“We fly to your protection, Holy Mother of God. Do not despise the petitions we offer you in our need, but deliver us from all dangers, O glorious and blessed Virgin”.
This short and easily memorised prayer – the Sub Tuum Praesidium, to give it its Latin title – is the earliest known prayer directed specifically to the Blessed Virgin. First found in third century texts, it places before us the incontrovertible fact that early Christians must have been in the habit of weaving Mary into their prayer, perhaps both private and common. This turning to Mary, as comforter and intercessor, has provided a rich seam in the Church’s life and in the celebration of the liturgy. Over the next few articles we hope to provide a window into this treasury of Marian commemoration, and to see how the Church recognises the Mother of God as a supreme teacher and example of prayer for all of God’s People.
Writing in 1974, Pope St Paul VI, with a clarity which stills speaks to us today, taught: ‘Devotion (to the Blessed Virgin Mary) fits into the only worship that is rightly called “Christian,” because it takes its origin and effectiveness from Christ, finds its complete expression in Christ, and leads through Christ in the Spirit to the Father. In the sphere of worship this devotion necessarily reflects God’s redemptive plan, in which a special form of veneration is appropriate to the singular place which Mary occupies in that plan. Indeed, every authentic development of Christian worship is necessarily followed by a fitting increase of veneration for the Mother of the Lord’.
In this apostolic exhortation, Marialis Cultus (on the veneration of the Virgin Mary), Paul VI sets out the core elements of the Church’s liturgical and devotional relationship with the Mother of God. Even from the few lines above, it is clear that the Pope situates Marian devotion firmly within the context of Christian worship, which always, if it is truly Christian, reflects the Father’s redemptive plan accomplished in Christ. And this will be the touchstone which validates every Marian devotion – are the faithful led by it to Christ?
Pope Paul continues: ‘The Church’s reflection today on the mystery of Christ and on her own nature has led her to find at the root of the former and as a culmination of the latter the same figure of a woman: the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Christ and the Mother of the Church. And the increased knowledge of Mary’s mission has become joyful veneration of her and adoring respect for the wise plan of God, who has placed within His family (the Church), as in every home, the figure of a Woman, who in a hidden manner and in a spirit of service watches over that family and carefully looks after it until the glorious day of the Lord’. We remind ourselves that Paul VI was writing less than a decade after the close of the Second Vatican Council: the Church was still digesting the huge body of teaching which the Council had generated, and would continue to do so, and at the heart of this lay renewed reflection on the Church’s own nature and mission, and a re-centring on the person of Jesus Christ. And in relation to both Christ and the Church, reclaiming the essential teachings on Mary’s role could not be ignored, since she, as Pope Paul did, is acclaimed both as Mother of God and Mother of the Church. This invitation to reflection was to find one of its supreme expressions in the formulations for liturgical celebration which are the Church’s public worship: Mary, model of womanhood, motherhood, discipleship, prayer and Church, was to become teacher for the People of God through its public prayer.‘The veneration which the universal Church today accords to blessed Mary is a derivation from and an extension and unceasing increase of the devotion that the Church of every age has paid to her … the liturgy, which receives approval and strength from the magisterium, is a most lofty expression and an evident proof of this living Tradition’. The richness of Catholic liturgy raises an unceasing sacrifice of praise to the Father, through the one Mediator, Jesus Christ – and she who is called the Mother of God and Mother of the Church, teaches us how to join our voices with hers.
-Part of our ‘Mary in the Liturgy’ series-
Other posts…
Our Lady of Bethlehem Abbey, Portglenone 