Karol Wojtyla's Totus Tuus. Maximilian Kolbe's awe before "The Immaculata." Louis Marie de Montfort's Total Consecration. I've always found these approaches daunting. It's the "totus" I think, the totality of it that crowds me.
I'm on a smaller path. My dailiness is lesser. A beginner perhaps? A disciple? Sometimes. Sometimes something even smaller. I do turn to Jesus's mom and mine in my morning prayers, my morning decade.
Half the prayers, I pray in Spanish. Spanish slows me into the meaning. The Hail Mary is interesting in Spanish. Not "Ave" to someone on high, but "Dios te salve, Maria" - God save you, Mary. Almost certainly, that is a greeting-cum-blessing to friend and foe alike in a very Catholic culture, almost a figure of speech - "Hi there in Christ our Savior!" But look how it greets Mary as one of us, in need of saving. As she was, proleptically.
Recently, I visited with a friend, a Regnum Christi consecrated woman. She was raised in the Chaldean church. (I now know how to pronounce Chaldean!) She speaks Aramaic at home. In church too of course when she visits home. She told me the Hail Mary in Aramaic. It begins, "Shalom, Mary!" (my transliteration). Just as any Aramaic speaker would greet his neighbor. Not, hail, oh exalted one - but peace, my friend. Peace, Mary.
So, I'm thinking of a little way. Seeking Mary's help in a special intention, I remind her what she told Juan Diego, "No estoy yo aqui que soy tu madre?" Then in espanol, "Dios te salve, Maria - llena eres de gracia . . ."
Here's another instance of a smaller scale. Anthony Esolen's rich piece on Mary in this months' Magnificat brings parts of our highest understandings of Marian theology down to little, direct simplicities.
Example: "For without any taint on your purity" becomes "without any touch on your chastity." Another example, ". . . her light touch when the boy Jesus perplexed her, and her calm words when the man Jesus seemed, at Cana, to refuse her."
In a similar vein, I liked what you quoted from Louis Marie de Montfort. This, for example: "It is an easy way: It is the path which Jesus Christ opened up in coming to us." Everything you quoted from de Montfort resonated with me in fact; and I remember my mom putting "True Devotion" into my hands when I was a teen. Lo, those many years ago. I wasn't much interested then. Your post is yet another embarrassing case of, "Doggone it. Was Mom ALWAYS right?"
Again, in the way of little ways, I liked your "In fact, the first person to completely and utterly entrust Himself to Mary was Christ Himself, Who made Himself dependent on her for the first nine months of His life in the womb and submitted to her for the first thirty years of His life." Thirty years. Count 'em. 1, 2, 3, . . . 30. That's a while! Mel Gibson creates a nice moment of imagining it when Jesus shows her the table he carpentered, and she pronounces, "That will never catch on."
Little moment, little way.
Another moment. You wrote, "Aside from that mysterious episode known as the Finding in the Temple, . . ." Mysterious? My wife has always maintained that Jesus then was a smart, holy, uppity teen, and that that's what teens do - run off, then criticize mom and dad for even looking. I've never found a better exegesis. But then, as you can see, I start with ordinary ways of understanding. Who am I to guess otherwise.
Clearly, Luke talked with Mary. And she had lots to say. Thank goodness. Thank God. It is down at that level - the plainest of plain conversations - that I seek Mary out. As, perhaps, Luke did. I ask her to pray for me and mine. I kneel before her image, la Guadalupana. Madre mia. But all on a very small scale, hardly arising to the level of totus tuus.
You've been writing about Christian music in a pop vein. I'm more at the level of "What a friend we have in Jesus!"
But we do. Don't we?
Please don't take my comments as criticism. We're in the same songbook. Sometimes on different pages. The interstices may be where we learn and grow. And if you heard me trying to sing, you might lighten up on the music. :-)
Karol Wojtyla's Totus Tuus. Maximilian Kolbe's awe before "The Immaculata." Louis Marie de Montfort's Total Consecration. I've always found these approaches daunting. It's the "totus" I think, the totality of it that crowds me.
I'm on a smaller path. My dailiness is lesser. A beginner perhaps? A disciple? Sometimes. Sometimes something even smaller. I do turn to Jesus's mom and mine in my morning prayers, my morning decade.
Half the prayers, I pray in Spanish. Spanish slows me into the meaning. The Hail Mary is interesting in Spanish. Not "Ave" to someone on high, but "Dios te salve, Maria" - God save you, Mary. Almost certainly, that is a greeting-cum-blessing to friend and foe alike in a very Catholic culture, almost a figure of speech - "Hi there in Christ our Savior!" But look how it greets Mary as one of us, in need of saving. As she was, proleptically.
Recently, I visited with a friend, a Regnum Christi consecrated woman. She was raised in the Chaldean church. (I now know how to pronounce Chaldean!) She speaks Aramaic at home. In church too of course when she visits home. She told me the Hail Mary in Aramaic. It begins, "Shalom, Mary!" (my transliteration). Just as any Aramaic speaker would greet his neighbor. Not, hail, oh exalted one - but peace, my friend. Peace, Mary.
So, I'm thinking of a little way. Seeking Mary's help in a special intention, I remind her what she told Juan Diego, "No estoy yo aqui que soy tu madre?" Then in espanol, "Dios te salve, Maria - llena eres de gracia . . ."
Here's another instance of a smaller scale. Anthony Esolen's rich piece on Mary in this months' Magnificat brings parts of our highest understandings of Marian theology down to little, direct simplicities.
Example: "For without any taint on your purity" becomes "without any touch on your chastity." Another example, ". . . her light touch when the boy Jesus perplexed her, and her calm words when the man Jesus seemed, at Cana, to refuse her."
In a similar vein, I liked what you quoted from Louis Marie de Montfort. This, for example: "It is an easy way: It is the path which Jesus Christ opened up in coming to us." Everything you quoted from de Montfort resonated with me in fact; and I remember my mom putting "True Devotion" into my hands when I was a teen. Lo, those many years ago. I wasn't much interested then. Your post is yet another embarrassing case of, "Doggone it. Was Mom ALWAYS right?"
Again, in the way of little ways, I liked your "In fact, the first person to completely and utterly entrust Himself to Mary was Christ Himself, Who made Himself dependent on her for the first nine months of His life in the womb and submitted to her for the first thirty years of His life." Thirty years. Count 'em. 1, 2, 3, . . . 30. That's a while! Mel Gibson creates a nice moment of imagining it when Jesus shows her the table he carpentered, and she pronounces, "That will never catch on."
Little moment, little way.
Another moment. You wrote, "Aside from that mysterious episode known as the Finding in the Temple, . . ." Mysterious? My wife has always maintained that Jesus then was a smart, holy, uppity teen, and that that's what teens do - run off, then criticize mom and dad for even looking. I've never found a better exegesis. But then, as you can see, I start with ordinary ways of understanding. Who am I to guess otherwise.
Clearly, Luke talked with Mary. And she had lots to say. Thank goodness. Thank God. It is down at that level - the plainest of plain conversations - that I seek Mary out. As, perhaps, Luke did. I ask her to pray for me and mine. I kneel before her image, la Guadalupana. Madre mia. But all on a very small scale, hardly arising to the level of totus tuus.
You've been writing about Christian music in a pop vein. I'm more at the level of "What a friend we have in Jesus!"
But we do. Don't we?
Please don't take my comments as criticism. We're in the same songbook. Sometimes on different pages. The interstices may be where we learn and grow. And if you heard me trying to sing, you might lighten up on the music. :-)