This is an edited version of a talk delivered during the Word on Fire Institute’s Marian Series on May 22.
. . .
“Satan loves it when people think they have to choose Jesus or Mary.”
This insight from Mark Miravalle resonated profoundly with me in terms of something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time now, which is the Catholic both/and: the idea that Catholicism overcomes false dilemmas with a communion of the heavenly and earthly.
The way I’d like to pose the problem is this: Is Jesus the gate of heaven or is Mary the gate of heaven? Spoiler alert: The answer is both.
I was born eight years into the papacy of John Paul II, that great Polish saint known for his deep devotion to Mary. His episcopal motto was of course Totus tuus (Totally yours)—the “you” in the motto referring to Mary herself—taken from Louis de Montfort, another great saint of Marian devotion. And I grew up going to a parish established for Polish immigrants in Western Massachusetts called Our Lady of Czestochowa. The icon of the Black Madonna was right there in the center of the altar, and at the close of every Mass, those of us serving as altar boys gathered around it in a semicircle and sang a hymn, in Polish, to Mary (“Maryjo, Królowo Polski”—Mary, Queen of Poland). So, needless to say, Mary was always in the picture for me as a Catholic growing up.
When I drifted away from the faith in high school and college, I drifted away from her too. When I returned to the faith soon after, I returned also to her. And she’s still there. Our family prays the Angelus every day at noon. I say a Hail Mary every time I get in the car. A few years ago, my wife and I read the 33 Days to Morning Glory book and participated in a Marian consecration at our parish. My first book, The Way of Heaven and Earth, doesn’t talk about Mary much at all, yet features a beautiful painting of her pregnant with Christ on the cover. And then a new book, Gate of Heaven, which I had the privilege of editing, is all about Mary.
She’s always there.
G. K. Chesterton, reflecting on his life pre-conversion, wrote, “This figure [of Mary] was the figure of the Faith. . . . She embodied, as a complete human being still only human, all that this Thing had to say to humanity. The instant I remembered the Catholic Church, I remembered her; when I tried to forget the Catholic Church, I tried to forget her.”
It’s within the Church, across the sweep of her two-thousand-year history, that we see and understand Mary in full.
All of this raises the question: Why is she always there? Should she be always there? Should the Catholic Church be giving all this time, attention, and devotion to a mere human being? Should it lavish her with titles like Gate of Heaven, Morning Star, Queen of Angels, Queen of Patriarchs, Queen of Prophets, and all the other titles in the Litany of Loreto? And doesn’t this detract from, distract from, Christ?
The X account Sola Chad, a sola scriptura (Scripture alone) defender, recently tweeted something interesting that I think is typical of a lot of Protestants’ view of Mary. He said, “Mary is not the Mediatrix, co-redemptrix, Gate of Heaven, Queen of Heaven, refuge of sinners, mother of the Church, spouse of the Holy Spirit, ark of the new covenant. She is the mother of our Lord Jesus and a humble, faithful servant. [Of course, here I’d want to interject with the famous gif: “Why not both?” He goes on:] The [Roman Catholic Church’s] unbiblical titles have made her into an idol to be worshipped. No one comes to the Father except through Christ.” Here we see the choice for Jesus at the expense of his mother.
And it’s not just Protestants who have a hard time with Mary. Consider this passage from the phenomenal book The Mary Pages by Sally Read, who contributes a foreword and original Marian poetry to the new book, Gate of Heaven. Reflecting on her perspective on Mary as a young atheistic feminist before her conversion to Catholicism, she writes, “[Mary’s] silence weighed on me. . . . It was men who silenced her, who took her story and used it for their own dubious means. It was men who robbed her of . . . the ordinariness of her body . . . the very truth of her story. How best to shut a woman up? Put her on a pedestal and give her a crown.”
So, for many evangelicals, Catholics elevate Mary to divinity. For many atheists, we rob her of her dignity. Both would agree that we miss her identity—her humanity.
When I was tasked with compiling this book of reflections for Word on Fire with its evangelical mission, I had all these objections in the back of my mind. And I wondered: How should this book present Mary, and why Catholic tradition cares so much about her, to people who might be skeptical, from evangelicals like Sola Chad to atheistic feminists like the young Sally Read? I knew I would be drawing, as I did in The Holy Hour, from Scripture, the Catechism, the Fathers, the saints, etc. But what should this book say and how should it say it?
The answer came together on its own: letting the life of the Church speak for itself. It’s within the Church, across the sweep of her two-thousand-year history, that we see and understand Mary in full. She’s there in the Bible, Old Testament and New. From the protoevangelium of Genesis to the heavenly vision of Revelation, she’s there. From the Incarnation to the Crucifixion to Pentecost, she’s there. She doesn’t say a lot in the Gospels, but her words, as Edith Stein put it, “are like heavy grains of pure gold.” And her presence in Scripture is just the beginning. She’s there in the early councils of the Church, the Church Fathers, the medieval antiphons, the Marian dogmas, and the work of countless saints, scholars, and artists down the ages. We see her in the Church’s paintings, cathedrals, prayers, hymns, stories, and poems, right up to the present day.
Chesterton was right: Mary is the figure of our faith. The Church is Marian; it speaks of Mary because it speaks as Mary and with Mary.
“Well,” some people might respond, “so much worse for the Catholic faith; if that’s what Catholicism involves, I want no part of it”—again, choosing Jesus at the expense of Mary. But the second thing to know, which I think also emerges in this book, is that everything that Mary is—everything she says and does—is about her Son. The Carmelite nun and poet Jessica Powers put it this way:
She never walked
with her own beauty
nor made a feast of her goodness,
inviting friends from the far and wide.
She never sat down with her own innocence . . .She was a maiden promised to one lover
whom she was always seeking. . . .She was out on a road alone, hastening onward,
gathering all as a gift, the small and great
fragments of mystery and reality.
Everything was for Him, even her own being.
Mary’s first words in the New Testament are “How can this be?” And they’re in reference to Jesus—conceiving and birthing the Savior. Her last words, at his first miracle, are “Do whatever he tells you”—again in reference to Jesus. Mary ponders Christ, bears Christ, obeys Christ. This is her whole identity—and likewise the identity of the Church.
Here we come back to the original question. Is Jesus the gate of heaven, or is Mary the gate of heaven? The answer is: Yes.
It’s true that no one comes to the Father except through the Son; we have one mediator with God (1 Tim. 2:5). But is it possible that no one comes to the Son except through his mother—called the mediatrix of all graces? Both statements can be true at the same time, and rather than cancel each other out, they enhance each other. We can choose both Christ and his mother, to the endless frustration of Satan. As Scott Hahn put it, Mary “is not in competition with Christ.”
Everything that Mary is—everything she says and does—is about her Son.
“But isn’t it true,” someone might respond, “that Jesus himself says in John 10:9, ‘I am the gate’? Mary doesn’t say that.” True—but this gate to the Father could only enter the world through the “gates of daughter Zion” (Ps. 9:14). The Son gives us the Father, the heavenly God; but Mary gives us the Son, consubstantial with the Father. Mary’s not the gate to the Father in the same way that Christ is; but she is the gate of heaven, for the same reason that she is the mother of God, that early title defined in Ephesus in the fifth century. And the reason is that her Son is divine. If Christ is truly God, then she is truly God’s gate. Once again, both statements—Christ is the gate, Mary is the gate—come together as true.
We see a similar dynamic in Christ the Way. Jesus says “I am the Way” (John 14:6). At the same time—and without contradicting that for a second—Mary plays an indispensable role in showing this Way and guiding us on it. Paragraph 2674 of the Catechism says, “Jesus, the only mediator, is the way of our prayer; Mary, his mother and ours, is wholly transparent to him: she ‘shows the way’ (hodigitria), and is herself ‘the Sign’ of the way, according to the traditional iconography of East and West.” The reference there, hodigitria, is to the iconic style of Mary holding the Christ child and pointing to him—an example of which we see in the Our Lady of Czestochowa icon I mentioned earlier. In Greek it means, literally, “she who shows the Way.” Christ is the Way, and Mary shows the Way. Both are true.
For two thousand years, the Church—in all its Marian language and poetry, doctrine and devotion—has been teasing out this dynamic, which Charles Williams called “coinherence.” The Triune God and the Virgin Mary coinhere with each other—through, with, and in Christ. This is the great love story into which we have been caught up as Mary’s children, and Christ’s brothers and sisters.
This is why Mary matters—not because Christ doesn’t matter, but because he does. Her identity, her humanity, her femininity—all of it is given to him, and assumed to the Father with him. And the Church is called to follow her in following him.
So she’s always there—and always will be.
His body is swaddled head to foot,
but his face is a window: one small pool of light.
This nakedness, that even Adam would not cover,
is a tender dish of listening, hunger
in the nuzzling nose and petal mouth, a sense
of all in the here and now—and dizzy distance,
like that one star announcing the expanse
of night. Lady, see the depths of his dark eyes.
This locked gaze is what keeps God and man
together. It is true prayer: he holding fast
to your face like a constellated sky; you tumbling
softly into him with no lights but those eyes.
—Sally Read, “His Face”