The Most Beloved Woman
Excerpt from the book The Most Beloved Woman
Today we honor our Blessed Mother, the Mother of God, the Mother of our Dear Savior —Jesus Christ. She is the Mother of mother’s, the Woman of women, the Most Beloved Woman of all humanity.
Our Mother wants us to come to her in our pain, our heartache, our triumphs, and victories. She want to intercede for us before her Blessed Son. She wants to champion our cause if only we would come to her, seek her, and accept her in our hearts.
May you be consecrated and devoted to our Mother’s most Immaculate Heart and be won over to her Son’s Most Sacred Heart.
Yours in Jesus and Mary.
From the book The Most Beloved Woman by Reverend Edward F. Garesche, S. J. (Benzinger Brothers, 1919, pages 9-17).
The Most Beloved Woman
It is the blessed gift of every pure and holy woman to gather about herself the love of some devoted hearts. If her sphere is small, her true lovers will be few. If she is known far and wide, the circle will be larger, for her innocence and goodness will appeal to a greater number of loyal and impressionable hearts. But the circle of such devoted and unselfish worship can never be very wide, because the affection we speak of is not admiration, nor reverence, nor distant service it is the sort of intimate, personal devotion which a son gives to his mother a friend to his intimate friend. True friendship cannot be maintained with a multitude. The constant give and take of benefits and love which it requires cannot extend beyond a certain few, or it would soon exhaust our limited powers. Friendship and devotion must be mutual to exist at all, and so even the purest and best of women gather to themselves in this intimate and personal way of which we speak only a few devoted friends and lovers.
Yet, to every pure and womanly heart, these few loving friends, whether they be blood relatives, or brothers and sisters and sons and daughters of the soul, are inexpressibly dear. To help them and be aided by them, to confide in them and take their confidences, are the consolation of her life. Her loving solicitude goes out to them constantly, and she lives and plans and prays much more for her friends and unselfish lovers than for any merely personal end. They are her other self, more than the half of her heart.
Such thoughts bring us a little nearer, it may be, to realizing one astonishing and singular privilege of the Most Blessed Virgin. All the noblest prerogatives of her sex have been unutterably deepened and widened for her, and so, too, has this dear privilege of drawing and holding to herself the purest love of hearts. That intimate and personal devotion, that tender love of sons and daughters for their mother, of brothers and sisters for their sister, of friends for a most dear friend, are all bestowed innumerable times over upon God’s dear Mother. The love that she possesses from devoted hearts is deeper, truer, more enduring than any love of earth.
Indeed, the love we give to the Virgin Mary has borrowed the strength and fervor of every holy and unselfish human love. Men and women love Mary more because they love their mothers, sisters, friends. When grown men pray to her, there rises in their hearts a sweet, half-conscious remembrance of their own dear mothers, and this fond memory lends a tenderness to the thoughts of her. She has drawn to herself the charm and endearing sweetness of the pure love of all other mothers. They die, and their love would pass and be forgotten, did not the immortal motherhood of Mary draw to itself, and make perpetual, the strength and sweetness of the filial devotion of their sons and daughters.
Again, consider how the number of the devoted sons and daughters of Our Blessed Lady exceeds the narrow circle of any other pure and holy woman’s friends. When she declared “All generations shall call me blessed,” (Luke 1:48) she might well have said also, “and beloved.” It is a very test of saintliness, to be an ardent lover of God’s Holy Mother. The sweet name of Mary sings in the canticles of the Church, echoes in her liturgies, rings through all the exhortations of her saints, shines on her altars, glitters on her banners. She is written into great literature, woven into tapestries, painted into glorious pictures, built into cathedrals, and sculptured into stones. The world is sown, thick as the skies with stars, with lovers of Our Lady. Only think of the innumerable Catholic homes, scattered over the world, from the spot where you dwell to the uttermost borders of the earth. In every truly Catholic home the holiest name of woman, the sweetest memory of woman, is the name and memory of Mary.
But it should stir our hearts still more to dwell on the worthiness and power of this sweet and holy Virgin to attract and repay such measureless devotion. Other women cannot have more than a very limited circle of true friends. The reason is, as we have said, that they cannot deal with more than a very few in the sweet give and take of confidence and affection which is the soul of friendship. But the Blessed Mother is as powerful as she is merciful and loving, as strong as she is holy and fair. The multitude of her sons and daughters does not confuse her, their endless petitions do not embarrass her, for she has unspeakable strength and power from God to be to all men truly a mother. The cries at her thousand shrines rise efficaciously to her great heart, that is made strong and tender to hear and grant them all. Our hearts soon weary of loving, because they are small and weak. The heart of Mary never wearies, because it was made by God Himself mighty and deep and wide to mother all mankind.
There are a thousand sweet consequences for each one of us from this blessed prerogative of Mary, of drawing to herself and repaying the intimate and personal friendship of all hearts. Not only are we most truly her friends and children she is truly our friend and mother. We need never lack an intimate and devoted confidant, a tender consoler, a compassionate and gentle advocate, so long as we have, all our own, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
When we feel utterly unworthy to approach her adorable Son, we may speak to Him through the Heart of Mary. When we are disappointed in earthly loves, we may be very sure of meeting no sorrow or distress where no one ever sought comfort in vain, or cried for aid without obtaining relief. When the death of others, whom we love, utterly casts us down, we may still turn to that immortal Mother over whom death has no empire, who has made us a place in her Son’s eternal mansion, and keeps it for us, a true and faithful Mother, watching for our coming home.
Best of all, her love is not limited by our own hearts. Like all mothers, she loves us with a gratuitous and superabounding love more than we ever shall deserve. This is the sweetest charm of friendship of motherliness, and this exceeding love is found in no other woman’s heart as it burns in the Heart of Mary.
We should always think of the Heart of Our Blessed Mother as a heart intensely human in all that beseems a most pure and glorious humanity. Our own natures are human indeed, but with a humanity spoiled by the sin of Adam. The humanity of Our Blessed Mother is pure of all earthly stain. Yet none of the noble tenderness of our nature is foreign to her. She loves with a warm and generous emotion, and she desires our love in return as no other mother ever desired the love of her children. We should remember this when we think of Our Blessed Lady. She looks to us for tenderness, gratefulness, and service in return for her own undying and unsleeping love. Though she is Queen of angels and men, she is nevertheless still most truly a woman the Woman of all women, who comes nearest in the tenderness of her mother’s heart to the tenderness of the Heart of Christ.
Love and remembrance, reverence and service from the little circle of her friends and sons and daughters these things are dear to the heart of every pure and holy woman. They are no less dear to the Most Pure Heart of Mary.
And while we honor her as our Queen let us not forget that she would have our service no less than our petitions. Our Mother wishes indeed that we should cry to her in our distress but she desires also to have part in our joys, our hopes, and our successes. She wishes to be part of our life, and to have her memory woven with our days, as through the life of a dutiful child there runs like a golden thread the love and service of mother. To murmur occasional prayers, to think devoutly of her now and then, on some especial feast this is no fit service for a son or daughter of Mary. We must serve her as good and faithful children with actions even more than words. We must guess her wishes and desires and must anticipate, and with thoughtful love, what she would have us do for her dear sake.
It is not hard to guess what the Blessed Mother would have her children do at this especial time. The world is fainting away for want of a love and knowledge of her adorable Son. The poor for whom she must feel such especial tenderness, because she was herself a daughter of the poor are in sore need and the prey to proselytizers and fanatics of many kinds. Their little ones, growing up in godless surroundings, greatly lack instruction in the faith. Truly, there is much work at hand to prove the truth of our tenderness and the sincerity of our devotion to the most lovable and loving of all women.