I came across this excellent and inspiring page where we can take a minute to spend time with our Blessed Mother, as we ought to. Daily. And for a much longer time than what the page asks for (you love your Heavenly Mother more than that!).
But this site has got me thinking about love for the Blessed Virgin. Perhaps it should be one of the criteria for selecting a future mate. To truly and fully love the Blessed Virgin Mary is to love obedience, humility, and most of all, purity. Being our Lord's masterpiece, and in the most eloquent words of William Wordsworth, "our tainted nature's solitary boast", nobody is as pure as the Mother of our Lord. Ladies, a man with such a deep reverence and devotion to Mary will surely value and pursue purity and holiness in the woman he loves. And a woman who loves the Virgin Mary genuinely and completely will surely strive to follow Her excellent example of chastity, total obedience, and complete abandon to the will of God, unfazed by any great suffering it might entail. Such a woman is sure to be ever loyal, ever loving to her beloved no matter what the cost to her.
But most important of all, love of the Lord's Mother is love of our Lord Himself. Even those who begin loving Mary for Mary's sake alone, cannot remain thus if they truly loved our Lady. Let's not forget that our Lady's last recorded words in Scripture point eternally to Christ, "Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye."
Our love for the Blessed Mother naturally flows from the love of our Lord. Our Lord was formed in her womb. We cannot love our Lord without loving the woman He loves dearly, the woman who had been closest to Him. She carried Him in her womb. She is precious to me, just like everything my beloved touches becomes almost sacred. I love her like I automatically love my beloved's family. I want to be close to her, in the same way that my heart trembles as I hold with utmost care and reverence the letters I receive from the man I love because the same pages were held by him. We are deceiving ourselves if we still choose to believe that Our Lord came into close contact, was intimately united, with His mother and left her unchanged and empty, without leaving something of Himself in her. That does not sound like our Lord, who has revealed Himself to be relational beyond all measure and expectation, with a love that defies human comprehension yet is supremely and undeniably Love. That could not be our Lord, who gave Himself completely to us and continues to give Himself to us in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
My fellow romantics, we expect our significant others to love and respect our earthly, biological mothers who are human and (therefore) imperfect. How can we not expect greater love and deep reverence for the Mother of our Lord, our Heavenly Mother, who is immaculate and free from sin? God made it easy for us when He made her as perfect as can be.
So how do you know you've found an exceptional man or woman of God? Find someone who loves our Heavenly Mother. Other people strictly say 'must love dogs'. Let's say, must love Our Lady.
