THE PERFECT LENTEN COMPANION

This season is the ideal time to renew our devotion to the Blessed Virgin as our spiritual mother

Close-up of a stained glass window depicting Mary.
(Getty Images)

The season of Lent directs us to recall our own baptism and prepare for the celebration of the paschal mystery of the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. It is a time of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, and it helps us grow closer to Jesus.

In celebrating Lent and in every season of the liturgical year, it is good to recall the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, that the “Church honors with special love the Blessed Mary, Mother of God, who is joined by an inseparable bond to the saving work of her Son.”

“In her,” the council fathers wrote, “the Church holds up and admires the most excellent fruit of the redemption, and joyfully contemplates, as in a faultless image that which she herself desires and hopes wholly to be” ("Sacrosanctum Concilium," No. 103).

Mary is the perfect companion for Lent, and Lent is a perfect time to deepen our love, knowledge and veneration of the Mother of God. Lent is also a season of conversion, and here, too, we receive great help from Mary who, as the Mother of Mercy, points us to her divine Son, Jesus Christ, who came into the world to reconcile sinners to himself (cf. Lk 5:31-32).

In his general audience on Ash Wednesday in 2014, Pope Francis highlighted the special protection and help of the Blessed Virgin for the journey of Lent: “On this journey, we want to invoke with special trust the protection and help of the Virgin Mary: May she, who was the first to believe in Christ, accompany us in our days of intense prayer and penance, so that we might come to celebrate, purified and renewed in spirit, the great paschal mystery of her Son.”

These words of Pope Francis help us to appreciate one reason why Mary is the perfect companion for Lent: She is the model of the perfect disciple because she entrusted herself completely to God.

At the Annunciation, Mary tells the angel: “I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). In 1974, Pope Paul VI taught that Mary is “worthy of imitation because she was the first and the most perfect of Christ’s disciples” ("Marialis Cultus," No. 35).

In his Angelus address for the second Sunday of Lent in 2006, Pope Benedict XVI highlighted Mary as the model of believers who listen attentively to God: “The Virgin Mary herself, among all human creatures the closest to God, still had to walk day after day in a pilgrimage of faith, constantly guarding and meditating on in her heart the Word that God addressed to her through holy Scripture and through the events of the life of her Son, in whom she recognized and welcomed the Lord’s mysterious voice. And so, this is the gift and duty for each one of us during the season of Lent: to listen to Christ, like Mary. To listen to him in his Word, contained in Sacred Scripture. To listen to him in the events of our lives, seeking to decipher in them the messages of Providence."

At the wedding feast of Cana, Mary told the servers: “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2:5). In a similar way, Mary directs us all to be faithful to Christ, her divine Son. If we wish to draw closer to Christ during Lent, there is no better way than by entrusting ourselves to Mary, our spiritual mother.

As our spiritual Mother, Mary not only leads us to Christ, but she also protects and guides us from sin. Lent is a perfect time to renew our devotion to Mary as our spiritual mother who cares for us in the midst of challenges and difficulties.

One of the oldest known prayers to Mary is known as the “Sub Tuum Praesidium” (“Under Thy Protection”), which goes back to the third or fourth century. One translation of it reads: “We fly to Thy protection, O Holy Mother of God; Do not despise our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, O Glorious and Blessed Virgin. Amen.”

Because Lent is a time to turn away from sin, it is also an ideal time to recognize the gift that Our Lord himself gave us, giving us his own mother as our mother while he was dying on the cross (Jn 19:25-27). Pope St. John Paul II recognized that Jesus gave Mary as mother not only to the beloved disciple but to all of the faithful.

Mary's spiritual motherhood is the basis for the “Marian dimension” of the life of each of the disciples of Christ. John Paul II wrote in 1987: “The Marian dimension of the life of a disciple of Christ is expressed in a special way precisely through this filial entrusting to the Mother of Christ, which began with the testament of the Redeemer on Golgotha. Entrusting himself to Mary in a filial manner, the Christian, like the Apostle John, ‘welcomes’ the Mother of Christ “into his own home' and brings her into everything that makes up his inner life” (“Redemptoris Mater,” No. 45).

Lent is a time to deepen our prayer life, and Mary provides the best example of prayer in her canticle, known as the Magnificat (Lk 1:46-55). This canticle expresses the attitudes of praise, gratitude and humility that are at the heart of all authentic prayer to God. St. Paul VI speaks of Mary as “the virgin in prayer” who “praises the Lord unceasingly and intercedes for the salvation of the world” (“Marialis Cultus,” No. 18). As our spiritual mother, Mary not only teaches us how to pray, but she prays for us “now and at the hour of our death.”

In the Gospel of Luke, Simeon told Mary that her heart would be pierced so that “the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed” (Lk 2:35). This prophecy was fulfilled during Christxs passion when Mary stood beneath the cross witnessing her Sonxs crucifixion (Jn 19:25-27). Vatican II tells us that Mary “faithfully persevered in her union with her Son unto the cross, where she stood, in keeping with the divine plan, grieving exceedingly with her only begotten Son, uniting herself with a maternal heart with His sacrifice, and lovingly consenting to the immolation of this Victim which she herself had brought forth” (“Lumen Gentium,” No. 58).

Lent, along with the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, Sept. 15, is also a special time for venerating Mary as our sorrowful mother. This is done in the Stations of the Cross, which often includes the singing of parts of the medieval hymn the “Stabat Mater,” whose most memorable verses are: “At the cross her station keeping, Stood the mournful Mother weeping, Close to Jesus to the last. Through her heart, his sorrow sharing, All his bitter anguish bearing, Now at length the sword had pass’d. Oh, how sad and sore distress’d. Was that mother highly blest, Of the sole-begotten One!”

Because Lent points to Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil, Mary as Our Lady of Sorrows assumes particular importance. But even under the cross, Mary remains a teacher and a model. She shows how all of the faithful, like her, can unite their sufferings to the passion of Christ for the redemption of the world.

Mary’s “unique contribution to the Gospel of suffering” (described by St. John Paul II in “Salvific Doloris”) shows us that suffering is not meaningless. Lent is a special time to remember the sorrows of Mary and to join ourselves to her in offering her divine Son “in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world” (Chaplet of Divine Mercy).

There is no better companion for the journey of Lent than Mary. As she leads us closer to Jesus, she will serve -- as we pray in the “Salve Regina” -- “our life, our sweetness, and our hope.”

Robert Fastiggi, Ph.D., is a professor of systematic theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit. He is former president of the Mariological Society of America.