Best and perfect bonus

One time mama asked me to buy a bouquet of flowers for our altar and the flower shop dude gave me a cluster of small flowers as a bonus. He said they just got the shipment in and thought I would appreciate them because they smelled so incredibly amazing. He just cut off a small cluster, wrapped it in paper and handed it over after I had paid for the bouquet. Today as I was reflecting on Mary, I was reminded of this incident and I couldn't help but relate that encounter with Christ's gift of salvation and the role of Mary in our faith.

Christ's gift to us is like the bouquet I was getting. It's a complete gift: salvation, fullness of truth, fullness of joy, everything's in there, sure. But God did not leave it at that. Just before he died, as he hung from the cross, His last instruction was "Behold your mother." Mary is the bonus. Like my cluster of flowers, she does not detract from the primary gift, nor is she meant to be a replacement, that cluster of flowers would not have served the same purpose that the bouquet was meant for, if mama had used it to adorn the altar, it would have looked abysmal, lacking, the thing was smaller than my palm. No, the bouquet did the job, but the cluster of flowers I kept in my room and it made my room smell wonderful. It was just a bonus, but it felt personal and heart-warming, it was wonderful.

So I wonder, who turns away a bonus? Are people turned off by our devotion to Mary because it comes across as a bit much, what with the rosary, the litanies, and all that? Consider though the main event: Christ himself. Consider His magnitude. Doesn't it seem only fitting then, that his "bonus" be nothing less than a Queen, crowned with glory, bright morning star? Suddenly the intense devotion to Mary becomes something that is justly proportional to what it accompanies. To me, the fact that we give so much emphasis on her only serves to highlight the fact that God is infinitely greater.

Think about how when we as Catholics attribute the title "Mother of God" to Mary, some complain that we are giving her too much credit, almost to the point where the praise we lavish on her is blasphemous in their eyes. But actually, to call Mary the Mother of God, has nothing to do about her credentials, but everything to do with Jesus' nature. Jesus is God and it is by virtue of of this that Mary is given that title. The title has nothing to do with Mary's stature but it instead seeks to highlight that Jesus is God, and Mary just happens to be his mother, therefore Mary: Mother of God. To deny this is to deny Jesus' divinity. Everything about this woman simply points to His greatness. It's amazing how she is able to take every bit of loving attention we give her and use it to proclaim the greatness of her Son, she was not messing around with that Magnificat.

God didn't just redeem us, He also gave us Mary so that when He needs to break out the tough love, we have a mother we can turn to. There are times in my prayer when I don't feel like being particularly sweet with God, I get frustrated and my prayers to Him turn into temper tantrums. It's in those moments that I find it more soothing to turn to Mary and ask her to calm my heart rather than try to go another round with God, and it's an amazing feeling to have her as Mediatrix (Mary really is the favored one, she even gets the cool title).

I think maybe we've grown so attuned to the limits that contain our world that we forget the splendor of heaven and the unbounded nature of God's love. Our brains revolt when it is confronted by the spiritual. Our hearts refuse to believe when Love, in its purest form, sweeps us off our feet. Is it really so hard to believe that God can fill us with so much passion that makes it possible to desire him with all our hearts and still have some left over for His Mother too? Is it so hard to believe that He would love us so much, he would want to share His mother, who was the perfect mother, with us too? Limitless and Generous. What a glorious knockout combination our God is.

Lord, guide me in truth, that I may understand that Your Love has no bounds, and so neither should mine.


By Shae Vencilao, SFC Qatar