. The host and waiter ended up being the same young man. While he was seating us, I became distracted by the large medal he wore around his neck. It looked like a Miraculous Mary Medal, but I couldn’t be certain in the lighting of the early morning.
I finally asked him about it and he joyfully shared that it was a Miraculous Mary Medal. He told us that his co-workers wore their tattoos, Buddhist symbols, and other items, so he decided that he would wear his medal. He wanted to share his Catholic Faith. He was bold and zealous in all the right ways. He issued an invitation to the people he served, but like Our Blessed Mother, he did not force his way in.
This type of encounter may be common for many people reading this piece, but for my family, it is not. We live in an area where Catholics are a minority. The area we were visiting has a much higher Catholic population, so we were deeply blessed to see the Faith lived openly by a young man.
It was providential to find ourselves looking at a large Miraculous Mary Medal being worn in the open during the Christmas season. Our Blessed Mother is constantly with us through this holy season as she gives Her Son, Our Savior, to the world in love. Yesterday, the Church celebrated the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. There is no one who wants to lead us to Christ more than Our Blessed Mother.
This young man’s willingness to boldly live the Faith is an example of how Our Lady seeks to draw souls to Her Son. Any discussions this young man has with customers about the medal he wears will inevitably point to Christ. He told us he is frequently asked about it and even carries smaller medals with him to give to people who ask him about it. I told him that She would lead him to find his vocation, whichever one the Lord may be calling him to.
Turning to Our Blessed Mother to help us guide souls to Her Son is to truly choose Her as Our Mother. We can trust Her motherly wisdom and know that there is no one better to lead us into hearts in need. There is no surer guide on the path to love. Our culture is desperately searching for love and happiness. We hear it all the time through various ideologies, seekers, and even advertisements. The deepest longing of the human heart has been turned into a marketing and political strategy.
The many customers this young man serves are seeking love. They may be seeking it in all the wrong places, but deep down they desire to love and be loved. They may not see it, but the answer to all their longings can be found in the guidance of the Woman on the medal hanging around his neck. Servant of God Catherine Doherty—who delved deep into the spiritual longings of human beings in her writing—wrote in Bogoroditza: She Who Gave Birth to God:
Yes, we seek happiness and dimly know that love is happiness, but we have lost the true meaning of love. We are going around seeking it or seeking someone who can tell us where it is found.
She goes on to answer who can lead us to find love:
One person who can direct us to love is Mary, the Mother of God. She became pregnant with the Son of God, the Incarnation of Love, and gave him birth! She bore him, brought him up and watched him grow to manhood. She lived with him, followed him at a distance, and stood under his cross as he made his supreme sacrifice out of love for the whole human race. Mary knows the way of Love intimately, deeply, and profoundly. Of all the people who have ever lived, Mary is the one through whom Love was born.
She knows what surrender is necessary to encounter the love we are made for. Not the counterfeit forms that are in abundance in our day. Those falsities leave us cold and lonely. Our culture is very much like winter solstice in its barren, cold, dark landscape. It is Mary the Mother of God who silently carries the flaming love of the Sacred Heart within her and then gives birth to Him. She knows the depths of God’s love in ways the rest of us cannot imagine, but she does not keep His love to herself. She longs to share the riches of the pondering of her heart and the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit with each person. She desires to wipe away the tears of a lonely generation. She seeks to bind the wounds of the broken-hearted. This is what mothers do, and she is the mother par excellence.
This young man is doing what each one of us is called to do. He is leading people to Christ through the profound love of His Mother. In a culture where mothers routinely murder their own babies, this Mother extends her tender arms outward with the Christ Child in order to heal. This Christmas season is a reminder that we must take Our Mother to others. She wants the deepest longings of each human heart to be answered by the infinite love of Her Son.
Father, source of light in every age, the virgin conceived and bore your Son who is called Wonderful God, Prince of Peace. May her prayer, the gift of a mother’s love, be your people’s joy through all ages. May her response, born of a humble heart, draw your Spirit to rest on your people. Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Image from Fine Art America
