By Thomas Creen, MJ • Phoenix, AZ
A special blessing from my vocation in Miles Jesu has been the opportunity to get to know great Catholic leaders. One such leader is His Beatitude Lubomyr Cardinal Husar, Major Archbishop Emeritus of Kyiv-Halyc, Ukraine.
One time when Cardinal Husar was still Auxiliary Bishop of Lviv, we met up in Poland. We were at a Volkswagen dealership in Lublin waiting for his car to be serviced when he pointed out a sign to me with a grin. It said, “Masz Passata – Masz wszystko” which is Polish for “If you have a Passat, you’ve got it all.” That grin and his motioning toward the sign were classic comedy.
The more time passes, the more it seems to me that we can say, “Masz Maryje – Masz Wszystko,” – “If you have Mary, you’ve got it all.” Mary is a mere creature needing redemption from Christ as all of us do. There is no doubt that Christ is our all. But, because of Her total cooperation with God’s grace, Mary has been greatly exalted and Christ has given the example in this. It’s His fault!
Looking at Scripture and speculating only a little, one can imagine that after the Apostles were called, they were eventually introduced by Our Lord to Mary. One can imagine that the Apostles naturally observed how He related to Her and how He spoke about Her. Then one can see how after His Ascension into Heaven, they must have looked back on the training He had given them and realized that if they wanted to imitate Him and become other Christs, “alteri Christi”, they would need to relate to Mary in the same way. And thus you have the Catholic Church’s devotion to Mary which is an essential element in Christianity (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 971).
This post is also available in:
Hindi 
Italian 
Polish 
Slovak 
Spanish 
Ukrainian
