S2 - E1 - Mary, Lovin' Like a Motha

Glory & the Grind

Season 2 - Episode 1 “MARY” — Lovin' like a Motha

Welcome back to Glory & the Grind!

This week, we're diving into one of the most beloved—and often misunderstood—figures in Christianity: Mary, the Mother of Jesus.

Raleigh’s Glory & Grind of the Week

The Grind Potty Training & Summer with Kids
The Glory A Mindset Shift (Still in Progress)

God's Promise for the Week “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” -Luke 1:28

Main Topic: MARY

A listener asked us about Mary's role in the Catholic faith and why Catholics pray to her. We answer that question both personally and scripturally.

Carly's Story: Consecration to Mary

• During a season of deep suffering and uncertainty, Carly encountered Marian consecration through the writings of St. Louis de Montfort.
• One quote that profoundly impacted her was:
• “If we would go up to God, and be united with Him, we must use the same means He used to come down to us to be made Man and to impart His graces to us. This means a true devotion to our Blessed Lady.”
• Through consecration, Mary became a source of consolation, guidance, and deeper intimacy with Jesus.
• The Wedding at Cana provides a powerful image of Mary's intercession. She sees the need, brings it to Jesus, and directs others toward Him:
• “Do whatever He tells you.” (John 2:5)

What Scripture Reveals About Mary

1. Mary is "Full of Grace" Luke 1:28

The angel Gabriel greets Mary with words unlike those given to anyone else:

“Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.”

This title reveals God's unique work in her life. Mary is prepared and perfected by God's grace for her role in salvation history.

2. Mary is the New Eve Luke 1:38

Mary's response to God is complete trust:

“Let it be done to me according to your word.”

Early Christians such as St. Justin Martyr saw Mary's obedient "yes" as the reversal of Eve's disobedience. Through faith and surrender, Mary becomes the model disciple.

3. Mary is the New Ark of the Covenant Luke 1:35; Revelation 11–12

Just as the Ark of the Old Covenant carried God's presence, Mary carried Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, Mary becomes the living Ark of the New Covenant.

Revelation also presents a powerful image of the woman whose offspring are those who keep God's commandments and bear witness to Jesus, highlighting Mary's spiritual motherhood of believers.

4. Jesus Gives Mary to the Church John 19:26–27

At the foot of the Cross, Jesus says:

“Woman, behold your son.”

And to the beloved disciple:

“Behold your mother.”

Catholics understand this moment as more than a personal arrangement. In giving Mary to John—the beloved disciple and leader within the early Church—Jesus gives Mary to all who follow Him.

5. Mary is Present at the Birth of the Church Acts 1:14

Mary is present in the Upper Room with the Apostles as they await Pentecost.

She stands at both the beginning of Christ's earthly life and the beginning of the Church's mission.

As the Holy Spirit descends upon the Church, Mary is once again present with her Spouse, participating in God's unfolding plan of salvation.

What Catholics Also Believe About Mary

• Beyond what is explicitly stated in Scripture, Catholics receive teachings about Mary through Sacred Tradition.
• These include:
  • Mary's perpetual virginity
  • Her bodily Assumption into Heaven
  • Her continuing intercession for the Church
  • Her maternal role toward all Christians
  • Catholics believe Mary continually points us toward Jesus and never toward herself.

Mary's message remains remarkably consistent: Keep your eyes on her Son.

Reflection Question: In a culture where the lines between worship and honor are often blurred, how do you order the activities of your life through the lens of right worship?

Coming Next Episode:  "Faith Levels"

What does faith look like at different stages of the spiritual life?

In our next episode, we'll discuss beginner, intermediate, and mature faith—and how God meets us uniquely at every level.

Connect With Us!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to The Glory and the Grind, the podcast where we explore the beauties and the struggles of living out our Catholic faith. I'm your host, Carly Flynn.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

And I'm also here, Rolly Poche. We are two friends finding grapes in the grind of motherhood and ministry, while also dodging nerf carts, starting and then restarting the laundry, and balancing all the things.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Oh shoot! My clothes have been in the washer for three days.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Well, perhaps they have christened.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Is that a heresy?

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Uh probably not. I don't know. Anyways, we take your questions from life and the grind and look for the glory woven into your story. So let's dive into some moments where holiness and hot messes meet. And we're back. We are in our first episode of season two. Pew, pew, pew. Pew-pew-pew. We still do that. That's still happening. So we're doing things a little differently. Instead of getting into some icebreakers, we're gonna start off our episodes talking about our own glories and grinds. We did that in our wrap of season one, and that both kind of resonated really well with us. So we're gonna talk about a grind that we've experienced and then a glory, not necessarily that's come from that, but there's just something positive that's happened in our lives. So, Carly, if it's cool with you, I'm gonna do my glory and my grind first. I would love to hear it, Raleigh. Please share. And I'm willing to bet that you probably have experienced the same grind. So we're recording this right now in the summer, and all three of my children are home. My two dogs are home. I mean, they're always home, but it's just, it's a lot. We got a lot of people in our house. And we are in the trenches of body potty training. And my youngest is so close to being potty trained. She really could do it. She's just very stubborn. And we are just having a lot of failures in potty training. Yesterday was crazy in our house. Um, she had accidents. One of my dogs is a digger, and she got out. And of course, it's been raining, so she came back super muddy. I had to give her two baths yesterday. They had swim lessons. That went okay, except for, you know, the youngest had issues. And then we had to rush home. My middle child had a dance recital. So I had to hurry up and get all three kids ready to go out the door. We made it, and I'm just like sitting there at the dance recital, sitting next to my mom, telling her everything that happened that day. And like as I am unloading all of this on her, she's being very quiet, being receptive, not saying anything. And then as I'm just like unloading everything that has gone wrong today, my mind shift, it changed, my mindset changes a little bit. And I say, but you know what? At the end of the day, we're still blessed. Like, life is still good. And she said, Yep, exactly. And I can appreciate that she didn't throw it in my face that, like, oh, your dog got out of your backyard, your backyard that your kids can play in safely and not have to worry about anything. Oh, boohoo. Oh, your kids, you know, didn't do great at swim lessons, that they can learn how to do that and learn how to swim. And you can afford to send three kids to swim lessons and find a way in your budget to make that happen. Oh, boo-hoo. You know, it mindset shifts are hard to do, but the glory of my grind is that I can swallow my pride a little bit and God can slowly work on my heart at my own pace to find some peace in all of the chaos. So a bit of a glory that goes with the grind, but we're working on it. I'm a work in progress, Carly. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Well, if you're a work in progress, I'm a real work in progress. That's fantastic. But I'm looking forward to continuing to do that because I think that's going to give us, like you and I, as friends, opportunities to share what we're struggling with and celebrate each other's glories. Um, and I hope to learn from you along the way because we we all need that, right? I know that um it's just great to hear sometimes that I'm not the only one struggling through things. So thank you for sharing. Yeah. It's a group project, this parenting thing. It really is. It really is. So going into today's episode, we're so excited to answer another listener question. Um, we always bring a God's promise into our show so that we can really think about where in scripture is the Lord speaking about whatever topic our our listeners are asking about. So today's promise is a little bit different because it is from the Gospel of Luke, and it doesn't seem like a promise, but it really is. And hopefully by the end of the episode, you feel like it's a promise as well. We're looking at the Gospel of Luke, chapter one, verse 28 that says, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. So to follow that, we are gonna go ahead and jump in to our main question.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

So today's question is about Mary and what's the deal with Mary and what's the deal with Catholics with Mary? Um, Mary, and I've I've jokingly named this Mary raising Jesus like a mother because she she's not just Jesus' mother, right? We're gonna talk about in this episode that God gives us Mary as a mother as well. Uh, before we dig into the Catholic perspective on Mary, we want to encourage you guys, as always, hold our words up against the church's teaching, against sacred tradition and against sacred scripture, not just to fact-check us, but we encourage you to do that because we don't want you to just listen to what we say. We want you to make it yours, learn it on your own. Take this as an initiative to dive deeper. And especially do that if something doesn't sit well with you. It could be the Holy Spirit prompting you to dig deeper on a certain topic, or it could just be human error on our part. So give us some grace, send us some feedback. Um, but do the work yourself as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

And now that all the legal stuff is out of the way, let's dive in. Thanks, Raleigh. Um, so I'm gonna be taking the lead here to talk about Mary because I have a sort of personal devotion to Mary that has developed in a very specific way. So as we think about why do Catholics care so much about Mary? What's the big deal? I thought I would share my personal story first and then kind of dive into where scripturally uh the church gets all of this stuff. Um, but to share about my story, I have to share about consecrating yourself to Mary, which is a very particular type of prayer that we practice in the Catholic Church. Um, and the type of consecration that I practiced is from Saint Louis de Montvert. And I'm just gonna give you a couple quotes that come from these consecration prayers and the booklets that kind of go with the consecration, so that you get a sense of the ethos, right? Like you can hear from a Catholic who is a saint, who we believe is in heaven, who really loved Mary, and you get an idea of why he thinks this is a big deal, why this is important. So it's not just um because Mary's cool and all, right? Like you'll kinda you'll hear the heart of it. So let's see what Saint Louis says. If we would go up to God and be united with him, we must use the same means he used to come down to us to be made man and to impart his graces to us. This means having a true devotion to our lady. And again, of course, if you're a Christian, if you've been a Christian for five minutes, you know that Christ came to earth as a little baby through a woman, through his mother. Um, and we believe in the Catholic Church that Mary was free from original sin, free from any sin, that she had to be this like perfect vessel for God to come down to earth through her and through the Holy Spirit. So St. Louis is saying, you can go to Mary to do the opposite, right? To bring if she brought him to you, you can go to her and she will bring you to him. And that's just like a beautiful, kind of simple sentiment. Um, but he also says this, which I think I like even more. The authority with which God was pleased to give her is so great that she seems to have the same power as God, although she does not. Her prayers and requests are so powerful with him, and he accepts them in a sense that he does not resist his dear mother's prayer because she is always so humble and always so conformed to his will. And this makes me think about the wedding at Cana, right? His first miracle was because his mama asked him to. Like he wasn't ready. He said, It's not my time. Why are you bringing this up right now? And she said, Do whatever he tells you. And she did not say, He's going to tell you to make wine, right? Like she didn't prompt, she didn't plan it. Like we've we've probably all met an overbearing mother at some point who's like, and now my little baby will do X, Y, and Z because he's following mommy's instructions. Like, no, she said, do whatever he tells you. He could have said, do nothing. And it would have been his will, and she would have uh been humble and conformed to that. Do whatever he tells you, don't ask questions. Right. That's it. She didn't say he's gonna do what I want. She said, Could you please? And he said, Really? And she said, do whatever he tells you. She she hung back, but he was so delighted to please her and to serve her, and like excited to be called out by this prompting that he was willing to do his first miracle and begin his ministry, right? So this just kind of lays the foundation for like why would this saint talk about Mary being powerful or being um, you know, special? It's because of her relationship with her son that she brought him into the world, not by her own power, but by her own receptivity. And then she partners with him throughout his ministry and throughout his time in heaven. She's just standing next to him in all humility and love, just saying, like, would you please? Would you please? Would you please? And he, in in his delight and love for her, is saying, Absolutely, absolutely, right? And they just love each other. So before I dive in any more to that, Raleigh, do you have any thoughts on St.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Louis de Montfort and his So I did the consecration um to Jesus through Mary from St. Louis de Montfort when I was in college. And there's a few other ones now, like 33 Days to Morning Glory and different things like that. But I did the OG, you know, one. And I just remember loving it. My consecration day is the Annunciation. Um, and I tried a couple different times and it just didn't take. And then finally I just like sat down, made it work. And the biggest thing that I got through that consecration is that the phrase, the title of what it is, to Jesus through Mary. It's not to Mary for Mary, it's to Jesus through Mary. And so many fruitful things have come from that in my own life. Um, but one of the biggest struggles that I had doing my consecration to Jesus through Mary was that my prayers, I offer them to Jesus through his mother to do whatever she wants with them. Like, I'm gonna say this rosary, and I'm praying for a specific intention, and I am trusting that my prayers, my intercession, you will use at your will. And, you know, you will use as you see, as you see fit. And at first I'm like, well, no, if I'm praying for somebody, I want them to get my prayers. Um, but it's also that that discipline and that devotion and that um humility, that understanding, right? Like Jesus knows best. Therefore, his mama knows best.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Right. Because she only does what he would have her do.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Because she is sinless and perfect and loves him better than anybody ever did.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

So that's just a little bit about who Mary is to us personally. But I'll share with you a little bit more about my consecration journey. Um, I came to St. Delouis, St. Louis de Montfort's consecration in a real time of suffering and confusion. And so, Raleigh, you probably know this story already, but I went through a season where I was having miscarriage after miscarriage. And it was a very painful time, as I'm sure anyone can imagine. And I I did not know how to suffer that way, right? Like that's like a life skill. That's definitely a Christian skill to figure out like, how do you suffer well? How do you handle grief? How do you handle confusion? Um, and I didn't know what to do with it. I really truly just felt lost. So somewhere, I don't know if I was listening to a podcast like you guys are now, or if I was um reading something or or someone recommended to me, I really don't know how I found it. Maybe it was Hallow. Maybe Hallow was doing it. I don't know. I had this idea of like doing a Mary in consecration and saying, you know, in this journey of trying to become a mother, at this point I already had two children, but I wanted to have more. Um I was like, okay, maybe I need to pray to a mother. Like maybe that would be consoling to me is just to kind of enter into Mary's heart and think more seriously that way. I was fully, full disclosure, not prepared. I did not fully understand what I was getting myself into in starting this consecration. But it was like once I started, I knew I had to just hunger down and do it. Um, and it sounds that way because if you're not familiar with it, you say a certain series of prayers every day for 33 days. So it's quite a commitment. And some of the prayers can be lengthy, um, but beautiful and easy. Like it just, it's it's it's a time commitment. And while you're saying these prayers, they are prompting you to consider your humility, consider your the posture of your heart. Are you grasping at things or are you giving them over to Jesus? Are you attached to certain outcomes or certain identities? And then you're detaching from those things and handing them over to Jesus. And he in turn gives you himself and gives you his mother. And it's beautiful. So when I was saying these prayers and experiencing this time of trial, of course, I was praying very specifically to have a successful pregnancy, to have a third child. And um, it was just out of the depths of my heart, you know, like the way you pray when you don't know how to pray. It was those types of prayers. And I was saying the words that the consecration booklet or the audio prayer was prompting me to say. But I know that my heart was praying more than my lips were in all of that. And in learning about how Mary was a mother to Jesus, learning through those prayers, how she was so gentle, so humble, always just turning everything over to Jesus. Everything, everything, everything over to Jesus. Nothing is my own. I have no merits to call my own. Everything is from the Lord. I am just a vessel. He is there to fill me. Like everything was so detached and humble and lowly that that is where I found my consolation. Was in like, I don't have to fix whatever's happening to cause this infertility. It's not on me, right? Like I can pass all of this over to the Lord and pass my desires and my hopes and my dreams and my love and my grief over to him and be freed from it, be released from it. And he will fill me. I just need to be emptying myself completely with Mary as an example of that, giving it over to Jesus. And then she is there to like console and to pray along with you and all the things. And that was so consoling for me. But here's the part that I really want to share. Just to give you guys a little extra glory story today, you might not have known you were in store for it. Um, I've told you all that I'm a mother of three. So you know, you know that it came to a good um end of the story. But the part that is really specific to the consecration, to having a relationship with Mary that I have delighted to share with people. You said your uh um consecration day was the Annunciation. Is that what you said? That is what I said, and that is the truth. My consecration day was the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

Get out.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Yeah. And then on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, I'm at Mass, Holy Day of Obligation, right? So I'm at Mass. And during that mass, I had a sense in my prayer, because I'm just praying the mass regularly. Like I'm not like laid out in the spirit at mass or anything. I'm just praying, saying the praise. And I get this sense, just this real kind of like warmth and this sense of like delight that like I like Jesus is happy that I'm here. Have you ever had that feeling, Raleigh? Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

I've had that feeling, and it's usually happened in the presence of the Eucharist.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Um I just felt like Jesus was happy that I was there. And so I said a little prayer in response, just like, oh, I'm so happy that I'm gonna get to receive you today, Jesus. And like, I'm so grateful for that. And then I felt in the prayer that the Lord was saying, My mother has been talking to me about you. And I was like, Okay, because I've been saying a lot of prayers. Like this is on my consecration day, you know. I'm glad that you guys like heard me, you know. And he said, She has a request and I would like to grant it. And I was like, Okay, I don't know what that means exactly, but great.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Love it.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

You know, so then I was just like, okay, great. Sounds good. Thank you so much. And that was kind of like the whole prayer experience. Received communion, participated in the mass for the rest of the mass, went about my day. It was a mass at school because I was working at the school. Went about the rest of my work day. Um, and then uh I said my consecration prayer. Um, I was able to go to church because they say you should say the prayer in front of a tabernacle or in front of um an exposed host. Um, so I was able to do that. And then I told my husband at the end of the day, I was just like, hey, I've been saying these prayers for 33 days, and I felt like today at Mass that the Lord said that he's gonna grant my request. And my husband went, okay.

unknown 19:19

And I said, Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

He's like, which is very like cool, sweet. Detached from the outcome. That was the point, right? That I was just like, Yeah, whatever happens next, it is a gift. Right. And that's good. And spoiler alert, what happened next is that we had our third little baby and she is precious. And on another episode of the podcast, we can talk about how she arrived into the world because that was that is that's a good story. But that is all to say that no one is going to convince me that praying to Mary is not a good and holy thing, right? But to understand how the church views Mary and how to go about praying to Mary, I think can be a stumbling block for a lot of people, figuring out, like, of course, Jesus is the king. Of course, you know, put God above all things, like all of that. Duh, of course. But then Catholics kind of do this whole thing where there's pictures of Mary at church and they pray the rosary. And um, right, it just is kind of awkward. So, Raleigh, what has been your experience of people maybe stumbling over Mary in their spiritual life?

SPEAKER_00 20:29

So, teaching high school theology, um, and actually let me go back because I remember being in being out of college, I was a young teacher, and I went over to a high school friend's house after one of our football games, and I'm hanging out with him, and his friends from college um are in town. And he went to a, I can't remember if it was a public university or a Baptist university, but they were, they were Baptist. And he was just talking about how um he was talking about the mass because he remained Catholic and he was still very devout. And one of his friends said something about the Eucharist. And he's like, Well, yeah, well, you know, you guys with your, you know, your breads and your um, your your body and blood of Christ. Or he said something. And I was like, Well, yeah, it's Jesus Christ present in the Eucharist. And I remember my friend um from high school saying, Yeah, probably go, go. I've been waiting for somebody to be here to pack me up on this. I'm like, oh yeah, we got it, baby. Let's go. Um, so we're talking about all these things, and we're talking about Mary, and we're talking about, you know, and it was all, it was really all in good fun. And it was, it was very refreshing to have a conversation, right? That wasn't us versus them, it was just conversation. And we got on the topic of Mary. And we had just gotten from a football game, right? We went to a high school football game. High school football in our small town is such a big deal. The biggest. And I said, Yeah, it is the biggest. And I said, Um, well, we don't worship Mary, we honor Mary. And the lines between honor and worship. Are so blended in so many things in our lives, right? Uh, I'm gonna take high school football, for example, because we are both from a very small town where high school sports uh reigns supreme over most of our lives. We plan our weeks around it, our weekends around it. Uh, we plan our Sundays in the fall over, you know, NFL football.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

People in some ways plan their whole life around what do I need to do when my kids are five and six years old to be able to play high school football.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Right. Can I hold them back in this grade so that they can be even more successful?

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Or like, do I need to play tackle or flag or whatever? Or am I going to be the team leader at the football?

SPEAKER_00 22:37

First or second grade so that they can be the oldest. And like these, there's like a 10-year plan for kids in sports, um, which I'm not knocking because, you know, to each their own. Bring your kids to mass on Sunday and you're still good. But the lines between honor and worship are so blended in sports or other activities in our lives that when the defense of honor and worship with Mary is given, those lines are so blended in, you know, non-holy things that it's hard to translate them into holy things. So my experience with that is that when I'm explaining to people, you know, especially my students in my classroom or that conversation that I talked about, um, I first have to define what worship is, right? And what honor is. Like we worship the mass and we sacrifice in that. You use the term, I wrote it down, prayed the mass, because we are at the mass, the holy, you know, blessed sacrament, and we are worshiping and we are sacrificing to God. We're not sitting there honoring him. We are participating in the worship of Jesus Christ because that is the only thing we worship.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

We are re-presenting the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross. We're not, we're not, we're not crucifying him again. That's gotta be clear.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

Say it again for the people in the back.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

We are re-presenting the sacrifice that Jesus made one time. We are re-presenting it. We're presenting it again. We're showing God again. Yes, we remember. Yes, we remember what he did for us. We know that he is still here. We do praise during the word. We we sing praise, we read the scriptures, and then we actually re-present what God did on the cross. He sacrificed his body, and then in the communion, his body is still with us. So we show God again, we literally lift God's own body up to him and say, We remember that you did this and we re-present it to you as our own sacrifice. It is that's how you worship.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

You participate in the sacrifice, and that is the only thing we worship, right? That is the only thing Catholics worship is God. It's a first commandment, right? Thou shalt not put any eye the gods before me. But in our own lives, there are things that trickle into that space of what we could see from the outside looking in, kind of looks like worship, right? Yeah. But it is an honoring. We, we, we love our football teams, we love our baseball teams, we love our, you know, our kids with their dance recitals. We love those things, we honor those things and cherish those things, but we are not worshiping them. And in the same aspect, we see Mary as something that should be honored, right? Something that should be revered and respected. Um, and asking her to pray for us and intercede for us is no different than me saying, Hey, Carly, I'm going through XYZ. Please pray for me. Like that's what we do with the saints. That's what we do with Mary because we know they are in physical, you know, proximity to Jesus Christ in heaven, especially to your life on earth.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

Because in in Catholicism, we believe that Mary was assumed into heaven, meaning she's the only creature who never tasted death. Even Jesus died, but he rose again and is full in his glory, and we love and praise him above all else. But in his love for her, in his honor of her, he assumed her body and soul into heaven. We don't go to Mary's grave, right? We don't go look for Mary's tombstone. The Divinity Buddha is a lie. We believe that Mary is body and soul in heaven, um, and that she was free from sin. That like she never knew sin. She never knew death. That's pretty unique. Like, and that is because of God's will for her. So by saying that, we're not saying, wow, look at Mary being so awesome. Mary would say, look at my son being so awesome. He loves me so perfectly that he made a place for me to come and sit beside him and spend eternity with him. And after I got to spend my whole life with him, like, isn't he wonderful? That's how she would talk. So of course we want to look to her and say, hey, you seem to love Jesus pretty perfectly. So could you help me?

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Could you help me to love him more perfectly, please? Right. Like if you want to do something well, go to the person who does it the best. And um, you brought up the assumption. So I want to bring up when talking about the assumption of Mary, think about the terminology. Jesus ascended into heaven and Mary was assumed into heaven. So Jesus ascended on his own accord. He did not need any help. Ascend means to do on your own. He ascended into heaven. Mary was assumed. It's like she was pulled up by Jesus. Mary didn't say, okay, go go gadget wings and went up to heaven, right? Like she was brought to heaven by her son Jesus. Um, so ascension and assumption, words matter, words have meaning. So we know that the physical metaphysics is it's words. It is words.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

So what I have prepared for you guys for this um sort of wrap-up of a focus on Mary is where I think we can all agree on Mary, which is what they what we learned about her in the scripture, right? So one thing I do want to say is that if you are Catholic or if you're Catholic curious, you know, we have a um we have a duty as Catholics to believe in the dogma of the Catholic Church, which are the things that the Catholic Church says, these are the things we believe. And if you don't believe these things, then you're technically not Catholic. Not because we don't want you to be. We're just saying, like, to be Catholic means to believe in XYZ. And there are certain dogmas associated with Mary's identity and Mary and like the conditions of Mary's life. But you do not have to have a devotion to Mary. You do not have to pray the rosary. You do not have to memorize a Hail Mary or any of that in order to call yourself a Catholic. You, like I said, you have to confess those dogmas in order to be in full communion with the church. But that doesn't mean that Mary needs to become your sidekick and you have to do the Mary and consecration like Raleigh and I both did and all the other things. These are extras, these are opportunities, right? Um, but if you find Mary to be a stumbling block for you and you just want to figure out like, where's this foundation even coming from? Why does the church even make her a big deal at all? We're gonna look to the scripture really quickly. We've got five pieces of scripture that we're just gonna kind of breeze through that hopefully will give you somewhere to start in your own prayer life. Pray with these pieces of scripture, go to the catechism and get yourself started in your own journey in understanding um the church's honoring of Mary. So the first piece of scripture we're gonna look at is Luke chapter one, verse 28. That was God's promise today, where the angel Gabriel says, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. The reason I made that God's promise today is because it is a promise. It is a promise that the Lord is already with Mary and that he will remain with her. So if you turn to Mary and say, Mary, you are full of grace, all you're doing is quoting an angel. All you are doing is quoting scripture. So you can't feel like it's unholy to quote scripture, right? So there's that. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with you. I know that I can turn to Mary and the Lord will be with her because she has made it her business to be with the Lord. And that's what it's all about. We also believe, and we we hear that in um the gospel of Luke, that this title of being full of grace means that she is perfect, that she is without sin, that she is without blemish. And she was preserved from sin by God. Like we believe that Jesus was a part of creation. So we believe that he got to like design his mom, right? That he got to say she's gonna be different from all the other women. Never thought about that in my life. Isn't that amazing?

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Never thought about that in my life.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

Because all things were created through him. He is the logos. So whenever he was saying, I am going to come into this earth, not only did he get to design his mom, he got to design his grandparents. He got to design the whole lineage of David. He got to do all of it. He got to say, How am I gonna get here? Who do I have to come through? Wow and like he made the whole lineup happen. Then he sounded just like that. In his mind, I bet it was. It was like done. Word. So go to Luke. That's a good place to start. The next place we're gonna go is still in Luke. It's just 10 verses down. Luke 1, verse 38, which is where we hear Mary's fiat, which is her yes, her yes to God's plan. Because not only did God design his mom and made her perfect, he said it's gonna be up to her whether or not she gets, she wants to do this. You know, like I'm not gonna force myself upon her. I'm able to invite her into salvation history in this very significant role. Um, I'm gonna send my messenger. And if she says yes, then the Holy Spirit will overshadow her and I will have somewhere to hang out for nine months. Um, so she said yes to that, and she said, let it be done to me according to thy word, which shows us her perfect humility and her perfect willingness to be a part of God's plan. So we can trust her. Um, Saint Justin Martyr, um, who's one of the great, you know, like theologians of our of our church, said that her obedient yes was the undoing of Eve's no. So in that way, we refer to Mary as the new Eve. So if Eve was the one who said no and brought sin into the world alongside her husband Adam, then Mary and her yes and Joseph's yes were the undoing of that original sin and bringing about salvation to mankind. So grateful to them. We also refer to Mary not only as the new Eve, but as the new ark of the covenant. And this also comes from Luke. Oh, I love this. Me too. But this also comes from Revelation. So this is two pieces of scripture. Luke chapter one, verse 35, we hear um that the child born unto Mary will be called holy, the son of God, which is where we get the term Theotokos or God-bearer as one of the references to Mary. So if we know, because we studied Old Testament, that the Ark of the Covenant is where God placed himself significantly present to the Israelites, like he would come as that column of smoke or that cloud of smoke and find his dwelling among the Israelites in the Ark of the Covenant. We're not talking about Indiana Jones, we're talking about real time. Right. Right. Then when Mary said yes and received God in her womb, she is now the new Ark of the Covenant. She is now the one holding God's presence on earth.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Yeah. And something that blew my mind that I never had thought about, someone uh said this in college. I went to like a talk or a night of worship or something. And they talked about Joseph and how after the angel Gabriel came to Joseph and said, You will be, you know, stay with Mary. The child that she is bearing is the son of God. Joseph would have known his scriptures. Joseph would have known that Mary is this new tabernacle, and he didn't want to divorce Mary quietly because he was ashamed. He was probably scared because dang, they carried the tabernacle in the Old Testament around and special people had to carry it. And if you touched it and you weren't one of those special people, you died instantly. And like he homeboy probably got a little scared.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

Right. Like I'm the only one who can protect the Ark of the Covenant by myself.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:04

Like that's a big responsibility. And I gotta do it in a way where everybody's gonna ostracize me and think I'm crazy.

SPEAKER_00 35:09

Yeah. And I mean, praise God for Joseph that he also said yes and like take with that what you want. That's just one person's interpretation. But um, it made a lot of sense to me. Made a lot of sense to me.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

We also hear about that in the book of Revelation, in chapter 12, verse 17 of Revelation, um, we hear uh that Mary's offspring are those who keep God's commandment and bear testimony to Jesus. So whenever we hear that Mary is the mother of the church or that Mary is um, you know, a mother to all Christians, that's one of the scriptures where we get that from. So if she is the mother of God, she is by extension the mother of the church and the mother of all Christians. We also get that idea from the Gospel of John, which is the next one. Number four, Jesus himself designed his mom, um, invited his mom to salvation history, and then at his death on the cross, gave his mother to us as a gift. Um, we hear in the Gospel of John, chapter 19, verse 26 and 27, dear woman, here is your son to the disciple, here is your mother. And from that time on, the disciple took her into his own home. And we read that in the church as Mary being given as a gift to one of the apostles, to one of the leaders of the church, to one of the founding members of the church, right?

SPEAKER_02 36:29

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

And by extension to all of us, because she is going to continue to be an active mother in the early church, right? We know that she's present with them as they are going through all of these early stages of ministry and living with them after Christ's death, right? So she's going to be there and be a mother to all of them. And then that takes us into our fifth piece of scripture, which is Acts chapter one, verse 14 at Pentecost, where G Mary is there when the Holy Spirit descends upon the apostles. And what we hear is Mary is found in the upper room with the apostles. These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren, praying in the spirit as they receive all that they need to begin the church. The birthday of the church, she was there. And this, you just talked about something you heard at a talk. One thing I heard at a talk that blew my mind was that we talk about the Holy Spirit as Mary's spouse, because that is the only intimacy she would have experienced in order to conceive Jesus was being overshadowed by the spirit. Someone said Pentecost was just like a reuniting with her long-lost um spouse.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

You know, just like he had been with the Lord and the Lord was able to give the spirit. We see him doing that um during his ministry so that the apostles could drive out demons and cure the sick and all of that. But like it wasn't unleashed yet. But she knew the Holy Spirit already, where everybody else was just meeting him, you know? It's like what a gift.

SPEAKER_00 38:16

Yeah, and Pentecost, um, we talked uh in the first season about, you know, uh well, what was it? We talked about charismatic Catholics and we talked about uh traditionalists and the celebration of Pentecost in the church is such a big deal, I believe, in both, you know, quote unquote camps, because it is the birthday of the church. And it is usually the Sunday where we invite and we bring into the church all of those adults that have been studying through the OCIA program to become Catholic. So not only is it a birthday of the church, it's a celebration of the apostles meeting the Holy Spirit for the first time, but it's also bringing in people into the church, you know, and them receiving the Eucharist and being received into the church for the first time. So the the celebration of Pentecost is not just a regular Sunday in our church. It is a it's a it's a huge. It's a beast. It's the best of the best of the best. That's from a show. I can't remember what it is. It's fine. But good, good stuff today. Good stuff today. So hopefully we've given you something to think about when it comes to Mary and when it comes to the honoring of Mary versus the worshiping of Mary. And that's going to bring us to our follow-up reflection question for this episode. In a culture where the lines between worship and honor are blended, how do you order the activities in your life through the lens of right worship? Where are things falling before God? And how should they be falling after God? Right. Because God should come first. So just something to think about, something to bring up in the car ride when everything is quiet, just something to randomly throw out at your fingertips. Your car gets quiet? Never. Literally never.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

Let's say no fair. I have no idea what this is. Quiet car.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

It's only quiet when I'm by myself. Sounds nice. So this is that's a wrap. That's a wrap for season two, episode one, What About Mary? And in next episode, we're going to talk about the different faith levels. And I'm not talking about like you're a level one Catholic or you're a level two Catholic. We're just talking about being in different devotions of your faith or different, you know, sincerity of your faith and how to kind of maneuver through that when you're trying to make friends that are taking their faith a little bit more seriously, or just kind of trying to deal with um being in a relationship with someone who may not prioritize their faith. So just kind of what that looks like. We hope you guys enjoyed today's episode about. Let me try that again. We hope you enjoyed today's episode and that the spirit guided your reflection. Again, on our next episode, we're going to talk about different levels of our faith and what that kind of looks like in your own life.

SPEAKER_01 41:17

So if you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to follow us on Instagram and on YouTube. We would love to see you there engaging and share a question with us for future episodes. You can email us at thegloryandegrind pod at gmail.com or DM us over at Instagram at thegloryandegrind. We would absolutely love to hear from you.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

See you all next episode. We're praying for you. Please pray for us too. Peace.