The Devil hates Mary. I mean, he really hates her. He is over-the-top angry at God for allowing a small, poor, Jewish woman to become such a powerful enemy, one he is unable to defeat. When he tempts her, he’s like mosquito attacking an elephant; it must drive him crazy that she had the pleasure to crush him under her heel.
So, it would seem logical then that he would do anything in his power to destroy her. Since he is unable to destroy her due to her impenetrable, sinless soul, he has worked tirelessly to erase our reverence, devotion to, and memory of her. He wants us forget, even fear her presence among us.
Here are the four most subtle ways he has turned us against her.
By Associating the Color Blue with Sadness
After the American Civil War, a music genre known as the “the Blues” became common in the American south. Black slaves would sing of their sadness when working the fields and, as their emancipation gathered strength, their musical talents spread from south to north and eventually world-wide. The dreary melancholic tones of suffering and pain trademark of genre would play a significant role in the language used to describe the emotions of society in general, so much so that even today if you refer to someone as having the “blues,” it is understood that they are “sad.”
The color itself has some negative connotations as a result. Blue raindrops make us think of rainy days. Blue teardrops make us think of sorrowful emotions. Blue ice makes us think of the cold, frigid world we live in.
And yet, the color most commonly associated with Our Lady is Blue.
She is the blue sky, clear of clouds that allows the light of Christ to shine on us. She is the blue ocean, full of currents that whisk her Son towards us when the waves of life crash upon us. She is the blue diamond impervious to sin that teaches us to remain patient with our coals of sin until they are crushed by God’s mercy and turned into jewels fit for the King.
Blue might symbolize sadness in this world, but in the next it is the color of eternal royalty.
By Making 13 and “Unlucky” Number
Triskaodekaphobia is the term used to describe someone who is afraid of the number 13. Once every 212.35 days, the thirteenth day of the month falls on a Friday, and the triskaodekaphobics come out in full swing. They claim the demons will roam in the night, that black cats will walk across your path and change your destiny, that your luck will falter in some sort of cosmic misalignment with the constellation gods.
And yet, the number most commonly associated with our Lady is 13.
She was the first of the twelve apostles, but not counted among them, thus making the total 13. Her worth, of course, was higher than theirs as she was not only Jesus’ disciple, but His Mother, which puts her on a higher tier of holiness. She appeared to the children of Fatima on May 13th, and every thirteenth day of the month until Oct. 13 in which she performed the miracle of the Sun.
Several years later, St. Pope John Paul II credited Our Lady for saving his life when an extremist attempted to murder him outside of St. Peter’s Basilica on…May 13 1981.
And the thirteenth letter in the alphabet? The letter “M.”
The number 13 might symbolize the threat of evil and “unlucky” omens in this world, but to Catholics it’s the number of Our Lady’s intercession, a numeric threshold through which Christ’s Divine graces flow.
By Filling “Full Moons” with Eerie Auras
When the full moon appears deep in the recesses of our minds we imagine a werewolf morphing, a witch converting into a barn owl, and a vampire descending upon the innocent human prey asleep next to a silver-less, garlic-less, stake-less nightstand. Tides mysteriously rise, the ER is tizzied with new patients, and soon-to-be-born babies decide to become newborns when the moon is in full twinkles its twilight upon the earth.
And yet, the celestial body most commonly associated with Our Lady is the moon.
Mary, whose sole spiritual advice to those at the Wedding at Cana told them “Do whatever he tells you,” reflects the everlasting light of her Son onto his brothers and sisters below. It doesn’t have the same power, but the light she bears affects the earth in ways that the sun and stars cannot. She harbors the lost, protects that innocent, and guides us through our darkest nights until we arrive safely to the new day. She rises our spiritual tides, tempts our soul to sanctity, and bears us in her life-giving womb thus allowing us to be born again as true brothers and true sisters of her Son, Jesus.
A full moon might symbolize the eerie aura of danger and evil myths of this world, but on a deeper mystical level, she’s a symbol of Our Lady’s reflection of God’s eternal light.
By Demonizing Our Lady
When I was younger, the school kids used to brag about going into their bathrooms, turning off the lights, calling upon “Bloody Mary” to visit them in the darkness of their cabinet mirrors. They gloated, but I knew that when the demon came, they flipped the lights on and high-tailed it back to their rooms, and hid under the covers. Whether it was their imagination or not, “Bloody Mary” became a legend that boys and girls everywhere would recreate in their own bathrooms.
When I got older, I became a missionary to Mexico. While there, I was inevitably became aware of the practice of Santeria. Brujas and witchdoctors abound in the land of Our Lady of Guadalupe, so much so that the cult of dark magic erected their own anti-Mary, a figure known as “La Santa Muerte” or “the holy death.” She is a neopagan deity which the dark mystics, drug lords, and gangs worship. In return for this worship, La Santa Muerte grants her followers vengeance, wealth, and power.
And yet, the most powerful female to ever walk the earth wasn’t a god, but a lowly Jewish woman who accepted God fully into her body and soul – Mary.
Mary is the demon slayer who crushes the serpent’s head with the heel of her foot. She is the mother and protectress of all who call themselves Christian. She gives life, not death. She disperses grace, not pain and suffering. She is everything good, everything the devil and La Santa Muerte refuse in their pride.
Mary is more than what the devil has made her out to be.
Her true children know this and can see beyond the ways he’s tried to deter us from loving her.
St. Louis de Montfort once wrote that Mary “is the safest, easiest, shortest and most perfect way of approaching Jesus and will surrender themselves to her, body and soul, without reserve in order to belong entirely to Jesus.” If you know who Mary truly is, or if you want to know her better, then I encourage you to join me and thousands of others as we consecrate our lives to Jesus through the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary at www.rosaryconsecration.com.
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