Traditionally the month of May is dedicated to Mary, our Blessed Mother. As Catholics, we give honor to all the saints (what theologians call “dulia”), but we give a special, heightened level of honor to Mary (“hyperdulia”), because of her unique role in salvation history and her freedom from all sin, original and actual.
This is something, unfortunately, that many of our Protestant brothers and sisters fail to understand. Some of them mistakenly believe that we Catholics worship the Blessed Mother, which of course we do not. Worship (what theologians call “latria”) is reserved for God alone—the Triune God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). That is and always has been the teaching of the Catholic Church. Some other non-Catholics believe that if we give honor to Mary we diminish the worship that we owe to God, which is also not true.
The simple—and Biblical—rationale for honoring our Blessed Mother was given several years ago by Professor Scott Hahn of the Franciscan University of Steubenville. Hahn, who was once an anti-Catholic preacher and teacher virulently opposed to the idea of Marian devotion, has said that when we’re trying to help a person understand why devotion to Mary is pleasing to the Lord, and how it’s rooted in the Sacred Scriptures, we should make three points in our discussion:
Point number 1: Jesus perfectly fulfilled the Law. No Christian (Catholic or Protestant) would deny that assertion. Through his life and ministry Jesus taught us how the Law, given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, was meant to be lived. As he himself said in Matthew 5:17, “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them.” In the Catechism of the Catholic Church we are told that Jesus “was to fulfill the Law by keeping it in its all embracing detail—according to his own words, down to ‘the least of these commandments.’ He is in fact the only one who could keep it perfectly.” (CCC 578)
Point number 2: Remind the person of the 4th commandment of the Law, which is “Honor your father and your mother.” Since we know that Jesus perfectly fulfilled the Law, he honored Mary long before any Catholic ever did. That honor manifested itself most notably in our Lord’s obedience. The Sacred Scriptures make that fact crystal clear. As St. Luke said in his account of the finding of Jesus in the Temple, when the Holy Family returned to Nazareth, Jesus was “obedient” to Mary and Joseph. And given the fact that our Lord was (and is!) God, that obedience was perfect, as was the honor he gave to his mother.
Point number 3: We imitate Jesus! That, of course, is the professed goal of every Christian, Catholic and non-Catholic: to be like Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior in every virtue, and in the desire to do God’s perfect will in our life.
Such is the biblical basis of Marian devotion. If shared with someone who currently condemns such devotion as “unChristian” and “unbiblical”, these three points may have the effect of opening their eyes to the truth. And knowing them can also have the effect of increasing our devotion to and love for our Blessed Mother—which is something we should all desire. Here we need to keep in mind the beautiful and prophetic words of St. Maximilian Kolbe: “Never be afraid of loving the Blessed Virgin too much. You can never love her more than Jesus did.”
