6. If Mary were but known. (page 23-24)

I love the title of today’s reading. “If Mary were but known.” Honestly speaking, I need to ask all of us, do we know her? Do we truly know her? How much do we know her? And does it matter if we know her yet have less devotion to her when we are struggling in a sea of religious neglect? My dear brothers and sisters, the answer is yes, because when we start to know her and devote to her, we put ourselves under the shield of her mantle and see the hope in our struggles.

Struggling is actually not a bad word, because struggle itself is a kind of spirituality. We have to go through struggles in order to achieve a higher ground. This higher ground is where we get to know ourselves. Only when we start knowing ourselves, can we then truly work on ourselves and start drifting into the sea of love instead of the sea of religious neglect.

Today’s reading talks about if Mary is not half enough known or loved then it will have a sad result for all souls. Fr. Frederick Faber said that if Mary is half known, then the devotion to her will be low and thin and poor. And as a result, Jesus will not be loved, the heretics will not be converted, the Church will not be exalted, all the souls including all the saints will wither and fall. The worst being that tens and thousands of souls will perish because Mary is withheld from them and Jesus is faded away. Just like the handbook says: “it is the miserable unworthy shadow which we call our devotion to the Blessed Virgin that is the cause of all these wants and blights, these evils and omissions and declines.”

Yet, God is so merciful. Through the struggle, He helps us not to drift away in the sea of religious neglect. Even more, God is love, He revealed to the saints and to all of us a secret weapon to overcome the despair and give us hope in the sea of love, that is, to devote ourselves to His Mother. In there, through the devotion, we learn to gradually let go of the kicking, the unnecessary fighting, and eventually the control and start drifting in the sea of love. We will also start to know ourselves and our beloved mother Mary more. And we will start to follow and drift into all the graces and blessings that God has given us through her.