The Holy Name of Mary

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary” (Luke 1:26-27).

Today we celebrate the feast of the Holy Name of Mary.

It was a feast that was not celebrated for many years until Pope St. John Paul II reintroduced the celebration of this feast day.

In the story of the Annunciation, it's interesting to see how many times the word Mary appears:

“And he came to her and said, ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words, and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God, and now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.’ … Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin and I do not know man?’” (Luke 1:26-31,34).

Later, we're told, “Mary said, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to your word’” (Luke 1:38).

The name of the person that we love is special, and so the name of Our Lady means something special to us.

The name Mary can always be on our lips, in our hearts, in our minds. We turn to her frequently. It's a name that suggests peace, hope, consolation, joy.

In the Entrance Antiphon of today's Mass, it says, “Blessed are you, O Virgin Mary, by the Lord God Most High, above all women on the earth; for he has so exalted your Name that your praise shall be undying on our lips” (cf. Jth. 13:18-19).

God has exalted the name of His Mother. That name, in a special way, must go straight to His heart. He must be very happy when we praise Our Lady in all sorts of ways.

There's a story told about a parish priest in Alaska at the turn of the 20th century who had a little house with a little bedroom upstairs. And there was a sort of a tube going from the main door up to the bedroom.

In case somebody needed a priest in the middle of the night, they could talk into this tube, and it would be heard in the bedroom. Possibly it was the days before phones and doorbells and all the rest of it.

In the middle of the night, the priest heard someone saying to him, “Get up, Father, somebody at 55 Water Street needs you.”

And he half woke up, but he thought he must have been dreaming, and so he went back to sleep. But then five minutes later, the voice came again, this time stronger: “Get up, Father, somebody at 55 Water Street needs you.”

Now he woke up fully and he realized he wasn't dreaming. And he went downstairs to see who was at the door. But there was nobody at the door. There was a foot or two of snow outside and there weren't even any footsteps in the snow.

He thought to himself, ‘I must have been dreaming.’ He went back to bed.

But a few minutes later, the voice came again: “Get up, Father, somebody at 55 Water Street needs you.” Now he knew this was genuine.

He got the holy oils and the Blessed Sacrament, and he went out into the night in the snow.

He more or less knew where Water Street was. It was on the other side of town, on the wrong side of the railway tracks, somewhere there in a very depressed area.

Finally, he got to the street, and he got to number 55 and he found it was a derelict house. Nobody had lived there for years. The windows were broken. The door was ajar. He thought, ‘Maybe I was dreaming after all.’

But before going home, he decided he would just check around the back, so he went around the back of the house.

And again, the back door was swinging on its hinges, but in the moment when the door swung open a little, a bit of light came from the moon and lit up the floor.

He thought he saw the figure of a body or a person there on the floor. He went in to investigate and he found it was a tramp.

This tramp was freezing. He was in very bad shape. He looked after him as best he could.

He heard his Confession. He gave him Communion. And then he said, “I will call an ambulance,” because the guy was half dead, frozen to bits in the cold.

But before he went for the ambulance, the priest said to this tramp, “You must have done something very special in your life for me to have been called out like this.”

The tramp said, “No, I never did anything good in my life. I've always been a tramp.”

But the priest insisted a little bit and said, “Well, you must have done something.”

The tramp brushed it off and said, “No, I've never done anything good in my life.”

The priest sort of pushed a little more. Finally, the tramp said, “Well, okay, there was something that I did, but I don't like to talk about it very much. I never did it very well. Sometimes I did it in bad places, sometimes I was drunk. I was with other tramps in boxcars when we were stealing a ride on a train or something.”

The priest said, “Well, what was it?”

He said, “You see, when I was small, my mother told me that if I said the Mary prayer every day of my life, I wouldn't die without having a priest to hear my Confession and give me Holy Communion.”

Then the tramp said, “My mother was right, wasn't she, Father? I'm dying, aren't I?”

With that, he said, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” And with that, he closed his eyes and he died.

We can have great faith in the Hail Mary prayer and in the Holy Name of Mary because she has a special power in the sight of God.

The Alleluia verse said, “Blessed are you, O Virgin Mary, who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled” (cf. Luke 1:45). Elizabeth was the first to compliment the faith of Mary, precisely saying to her these words, “Blessed are you for your believing.”

In the Communion Antiphon, it says, “All generations will call me blessed, for he has looked upon his lowly handmaid” (cf. Luke 1:48).

God looked upon His lowly handmaid. He likes each one of us also to look upon her. He showered her with praise. He likes us to do the same.

The Church has said in all sorts of ways that the fastest way to Jesus is through Mary (St. Louis de Monfort, True Devotion to Mary). It also says that Mary's mediation always shares with that of her Son (John Paul II, Encyclical, Redemptoris Mater, Point 38, March 25, 1987).

We don't bypass Christ. We don't make a God out of Our Lady. We just do what Jesus told us. Jesus lifted up His Mother.

“A woman in the crowd…said, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breast that fed you.’ He said, ‘Rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it’” (Luke 11:27-28).

He seemed to put down His Mother a little on a human plane, but He exalted her on a supernatural plane. “Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.”

Jesus lifts up His Mother. When we lift up Our Lady, when we praise her, when we try and bring her into everything, like little children, always wanting to be in the presence of Our Mother, passing our petition through her hands, we're just doing what Jesus did.

In the Prayer after Communion, it says, “May we obtain the grace of your blessing, O Lord, through the intercession of Mary, the Mother of God, that from her, whose holy Name we venerate, we may obtain help in our every need.”

We venerate her name. We don't make too much fuss out of certain words in our faith —venerate, pray to—because we know that the adoration that's given to God is on a higher level. It's called Latria.

The Church says the veneration we give to Our Lady is on a secondary plane. It's called Hyperdulia. And the veneration we give to the saints is called Dulia.

Even if there are 10,000 people at a procession in Lourdes, or in Subukia, or any place, all of that veneration that's given to Mary never reaches the level of adoration that we give to God.

It's a mediatory petition; it passes through her hands. She helps us to make our petitions reach God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

It makes a lot of sense if we try to have that name frequently on our lips, with little aspirations, petitions for help, acts of thanksgiving, offering her our day.

In some versions of the Morning Offering, the name Mary appears: “O Jesus, through the most pure heart of Mary...” So, from the very first moments of the day, her name is on our lips.

In moments of difficulty, anxiety, or temptation, we can fly to her protection with the Memorare. If we pray the Rosary frequently, we say that name of Mary very frequently.

It's the prayer she most likes to hear. Every time that Our Lady has appeared in the last 200 years, she's always asked people to say her Rosary.

It can be very good to be generous with our Rosaries. There are all sorts of Rosaries, traveling in the car Rosaries, waiting for a bus or matatu Rosary, five minutes, a decade here and there Rosaries, filling in little pieces of time, waiting for the checkout in the supermarket Rosaries, all sorts of little opportunities in the day where we can turn to talk to the Mother of God.

Pope St. John XXIII used to say that the worst Rosary is the one that doesn't get said.

That's where every Rosary reaches the heart of Our Mother, obtains these things from her.

The invocation of her name brings joy, peace, rest, hope. Try to teach little children to say that name frequently. Even if, maybe, they can't say a full Rosary or even a full decade, some little aspiration can be there on their lips.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church has a lot to say about the name, every name. In Christianity, a name is very important.

When we're baptized or when we're born, we're given a name; we're not given a number. The name is very personal, very specific. It's not something anonymous.

The Catechism says, “Respect for [His] name is an expression of the respect owed to the mystery of [God himself] and to the whole sacred reality it evokes” (Catechism, Point 2144).

We praise Our Lady, we praise everything around her, the saints, the angels, Christ Himself.

The Catechism says, “God calls each person by name.” The Good Shepherd knows the name of the sheep. “Everyone's name is sacred” (Catechism, Point 2158).

Some psychologists say that the word that people most like to hear in any language is the sound of their own name. So when we say the names of other people, we should always try and say it with respect.

The Catechism says, “The name is an icon of the person. It demands respect as a sign of the dignity of the one who bears it” (Catechism, Point 2158).

Our name is linked up to dignity. If you insult somebody's name, you can insult their whole family, maybe their clan, their village. It can be a whole pile of consequences.

For the Jews, names were of great importance. In many cultures today, especially in Asia—Japan, China—somebody's name can mean great things. What they're going to be in the future can tell a story. Likewise for the Jews.

When a name was given to someone, it represented what that person was to be in the future. A person's name represented the reality of that person's being at the deepest level. Our Lord changed the name of Simon to Peter—rock—a symbol of what he was to be.

God the Father also wanted to give the name of Jesus through the words of the angel: “You shall call his name Jesus” (Matt. 1:21; Luke 1:31).

Through it, the mission would be explained. Jesus means Savior, Redeemer: “the name which is above every other name. In the name of Jesus, every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Phil. 2:9-10).

We could think of atoning to Our Lady for all the insults that may be given to her and to her name.

The name she was given was already predestined from eternity. We could ponder the meaning of Mary.

St. Isidore of Seville said, “Mary means enlightener, because she brought forth the Light of the world. In the Syriac tongue, Mary signifies Lady.” Very beautiful words.

St. Bernard says, “Let me say something concerning this name also, which is interpreted to mean Star of the sea, and admirably suits the Virgin Mother.”

She's our Star, Morning star, Star of the east, Star of the sea, guides our way in difficult moments, leads us through the storms.

St. Thomas Aquinas says, “Mary means Star of the sea, for as mariners are guided to port by the ocean star, so Christians attain to glory through Mary's maternal intercession.”

St. Louis de Montfort says, “God the Father gathered all the waters together and called them the seas or maria. He gathered all His grace together and called it Mary or Maria. … This immense treasury is none other than Mary whom the saints call the ‘treasury of the Lord.’ From her fullness, all men are made rich.”

When we stay close to Our Lady, we share in this divine treasure. She makes us spiritually rich.

The name Mary, being the name of the Blessed Mother, deserves special respect and devotion, and is therefore celebrated in four ways:

Firstly, Mary is a name of honor, since the faithful praise Mary as the Mother of the Divine Savior.

She is rightfully called “Mother of God,” for Jesus, true God, second Person of the Blessed Trinity, entered this world becoming also true man through Mary, who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Second, Mary is a most holy name, because the very mention of her name reminds us she's full of grace. She has found favor with God and is blessed among all women. She's the most beautiful woman that was ever created.

Third, Mary is a maternal name, because she's Our Mother, whom Our Lord gave to us as He was dying on the cross. “Son, behold your Mother” (John 19:26-27). Look at your Mother, and never stop looking at her.

Finally, Mary is the name of the Mother who responds to all our needs, protects us from evil, and prays for us sinners “now and at the hour of our death.” She's the Refuge of sinners, the Comforter of the afflicted, the Comforter of migrants and refugees.

Many cathedrals around the world are consecrated to God in her name. There's hardly a church on the planet without an altar dedicated to her.

There’s hardly a country or region without at least one special image devoted to her, through whom all sorts of benefits are received. She's the patron of many wonderful things in the Church.

Every small child from the earliest moments learns how to say a Hail Mary. There's hardly a sinner, however hardened, who doesn't possess some spark of confidence in her.

The very devils in hell, while fearing her, show her respect because she can “crush the head of the serpent” (Gen. 3:15).

St. Louis de Montfort says, “Just as the salvation of the world began with the Hail Mary, so the salvation of each individual is bound up with it.

“This prayer brought to a dry and barren world the Fruit of Life. … The Hail Mary is a heavenly dew which waters the earth of our soul and makes it bear its fruit in due season. The soul which is not watered by this heavenly dew bears no fruit, but only thorns and briars.

“Those who show positive signs of being among the elect appreciate and love the Hail Mary and are always glad to say it. The closer they are to God, the more they love to say it. … It is the perfect compliment the most High God paid to Mary through his archangel to win her heart.

“So powerful was the effect of this greeting upon her, on account of its hidden delights, that despite her great humility, she gave her consent to the incarnation of the Word. If you say the Hail Mary properly,” he says, “this compliment will infallibly earn you Mary's goodwill” (Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary).

Part of the Angelus is made up of the Hail Mary. We remind Our Lady at 12 every day of her vocation.

It's a very good prayer to pray, as we go to bed at night, three Hail Marys, before going to bed and sleep, to ask for her protection and her help and to thank her for all the graces she's given to us during the day. The sweet name Mary can be always on our lips in moments of tension, of difficulty, of emergency.

The pronouncement of this name can lead us into a new intimacy with her. Pope Benedict talks about “inviting everyone to become a trusting child before Mary, just as the Son of God did” (Benedict XVI, Address, September 9, 2007).

St. Bernard says, “Look to the Star of the sea, call upon Mary… in danger, in distress, in doubt, think of Mary, call upon Mary. May her name never be far from your lips or far from your heart.

“If you follow her, you will not stray; if you pray to her, you will not despair; if you turn your thoughts to her, you will not err; if she holds you, you will not fall; if she protects you, you need not fear; if she is your guide, you will not tire; if she is gracious to you, you will surely reach your destination” (Bernard of Clairvaux, In laudibus Virginis Matris).

Mary was chosen in a very special way. We're told in St. Paul, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.

“And because you are children, God has sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a child; and if a child, then also an heir through God” (Gal. 4:4-7).

All this happened at the time chosen by God. He had chosen this Lady in a very special way.

“The Lord God said to the serpent,” in Genesis, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals. … And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel’” (Gen. 3:14-15). Mary was chosen since then.

St. Paul says to the Ephesians, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in his presence. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will” (Eph. 1:3-5).

If God chose each one of us, much more must we say that He chose Mary.

We are told in The Forge, “That friend was saying to himself, ‘Apart from other reasons, there are two good reasons why I should make reparation to my Immaculate Mother every Saturday and on the eve of her feasts.

“‘The second is that on Sundays and on the feasts of Our Lady, which are often local feasts, instead of dedicating such days to prayer, so many people spend them offending our Jesus with public sins and scandalous crimes. You've only to look around you and see.

“‘The first reason is that, perhaps due to the devil's influence, those of us who want to be good children are not taking proper care in the way we live these days dedicated to Our Lord and to his Mother.’

“You’ll realize that unfortunately, these reasons are still very valid. And so we too should make reparation” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Forge, Point 434).

“I have come to see,” said St. Josemaría in The Forge, “that every Hail Mary, every greeting to Our Lady is a new beat of a heart in love” (Ibid., Point 615).

“Devotion to Our Lady in Christian souls,” he says, “awakens the supernatural stimulus we need in order to act like members of God's family” (Ibid., Point 587).

“We have to love the Blessed Virgin Mary more. We will never love her enough,” we're told in The Forge.

“Love her a lot! It shouldn't be enough for you to put up pictures of her, and greet them, and say aspirations. You should learn to offer her, in your strenuous life, some small sacrifice each day, to show her your love, and to show her the kind of love that we want the whole human race to proclaim for her” (Ibid., Point 527).

We can say, O clement, O sweet Virgin Mary, pray for us who have recourse to you. Help us always to honor your name and to honor you in all sorts of ways, and we look to you each day for all the little things that we need.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

OLV