Mary matters

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

The Bhagavad Gita –if I remember well- prophesies that in the last days the beasts will enter the cities and even attack humans. When I first learned of that curious prophecy, it reminded me of Revelation 5:7 “When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!”  I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.” We all have heard of recent animal attacks in various parts of the world, the latest I remember happened not long ago when a herd of elephants laid waste to a small village in India repeating what other elephants had done a few years ago in a different village where – curiously enough – the houses of Christians were spared from any damage. In India the elephant is a symbol of good fortune. In other parts of the world sharks, bears, tigers, lions, and a variety of smaller wild animals have been reported to attack humans for no reason. I don’t think that specifically fulfills the prophecies already mentioned here but it is good to illustrate the deep disorder growing in the natural world as men get more and more wicked. As mankind falls to lower and lower moral standards approaching a beastly state, it is no wonder that animals begin to prey on us.

Of all the beastly practices adopted by mankind as part of its ‘legal’ system, abortion must be the most abominable. St Teresa of Calcutta defines the barbarity of that practice and its sure consequences in just a few words:

“By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. [Abortion is] really a war against the child, and I hate the killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that the mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? … Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love one another, but to use violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.” – Quoted by Paul Kengor in: How Mother Teresa Challenged Hillary Clinton on Abortion.

After considering so many qualities of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the last few articles posted here, let us consider how she freely accepted to consecrate her life to redeem us all, and how she prepared her Son, Jesus to be Christ, the sacrificial Lamb of God who takes the sin of the world. There is something very powerful in the figure of Mary accepting the words of St Simeon at the Temple:

Luke 2:34-35 — Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.” 

Think of poor Mary. Her parents were not there perhaps because she was already an orphan at that young age. She owned nothing, she was secretly asked by God to be the Mother of the Messiah. That was an honor but it had to be preceded by the shame of being pregnant before being formally married. Now after she had accepted all that undeserved humiliation she is told she is going to lose her child. When? Where? She was not told. That baby was the only thing that Mary ever had, although born to be a King, the prophecy placed in poor Mary’s heart the ominous news that one day she was going to be pierced by the agony of his death. Mary carried that cross all the days Jesus was with her, all the way to Calvary.

I propose that the pain that Mary suffered —anticipating for most of her life the sacrificial death of her Son— is there to counterbalance the error of Eve, who squandered all she had learned in her own time of bliss in God’s garden. allowing the devil to trick her into desiring the forbidden fruit symbolizing the sovereignty of God.

Genesis 3:6 — When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Eve was tricked into envying God’s wisdom and illicitly wanting a part of it. Implicit in that act was a distrust of her Creator, Who already had destined her to grow in wisdom to be the mother of all mankind. By her act Eve condemned all her offspring to a brief period of strife followed by death. No one had any idea that Redemption was coming. Expelled from Paradise Eve and her children could only expect a vain life filled with sorrow. Death was lurking in the shadows, ready to take them to the grave. Hopelessness does not begin to describe what Eve and her children experienced. Little brave Mary of Nazareth took all that upon her shoulders and was made wise in tribulations, poverty, persecution, and sorrow. She humbly accepted to learn the wisdom of the Cross.

Those Christians who see Mary as just another woman who was merely a necessary womb for the Savior to be born should walk one single day in Mary’s sandals, and learn.

So the dreaded time of the Cross came and Mary stood there as a suffering witness of the barbarity unleashed on her innocent Son. Who could deny that in her heart she didn’t desire to exchange places with Jesus? What loving mother has not wished for herself the illness of a beloved little son?

The terrible price had to be paid. Jesus carried on His Holy Body the sin of Adam and with that the sin of all mankind. Mary was moved to “desire” the frightening fruit of the Cross. As her Immaculate Heart was pierced more and more through the agony of Jesus, Mary wished for herself every second of her Son’s pain. Thus was erased the vanity of Eve. By surrendering the Body and Blood of her Divine Son, Mary helped to liberate mankind.

Now to the demonic counterpoint: human abortion. The sacrifice of Mary was endured for our sake. Over the centuries God revealed to mankind in the mystery of the Law that Someone had to die so His people could live. First the sacrifice was represented by animals and first fruits, desirable, perfect things had to be set aside and consumed to please God, to apease His just wrath and remove the curse from the land. In those ancient days no one imagined that God was teaching His people the kind of sacrifice He was going to offer to save and sanctify them. Not a lamb but His lamb, His dearly beloved Son, Jesus. No one imagined that the Wisdom, His first Creation of long ago had been selected to be the Mother of His Son Incarnate. What a great mystery!

The devil copies everything that God does and repeats it with an evil twist. Abortion imitates the magnanimous, noble actions of the Redemption in one aspect only: a woman willingly accepts to allow her son or daughter to die. Remember that blood has a redeeming value. We know it because God Himself taught us so in the Mosaic Law and also through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

In the wicked days we are living the devil encourages and promotes abortion to liberate his minions imprisoned in the depths of darkness. Jesus “tied the strong man” in Calvary and granted us some time to rebuild the world but in time the devil was allowed to roam the world freely one more time. Now he wants to attack the Church in the same manner that he attacked Jesus. The devil has to cause the Passion of the Church and we know through the vision of Pope Leo XIII that the devil has been working hard to corrupt the Church as thoroughly as he can. He’s back and he needs his troops with him.

Jude 6  —  And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling—these [God] has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the Great Day.

Matthew 12:43-46 — “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order.  Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”

For all we know we are getting closer and closer to the Great Day mentioned by St Jude. In the vision of Pope Leo XIII the devil asked for “a greater power over those who will give themselves over to my service.” He has been deceiving generation after generation finally in the last one hundred years or so, driving many of  his followers lower and lower into bestial appetites and behavior. The devil has inspired them into performing millions of abortions, many of them sanctioned or protected by laws that bear his wicked seal. We know that today sacrificial abortions are taking place in satanic ceremonies in most of the “civilized” countries of the world.

The end to all of these abominations began with the “yes” of Mary. “By pronouncing her fiat at the Annunciation and giving her consent to the Incarnation, Mary was already collaborating with the whole work her Son was to accomplish. She is mother wherever he is Savior and head of the Mystical Body” (Catechism of the Catholic Church # 973).

We had discussed before her role in the mystery of salvation as it is written in Genesis. She is the enemy of the devil.  That is announced in Genesis 3:15:  “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.”

Here is a good summation found in Catholic Bible 101:

“In the last book of the Bible, Revelation (or Apocalypse), in the 12th chapter, there is a huge battle going on (enmity) between Mary,  the woman clothed with the sun who gives birth to a savior, and the devil.  The devil tries to take her out, but God miraculously rescues her and her child by putting them into the desert, away from Herod’s evil clutches.  Revelation 12:17 says that we are her children if we obey the commandments and bear testimony to her son, Jesus.  This is a great bookend to the Garden of Eden, where an immaculately created virgin, Eve, says yes to the demon Lucifer, and allowed sin to enter the world.  Mary, also an immaculately created virgin, says yes to the angel Gabriel, and allowed salvation to enter the world.  Eve came out of Adam, Jesus came out of Mary.” — Catholic Bible 101: Mary versus the devil. 

We are nearing the end of the final defeat of sin and evil in the world. If a woman was the victim of the devil in the beginning, it is fit and just for the devil to be defeated and humiliated by a woman. That woman is Mary.

If the devil has given his followers unclean beastly hearts to enter even the Church and try to defile her with their abominations, it is fit and just that the Immaculate Heart of Mary conquers that infernal host and sends them to their final, hapless destination. That is the meaning of the Our Blessed Mother’s words: “In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”

Mary is not a mere useful womb. Mary matters. Blessed be the Mother of Our King and Savior!