Our Lady of Graces. A Mariological rereading.

Our Lady of Graces: a Mariological rereading of Mary

Introduction

When we look at an image of Our Lady of Graces, the projection of a present-day image is inevitable, an image that has little to do with the context in which it was drawn, painted, sculpted and possibly described. In this sense, it is important to understand the profound Mariological meaning that remains unchanging, for it belongs to Revelation.

The invocation of the Virgin with the title “of graces” evokes fidelity to and coherence with the tradition of the Church in the closeness of the Intercessor. To speak of Tradition is also to say Magisterium and its directives for the exercises of piety. The insertion of Mary into the one Christian worship of the Church has brought, beginning from Christ, a renewal in the Spirit that leads to the Father.

The active engagement of the devotee is vital in order to understand that we live what we pray and we pray what we believe (lex credendi-lex orandi-lex vivendi). It is therefore not strange to think that a devotee of Our Lady truly lives it. Praying before Our Lady of Graces, one invokes mercy, and the tone is truly united with the Absolute made flesh. By the power of the Incarnation, the devotee becomes a participant and experiences his spiritual rebirth. In this sense, mercy is the daily experience-testimony: it is Jesus who repeats to us: “be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36).

It is in this sense that we see the fear of God in Mary, that is, trust, not in wrath, but in the greatness that offers the creature new things at every moment. The generation that God brings about in the heart of the faithful is an attitude toward brothers and sisters that creates spaces and reciprocal understanding.

Ex-voto: the grace received

When we walk through shrines all over the world, we find manifestations of the graces received, normally in tragic situations with no way of escape. This experience is so intense that the devotee feels the need to bear witness to the greatness of what God has accomplished in his life through the intercession of Mary.

Over the centuries Christianity experienced this intercession to the point of invoking Mary as Taumaturga, which means She who obtains from God and grants to the one who invokes her with faith. This intermediate point between God and man has been a subject of development, revision and proposal from the Mariological point of view that we cannot set out in this article; the reminder remains, however, that each age presents itself as closer to the truth of God, for the Holy Spirit guides us to the fullness of truth (Jn 16:13). The image of Mary as the loving Mother goes beyond intellectual perception and places itself within the realm of experiential factuality. The faithful turn to Mary with unlimited confidence and experience effective help in the difficult moments of life. The phenomenological datum of relevance emerges from Christian behavior toward Mary, for it has to do with a living presence, one that enters into dialogue and is recognized. Mary’s exalting holiness at first seems so different from us, because of the world in which we live, but on the other hand so close to each person in the most sorrowful moments of the sword of sorrow (Lk 2:35).

The birth of the title Our Lady of Graces

The context of vital realities such as food, work, health, unity, family, peace, reconciliation, together with the mobilizing power of the figure of the Holy Virgin which is configured with the Christian faith, speaks to the heart of confidence and affection. This Marian phenomenon results from the continuous saving action of Jesus; Mary’s influence over the centuries inspires generations to seek support, regardless of culture, in the Mother of the living. Recalling the pilgrimage of Pope Benedict XVI to Einsiedeln in 2011, he affirmed that:

“when Christians in every age and in every place turn to Mary, they let themselves be guided by the spontaneous certainty that Jesus cannot refuse the requests that His Mother presents to Him, and they rest on their unshakable confidence that Mary is at the same time also our Mother, a Mother who experienced the greatest suffering of all, who perceived together with us all our difficulties and thinks in a maternal way about overcoming them”

Seeking a meaning in the biblical and ecclesial Tradition

When we look at the New Testament we find grace as a space of encounter between God and men. It is the way in which God becomes the history of salvation. On a very simple reading, the plural graces are the charisms and other helps; when the singular grace is used we are speaking of a much deeper and more mysterious reality, above all because we are speaking of two worlds that touch each other: the divine and the human.

In the letters of Saint Paul we find the description of the Christian life of the first communities in present-day Asia Minor, and we note that in them the Spirit distributes and awakens gifts, virtues, ministries and charisms. The Second Vatican Council in Lumen Gentium 12 states in this regard that:

“the Holy Spirit not only sanctifies and leads the People of God by means of the sacraments and the ministries and adorns it with virtues, but, ‘allotting His gifts to each one as He wills’ (1 Cor 12:11), He also distributes special graces among the faithful of every rank, by which He makes them fit and ready to undertake the various works and offices profitable for the renewal and the ever wider building up of the Church, according to those words: ‘to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good’ (1 Cor 12:7). These charisms, whether they be the most outstanding or the more simple and common, are to be received with thanksgiving and consolation”.

In unison we can affirm that ministry is not superimposed on the charisms, for it is itself a charismatic element. All the more so since ministries are conferred preferentially on charismatic men (Acts 13:2-4). The whole ecclesial reality receives the charism as a structural element of the Church, and its members are built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, having as cornerstone Christ Jesus Himself (Eph 2:20). The first of the charisms is love (1 Cor 13:13). After this charism we find faith, infused by the Holy Spirit. The gift of healings (1 Cor 12:9, 28, 30). These are new events, signs of the new covenant that lead us back to the actions of the Spirit (1 Cor 12:10). The Holy Spirit is the origin and “dispenser” of the charisms. This affirmation seems to create a contrast or a contradiction with the Marian invocation. Nevertheless, the more one goes deeper into the spiritual gifts of grace, the more the one Spirit is manifested (1 Cor 12:11), who brought Mary to the fullness of creaturehood. Paul affirms that the spiritual gifts are “manifestations of the Spirit” (1 Cor 12:1, 7). Therefore the graces are then spiritual gifts granted to the charismatic faithful and bound to the mediation of persons. The charisms can then be permanent or temporary, according to the will of the Father. The graces are not isolated, but exist for the benefit of the community and come, in the last analysis, from the Spirit of the Father and of the Son.

In the next chapter we will speak about “Mary Mediatrix of grace in Christ and in the Spirit”. And you, what questions do you have regarding Our Lady of Graces?

To deepen devotion to Our Lady of Graces and the veneration of Mary, consult the apostolic exhortation Marialis Cultus of Paul VI, on the renewal of Marian piety.

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