“O name of Mary! Joy in the heart, honey in the mouth, melody to the ear of Her devout children!” (Saint Anthony of Padua).
I have a pet peeve…
Without any judgement to anyone else, it peeves me when people call the Blessed Virgin, Mary.
I believe this could be because when I was a child, my mother taught us that we should not call the Blessed Virgin by her first name – as a sign of respect for her. I am quite old now and things were different when I was a little girl. Nevertheless, when my own children call the Blessed Virgin by her name, Mary, I usually respond by correcting them and saying, “Please call her the Blessed Virgin, or Our Lady, or Mother Mary, or pretty much any of her other titles, because we are not on a first name basis with the Queen of Heaven!”
And my children laugh at me a little with this, and think I am terribly old fashioned. After all, the Blessed Virgin is my Mother – as intimately as the Mother in whose womb I was formed. But – for me – just as I do not call my biological mother by her name, and instead use her title, Mum, or Mother, so too do I wish to use the title of the Queen of Heaven.
But I have been reflecting on the way that God calls the Blessed Virgin. She has so many titles.
She is Mother of the Church, Queen of Angels, Mediatrix, Mother of God, Queen of the Apostles, and the list actually goes on and on and on…
And I have been thinking about that today as I have been reflecting not so much on the words that God uses when He speaks to His Daughter and Spouse and Mother, but His tone of voice…
I imagine the tone of voice that God used when He was calling out to His mother in His sleep, when He was just a little Boy. Did His call to her brush against her soul like a caress? Did she attune her ears to the sound of her name from His lips? When she heard that Child call to her, did she marvel at the Holy Will of God? Did she adore Him for the miracle in her home?
“In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.’” (Luke 1:39-47).
The name of the Blessed Virgin was blessed twenty centuries ago, because it was blessed at the moment of creation, when God (who is outside of time and space) knew that Eve would sin and that the New Eve – Mary – would bear the Son of God to allow Him to redeem the world.
And how the Saints have called on you, Mother Mary…
“O name of Mary! Joy in the heart, honey in the mouth, melody to the ear of Her devout children!” (Saint Anthony of Padua). “O most sweet name! O Mary, what must thou thyself be, since thy name alone is thus amiable and gracious” (Blessed Henry Suso).
And I would like to be counted among the Saints. And for that I shall need to call on Our Lady – Mother of the Saviour, and my Mother…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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