Go to Your Mother

Learn to Love Marian Devotions

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Traditionally, the month of October is dedicated to the Rosary, and May is dedicated to Mary. But every day is a good time to examine — and implement — Marian devotions.

Some well-known Catholics shared their favorite ones with the Register: The Rosary was by far the most cited Marian prayer. But the Miraculous Medal devotion, Salve Regina, Angelus and Marian consecration of St. Louis de Montfort were also among their practices, along with devotions to the Blessed Mother under the titles of Our Lady of Lourdes and Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The Rosary
In Lincoln, Neb., Bishop James Conley’s favorite Marian devotion is the Rosary.

“As a convert to the Catholic Church, I discovered the Rosary to be a meditation on the life of Jesus and Mary deeply rooted in the sacred Scriptures,” Bishop Conley explained. “The Rosary invites us to meditate on concrete events in the life of Jesus and Mary and to enter into those events in our prayers.”

“The way the Rosary is structured is also very inviting,” the bishop also finds. “The repetitious praying of the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be serves as ‘background music’ for the meditations, and it also helps us from getting distracted or wandering in our prayer.”

Bishop Conley noted yet another important attribute: “The Rosary is also very incarnational, because the beautiful beads allow us to use our hands and our fingers when we pray. This is a recognition of the goodness of the body in assisting us to pray.”

EWTN series host Father George Rutler cited the Rosary, too.

“The Rosary is the most practical devotion, rather like a heavenly toy that makes even the bored or brilliant or sophisticated childlike. That saves us from being childish, which is the refusal of an adult to be childlike. Her Son said we had to be childlike to enter the Kingdom, and the Mother helps us take on that mysterious simplicity.”

There is a practical side to this devotion, noted Father Rutler: “Besides, in the city, I have to walk a lot, and the Rosary is perfect for that — along with my guardian angel, who prevents me from getting run over.”

However, Father Rutler, who is an author and the pastor of St. Michael Church and administrator of Holy Innocents Church in Manhattan, also noted, “It is difficult and perhaps misleading to speak of a ‘favorite’ devotion, because any act of prayer brings with it a favor, namely communion with the woman whom Christ made our mother on the cross.”

“So the cross is the central object of all Marian devotion, and one should think of oneself at the cross with her and John, making up for all those who fled her at the Crucifixion. Remember that the disciples abandoned the Mother as well as the Son,” he added.

Another EWTN TV host, Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle, has always felt drawn to the Rosary.

“My grandmother and mother instilled that prayer in my life,” she related. “My grandmother’s quiet example of praying the Rosary spoke volumes, as did my mother’s wonderful practice of drawing as many of her eight kids together as possible to pray the Rosary. The candle flickered in blue glass before the statue of the Blessed Mother, and we all knelt with my mother to pray, especially on special feast days or for particular needs.”

Cooper O’Boyle has prayed the Rosary with her five children and raised them “to know that they can turn to Mother Mary for help. She will surely bring them to her Son, Jesus,” she emphasized.

The Rosary is also a favorite Marian devotion of Helen Hull Hitchcock, editor of the Adoremus Bulletin and founding director of Women for Faith & Family.

She well remembers seeing then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger walking to St. Peter’s with a rosary in his hand.

“It’s something that one can take with him or her in his or her memory and [have] in hand everywhere and anywhere,” Hitchcock said. “It’s Gospel-oriented and a prayer that we can say when our mind is on autopilot.”

Singer, songwriter and Catholic evangelist Mark Mallett shared his thoughts on the Rosary, too.

“I love the Rosary, and in particular the Joyful Mysteries — more precisely, the first three decades, for they are a template of what it means to be a Christian,” he observed.

Mallet emphasized that the Rosary is what Pope St. John Paul II called “the school of Mary”: “If we persevere in this prayer, we will truly learn what it means to follow the will of God.”

Andrew and Sarah Swafford try to pray the Rosary each evening with their children, even if there’s only time for a single decade, because “it’s nice to slow down and set our minds on the mysteries of Christ’s life,” they noted in an email.

Andrew is an assistant professor of theology at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan., and Sarah is a Catholic speaker and founder of EmotionalVirtue.com. The Swaffords have two sons and a daughter.

Often, the children’s theological curiosity is triggered as they pray. They ask what a certain phrase in a certain prayer means or about various events in Christ’s life. The Swaffords say that praying slowly over the mysteries really brings out the children’s inquisitiveness.

Jackie Francois Angel, a traveling speaker, singer/songwriter and youth worship leader, is also devoted to the Rosary, in a special novena.

“Most people who listen to my talks would assume that the 54-day Rosary novena is my favorite Marian devotion, because I love to share how powerful Mary’s intercession is and how she has helped answer huge prayers in my life,” she explained.

Francois Angel shared her biggest answered prayer: “I started praying a 54-day Rosary novena for my unknown future husband. On the second day, I re-encountered Bobby Angel at a retreat where we had first met a year and a half before.

And on the 54th day, Aug. 15, the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, he bought the engagement ring — and three months later proposed.”

They married in August 2013 and welcomed a daughter this past August.

The Miraculous Medal
Cooper O’Boyle also carries on another devotion — inspired by Blessed Mother Teresa, with whom she communicated for 10 years.

“Mother Teresa used to hand out blessed Miraculous Medals to all she met,” she explained.

During a difficult pregnancy, she recalled, “Mother Teresa gave me a special Miraculous Medal to wear and encouraged me to pray this prayer to the Blessed Mother: ‘Mary, Mother of Jesus, be Mother to me now.’ It is simple yet powerful.”

That baby is 23 years old, and after Mother Teresa died, Cooper O’Boyle carried on her tradition of giving away blessed Miraculous Medals: “To date, I have given away thousands upon thousands all over the world and have seen many amazing and miraculous transformations occur through the Miraculous Medal.”

Special Prayers
Hitchcock said that she also prays favorite prayers to the Blessed Virgin daily, one being the Salve Regina at the end of Compline (evening prayer).

“It’s a kind of a hymn and prayer,” she said. “That often leads me into saying the Rosary at night.”

She also finds a favorite in the Angelus, which she says is “a very good family prayer.” The Hitchcocks pray it at lunch and dinnertime, as the nearby church bells announce the Angelus at the traditional hours of noon and 6pm.

“That’s a very good one, a short one, and young children can learn it,” she said.

Our Lady’s Titles
The Swaffords have shared a devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lady of Lourdes with their kids, too.

“We hope to impart the spirit of the New Evangelization to our children, and Mary’s appearance to St. Juan Diego certainly helped to set in motion the evangelization of the Americas,” they said.

“Our Lady’s appearance to St. Bernadette, on the other hand, is fascinating for our kids, because they see in her a story of faith as a youth. It helps them to realize that sanctity can begin now.”

Marian Consecration
The Swaffords also have a devotion to the Marian consecration of St. Louis de Montfort.

The older children were 6 and 7 the first time they did the consecration as a family. “The kids actually seemed to enjoy the repetition of the poetic prayers and titles of Mary. They even started to memorize some of them by the end,” they recalled.

“While the kids certainly didn’t understand everything they were saying, we believe the subtle ingraining of various titles and images of Mary will till the soil of their hearts for a later time, when they can more deeply understand the role of Mary in salvation and in their own lives today,” noted the Swaffords.

Jackie Francois Angel agrees: “The consecration to Our Lady has changed my life immensely and is my favorite Marian devotion.”

She detailed why: “My best friend, Julie, had been urging me for five years to do the consecration. Finally, in 2009, when a priest friend of mine shoved the St. Louis de Montfort 33-day-preparation-for-consecration book in my hand and said, ‘You’ve got to do this,’ I realized that this was going to change my life.”

She consecrated herself to Jesus through Mary on Feb. 2, 2010, the feast of the Presentation of Our Lord.

“That year, my spiritual life became richer, my full-time traveling ministry took off, and my relationship with Mary deepened,” she discovered. “I found out later that my husband consecrated himself to Mary later that same year.”

That Marian devotion continues, she said. “Bobby and I have since re-consecrated ourselves every year together, and this year, we consecrated our baby girl while still in the womb at 39 weeks on Aug. 15 to Our Lady.”

She concluded: “Through this consecration, Mary has become a close mother, friend, confidant, and intercessor. Every night, we consecrate everything we are and have to her — our marriage, our family, our friends, our ministry, finances, home, etc. We love Our Lady!”

Joseph Pronechen is the
Register’s staff writer.