# Mary Made it Make Sense | Why I Came Home to the Catholic Church | Part Five

An episode of [AfterMass](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1823710125), 4 Nov 2025, 26 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/1069762b8/podcast/play/110651719/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-10-4%2F410546787-44100-2-468b3d035b3d8.mp3

Most people who push back on Marian devotion aren’t trying to reject truth.. they’re trying to protect Jesus. They love Him. They just don’t understand how honoring Mary magnifies Him instead of replacing Him. In this episode, I walk through the biblical, historical, and spiritual reasons why devotion to Mary isn’t optional or extra, it’s essential. We’ll look at her role as the New Eve, the Ark of the Covenant, and how her “yes” continues to echo through the life of every believer who chooses surrender over pride. If you’ve ever wrestled with why Catholics honor Mary, this is the episode that finally makes it make sense. 💌 Contact me: theaftermasspodcast@gmail.com ⚡ Powered by Truthly 👉 Download the app: bit.ly/anaXtruthly (get a free 30-day trial with code AFTERMASS) #Catholic #CatholicPodcast #AfterMass #CatholicFaith #CatholicChurch #ConversionStory #TruthlyAI #AnaMunley #WhyICameHome

## Transcript

[0:00] Hi friends, and welcome back to Aftermath, the podcast for
[0:03] Catholics who want more than just faith on Sundays.
[0:06] I'm your host Anna, and this is episode 4 of my seven part
[0:09] series that I'm doing called Why I Came Home, 7 Reasons I Found
[0:14] Truth in the Catholic Church. And every part so far has built
[0:17] on one simple goal, which is to show you why Catholicism isn't
[0:21] just an old tradition. It's the logical, historical and
[0:25] spiritual home of Christianity. Today, we're diving into why
[0:29] Mary made it make sense. If Mary makes you nervous,
[0:38] you've probably learned about her without Jesus at the center.
[0:41] Most people who push back on Mary and devotion, they are not
[0:44] trying to be rebellious. They're trying to protect Jesus.
[0:48] They love him. They just think that loving Mary
[0:51] competes with him. But The thing is, honoring Mary
[0:54] does not replace Jesus. It magnifies him because
[0:58] everything about her points right back to him.
[1:01] Her entire existence is 1 massive echo of the incarnation
[1:05] where God became flesh. And I think that's something
[1:08] that I personally missed. For a long time I thought Mary
[1:12] was more of like a side character side topic, like a
[1:16] sweet add on for sentimental Catholics.
[1:19] But once you actually understand who she is, you realize that
[1:22] she's not a distraction from Jesus.
[1:24] She's instead just proof of how close He really came to us.
[1:29] If God didn't want a mother for his Son, he didn't have to make
[1:32] one. But He did.
[1:34] And He didn't just borrow her womb and move on.
[1:37] He honored her and obeyed her and loved her.
[1:40] And that tells us something about the heart of God that we
[1:43] miss if we keep her at arm's length.
[1:46] So in this episode, I want to walk through how Mary made it
[1:49] make sense for me, why the doctrines about her aren't just
[1:53] random, but why they actually protect the truth about Christ,
[1:56] and how honoring her ended up deepening my love for him more
[2:00] than I ever expected. For a lot of us, Catholics
[2:03] included too, we grew up hearing the Catholics worship Mary.
[2:07] And I do understand why that phrase gets tossed around a lot.
[2:09] Because from the outside, Mary and devotion can look like
[2:12] idolatry. We've got statues and candles
[2:15] and prayers and processions, and it can feel excessive if you
[2:18] don't actually understand what's happening.
[2:21] But the intention behind it is not to compete with Jesus.
[2:25] It's actually to protect the truth about him.
[2:27] Most Christians who question Mary and devotion are doing it
[2:30] from a sincere place. They want to keep Jesus at the
[2:33] center. And that's actually a really
[2:35] great instinct. But the problem is when you
[2:37] remove Mary from the story of salvation, you don't get a
[2:40] version that's more Christ centered.
[2:42] You get one that's incomplete because from the very beginning,
[2:46] God has never worked in isolation.
[2:48] He's always worked through people, through covenants and
[2:51] families and chosen instruments. We've got Noah, who built the
[2:55] ark. We have Abraham who carried the
[2:57] promise, Moses who held the law, and David carried the throne,
[3:01] and Mary, she carried the word made flesh.
[3:04] God doesn't need anyone to accomplish as well, but he
[3:06] chooses to involve humanity in it.
[3:09] And Mary is the ultimate example of that cooperation between
[3:12] divine grace and human freedom. So the question isn't why do
[3:16] Catholics honor Mary? The question should be, why
[3:18] wouldn't we? If God himself honored her by
[3:20] choosing her, calling her full of grace, and dwelling in her
[3:24] womb, how can we say that we love Jesus but ignore the woman
[3:27] that he loved the most? Every Marian truth, every title,
[3:32] every devotion is not about giving Mary power that she
[3:35] doesn't have. It's about recognizing the power
[3:38] of God working through her. So when you really understand
[3:42] that honoring Mary doesn't take attention from Jesus, it directs
[3:46] your gaze right where it belongs, which is to him, to the
[3:49] one that never stops. When you really understand that
[3:52] honoring Mary doesn't take attention away from Jesus, it
[3:56] directs your gaze right where it belongs, to the one that she He
[3:59] never stops pointing towards. Every single teaching about Mary
[4:03] is really a teaching about Jesus.
[4:05] If you take the doctrines about Mary out of the story, you don't
[4:09] just lose her, you slowly lose the incarnation.
[4:13] If you think about it, Christianity is not built on an
[4:16] idea, it's built on a person, God taking on flesh.
[4:20] The moment the Word became flesh, everything changed.
[4:23] Heaven collided with earth, eternity entered time, and that
[4:27] happened through Mary, through a real woman who said yes to God
[4:31] before she understood the whole plan.
[4:33] That's why the early Church defended Marian doctrines so
[4:36] fiercely, not because they wanted to exaggerate her
[4:39] importance, but because they wanted to protect the mystery of
[4:42] who Jesus truly is, which is fully God and fully man.
[4:46] You can't separate the two things.
[4:48] If you diminish Mary, you end up diluting the truth of the
[4:52] incarnation, because she is living proof that God didn't
[4:55] just appear to be human, he became human.
[4:58] Her body is where divinity touched humanity.
[5:01] Her blood became his blood. Her DNA became his DNA.
[5:06] If that doesn't make you stop and awe for a second, then
[5:10] you've gotten too used to the story.
[5:12] Honoring Mary does not blur the line between God and man.
[5:16] It draws it even sharper because her greatness is not about her
[5:21] own strength, it's about what God did in her.
[5:24] The same way that we honor the cross, not because it's wood but
[5:28] because of who hung on it, we honor Mary not because she's
[5:32] divine, but because of who she carried.
[5:35] Mary keeps Jesus human, not just divine in theory, but human in
[5:39] history. And the moment that you start to
[5:42] see that devotion to her stops feeling foreign and starts
[5:45] feeling like the most natural way to love Christ more deeply,
[5:49] one of the most beautiful ways that Scripture reveals who Mary
[5:52] is without needing to even say her name is through typology.
[5:57] Typology just means a pattern of foreshadowing, something in the
[6:00] Old Testament that points to something greater in the New
[6:03] Testament. And one of the strongest Marian
[6:06] typologies in all of scripture is the Ark of the Covenant.
[6:09] So let's go back for a second. In the Old Testament, the ark
[6:13] was not just a golden box, it was the holiest object in
[6:16] Israel. It carried the presence of God,
[6:19] and inside of it were tablets of the law, the word of God in
[6:23] stone. We also had a jar of manna and
[6:25] Aaron's rod that budded with life.
[6:28] And wherever that ark went, God's glory went with it.
[6:31] People bowed, they sing, they processed before it, not because
[6:36] they worshipped the wood and the gold, but because they revered
[6:39] what God Himself chose to dwell. Fast forward to the New
[6:43] Testament in Luke's Gospel that mirrors Second Samuel almost
[6:47] word for word when he describes Mary's visit to Elizabeth in
[6:51] Second Samuel 6, David goes to bring the ark to Jerusalem.
[6:55] The ark travels to the Hill Country of Judah, and David
[6:58] asks, how can the ark of the Lord come to me?
[7:02] And he leaps for joy before it. Now if you go to Luke 1, Mary
[7:06] travels to the Hill Country of Judah.
[7:08] Elizabeth filled with the Holy Spirit says, why is this granted
[7:12] to me, that he, the mother, What did she say?
[7:14] That the mother of my Lord should come to me and the child
[7:17] in her womb. John the Baptist leaps for joy.
[7:21] That is not a coincidence. Luke knew exactly what he was
[7:24] doing. The Holy Spirit inspired him to
[7:26] show us that the ark that once carried the Word of God written
[7:30] on stone, now carries the Word of God made flesh.
[7:34] The old ark held the manna from heaven.
[7:37] The new ark holds the bread of life.
[7:40] The old ark held the staff of the high priest.
[7:42] The new ark carries the eternal high priest himself.
[7:46] The old ark was overshadowed by the glory of God.
[7:49] The new ark was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit.
[7:52] If God made an object that carried His presence so holy
[7:56] that no one could even touch it without dying, why would we
[8:00] think that the woman who carried His Son would be treated with
[8:03] less reverence? Honoring Mary does not mean that
[8:06] we are worshipping her. It means that we recognize what
[8:09] God did through her. It means that we understand that
[8:12] she is the vessel through which heaven touched earth, the Ark of
[8:16] the New Covenant, carrying not symbols of God, but God Himself.
[8:20] So when Catholics honor Mary, we are not inventing something.
[8:24] We are continuing the same pattern God established
[8:27] thousands of years ago. He dwells in holy places, and
[8:31] those places deserve honor not because of what they are, but
[8:35] because of who is within them. Now let's move on to the most
[8:38] misunderstood teachings when it comes to the Marian doctrines,
[8:42] which is the Immaculate Conception.
[8:45] This is not about Jesus being conceived without sin, That's
[8:49] the incarnation. The Immaculate Conception is
[8:52] about Mary, meaning from the first moment of her existence
[8:55] God preserved her from original sin.
[8:59] And the reason is not just random, it's entirely about
[9:02] Jesus. God always prepares the place
[9:04] before he fills it. That's his pattern from the very
[9:07] beginning. He formed the garden before
[9:10] placing Adam in it. He gave Noah the blueprint for
[9:12] the ark before the flood came. He gave Moses the instructions
[9:16] for the Tabernacle before his glory filled it.
[9:19] So it only makes sense that before the Word of God became
[9:22] flesh, God would prepare a pure dwelling for himself, not out of
[9:26] gold or wood, but out of humanity.
[9:29] The Immaculate Conception is not about Mary making herself
[9:32] perfect. It's about God's grace doing
[9:35] something extraordinary in her life so that his Son could take
[9:39] on flesh from an unstained vessel.
[9:42] It's what theologians called prevenient grace.
[9:45] I'll put the word on the screen. You guys know me in my
[9:47] pronunciations, but it means grace that goes before.
[9:51] So Mary was saved by Jesus, just like we are.
[9:53] The difference is that she was saved in advance, redeemed at
[9:56] the first moment of her existence by the merits of the
[9:59] same cross that would one day hang above her.
[10:02] In other words, Jesus was so powerful a Savior that he could
[10:06] apply the fruits of his redemption before the event even
[10:09] happened. So Mary's sinlessness does not
[10:11] compete with Christ's saving work.
[10:13] It magnifies it. It shows how total his victory
[10:17] is, that his grace doesn't just heal after sin happens, but it
[10:21] can prevent it entirely. And when you look at it through
[10:24] that way, the Immaculate Conception isn't just a Marian
[10:27] doctrine, it's a Christological masterpiece.
[10:30] It protects what we believe about the holiness of Christ,
[10:34] because if God the Son is truly perfect, it would be unfitting.
[10:39] Not impossible, because he can do anything but unfitting for
[10:44] his humanity to come from a vessel still under the dominion
[10:47] of sin. So when the Angel calls her full
[10:50] of grace, not poetic language, guys.
[10:52] That's theological reality. Grace filled her, surrounded
[10:57] her, defined her, not because of who she was by nature, but
[11:01] because of what God made her by grace.
[11:04] Mary is not the source. She's the perfectly prepared
[11:07] receiver. Every privilege she has points
[11:10] back to the power of God and the person of Jesus.
[11:13] And that's what Catholicism gets right here.
[11:15] It's not that Mary's story is about her.
[11:18] It's that God's story is written through her.
[11:21] So now let's go to the next point that raises some eyebrows.
[11:24] This one is Mary's perpetual virginity.
[11:27] This one tends to make people very uncomfortable, mostly
[11:30] because we've we've been conditioned to see virginity and
[11:32] marriage through a modern lens instead of a biblical one.
[11:36] But the point of this doctrine isn't about repressing something
[11:40] good. It's about revealing something
[11:41] holy. When the Church says that Mary
[11:44] remained a virgin before, during, and after the birth of
[11:46] Jesus, it's not saying that intimacy is bad or that she was
[11:50] somehow above normal human experience.
[11:52] It's saying that something absolutely unique happened in
[11:55] her life, and her whole body became consecrated to that
[11:59] mystery. If you think about how God
[12:02] treats holy things throughout Scripture, when something or
[12:05] someone becomes the vessel of His presence, it's set apart.
[12:10] The ground around the burning Bush became sacred.
[12:13] The temple instruments couldn't be used for anything common.
[12:16] The Ark of the Covenant couldn't be touched by just anyone.
[12:19] And Mary, her womb, became the dwelling place for the living
[12:23] God. The idea that this sacred space,
[12:26] the very gate through which God himself entered creation, would
[12:30] later be used in an ordinary way doesn't fit the biblical pattern
[12:35] of how God works. The early Christian saw this
[12:38] very clearly. They read Ezekiel where God says
[12:41] of the temple gate that this gate shall remain shut, it shall
[12:44] not be opened, and no man shall enter it, for the Lord, the God
[12:47] of Israel, has entered by it. So they saw in that verse a
[12:51] powerful image of Mary's womb, the gate through which the Lord
[12:55] entered and which remained set apart forever.
[12:59] Now some people will point to the brothers of Jesus in
[13:03] Scripture as evidence against her virginity, but in both
[13:07] Hebrew and Aramaic, the word for brother can mean relative, kin,
[13:11] or even close family friend. Scripture uses that same word
[13:15] for Abraham and Lot, and they were uncle and nephew, not
[13:19] siblings. More importantly though, the
[13:21] earliest Christians, so those closest to the apostles,
[13:24] unanimously affirmed her perpetual virginity.
[13:28] So this wasn't just some invention later on, it was the
[13:31] instinct of those who actually knew the story, who recognized
[13:34] that Mary's body had participated in something so
[13:38] sacred that it was fitting that it would remain dedicated to God
[13:41] alone. Mary's virginity is not about
[13:43] separation from the world, it's about total consecration to God.
[13:47] She didn't give up something good for no reason.
[13:49] She gave it up because she had already given everything.
[13:53] Her body, her will, her motherhood, her very identity
[13:57] were all caught up in the mystery of God made flesh.
[14:01] So Catholics don't honor her virginity because we think that
[14:05] sex isn't pure, or we made it up, or it fits some weird
[14:10] doctrine or agenda that we just invented.
[14:13] We honor it because we believe the incarnation was that holy.
[14:17] The point isn't to make Mary untouchable.
[14:19] It's to make Jesus unmistakable. The more you understand this,
[14:23] the more it becomes clear that these teachings are not
[14:26] exaggerations about Mary. They are reflections of how
[14:29] seriously the Church takes the mystery of God becoming man.
[14:33] Now this is where people usually get stuck.
[14:35] They'll say, OK, I understand that Mary was important, but why
[14:38] do Catholics pray to her? Doesn't that just take away
[14:42] attention from Jesus? Listen, authentic Marian
[14:45] devotion never stops at Mary. It always leads straight to her
[14:50] Son. Every single title that she has
[14:52] been given, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, Our Lady of Sorrows,
[14:56] all of them exist because of her relationship to Him.
[15:00] She is not divine, she is not a rival.
[15:02] She is a mirror. When you look at her, you see
[15:05] the reflection of what perfect discipleship looks like.
[15:09] Complete obedience, total humility, and unwavering trust.
[15:14] When people misunderstand devotion, it turns into
[15:18] obsession or superstition or fear.
[15:21] But real Marian devotion is not sentimental.
[15:25] It's not superstition. It's theological.
[15:29] It's Christ centered love expressed through the woman who
[15:32] said the greatest yes in human history.
[15:35] When we honor Mary, we are not adoring her.
[15:38] That's a crucial distinction. The Church uses these words for
[15:43] a reason. Adoration or latria belongs to
[15:47] God alone. Veneration or dulia is the
[15:51] respect given to the Saints and hyperdulia.
[15:54] A unique higher honor is given to Mary because of her unique
[15:58] role in salvation history. None of that confuses who God
[16:02] is. In fact, it protects our worship
[16:04] from drifting into confusion. If Jesus is truly the perfect
[16:07] Son of God, then loving his mother can never threaten him.
[16:11] You can't love Mary too much as long as you love her in the way
[16:15] Jesus does. No one, not you, not me, not
[16:18] anything in history loves Mary more than Jesus does.
[16:21] So if loving her were wrong, he'd be the first one to stop
[16:25] us. True devotion to Mary doesn't
[16:27] pull your gaze away from Christ. It studies it.
[16:31] It trains your heart to see him the way that she did, with faith
[16:35] and tenderness and absolute surrender.
[16:38] That's why every authentic Mary in prayer, every hymn, every
[16:42] rosary ends in the same direction.
[16:45] Lead us to your Son. That's what is always said.
[16:48] We do not go to Mary because Jesus is harsh or distant.
[16:51] We go to Mary because God delights to save through
[16:55] relationship. And when we approach her, she
[16:57] doesn't keep us in her arms. She brings us straight to His.
[17:01] Honoring Mary is not Catholic extra credit, it's biblical
[17:05] family life. When Jesus was dying on the
[17:08] cross, he didn't just give us forgiveness, He gave us his
[17:11] mother. Behold your mother.
[17:13] That was a poetic moment, but not just a poetic moment.
[17:17] That was the establishment of a relationship, a new kind of
[17:21] spiritual motherhood. So when I honor Mary, I am not
[17:24] taking glory from God. I'm receiving the family that He
[17:27] created on that hill. And when I invite her in her
[17:31] session, I'm not bypassing Jesus.
[17:33] I'm participating in the communion of Saints that He
[17:36] himself set in motion. Mary always says the same thing
[17:40] that she said at Cana Do whatever he tells you.
[17:43] That is her whole entire mission pointing us right back to him.
[17:47] For most of my life, I believed that Mary was just a background
[17:50] figure. I respected her, I celebrated
[17:53] Christmas, I knew that she said yes to God.
[17:55] And then in my mind, she kind of just disappeared into history.
[17:59] And part of me was a little bit afraid to go any deeper.
[18:03] But that's because I thought if I started giving her too much
[18:06] attention, it might somehow take it away from Jesus.
[18:09] But what really shifted everything for me was when I
[18:11] started looking at Mary, not just as an idea, but as my own
[18:15] spiritual mother. Not as a symbol, but as a person
[18:18] who actually lived, who actually suffered, who actually said yes
[18:22] when it cost her everything. When you read the Gospels again
[18:25] through that lens, you do realize that she was there for
[18:28] every major moment of Jesus's life, not just in Bethlehem, but
[18:32] at Cana, at Calvary, at Pentecost.
[18:34] She wasn't a side note. She was woven into the story of
[18:38] redemption, and the more you understand who she really was,
[18:42] the more you realize how much she actually revealed about
[18:45] Jesus. Mary made Jesus less abstract
[18:47] for me. She made him personal.
[18:50] When I prayed the rosary for the first time, not as a ritual, not
[18:53] as anything except a meditation on Christ's life, you can just
[18:58] feel something shift. The mysteries are not about her,
[19:01] they're about him. You walk through his life.
[19:04] You walk through his death, his resurrection, and she's just
[19:08] there holding your hand through it.
[19:09] You know, it stops feeling like you're reciting words and really
[19:13] feels like you're walking with someone who already saw
[19:16] everything that I was facing and someone who already had to say
[19:21] yes to suffering and to trust and obedience.
[19:24] And what surprised me the most is that the more I honored her,
[19:29] the more that I loved Jesus. I started noticing how often I
[19:33] used to kind of keep Jesus at a safe distance as an idea or a
[19:37] concept, someone I could talk about without really letting him
[19:41] in. But Mary doesn't let you do
[19:45] that. Her whole life is about the
[19:46] incarnation, about God becoming real and tangible and close.
[19:51] So through her, I learned that faith is not about lofty
[19:55] thoughts, It's truly about surrender, about letting the
[19:59] Word take flesh in your life the way that it did in hers.
[20:03] And honoring Mary didn't make me less focused on Christ, it made
[20:06] me incapable of looking anywhere else.
[20:08] She didn't pull me off course. She showed me the way home.
[20:12] Once I let Mary into my prayer life, everything about how I
[20:15] related to Jesus started to change.
[20:18] Before, my relationship with Him was sincere.
[20:21] But. Shallow, honestly.
[20:23] I believed in him and prayed to him and worshipped him, but it
[20:28] always still felt a little bit distant, like I was talking
[20:31] about him, not with him. Mary and devotion changed all of
[20:35] that. The Rosary taught me how to
[20:37] meditate on his life, not as a story that I memorized, but as a
[20:41] mystery that I could enter into. Every decade is a doorway, and
[20:45] the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Crucifixion, the
[20:48] resurrection, you know, each one of those draws you closer into
[20:51] the heart of the Gospel. I started to see that every
[20:54] mystery is really a reflection of His love.
[20:57] And every one of them passes through her hands, not because
[21:01] she stands between us, but because she lived at first.
[21:04] So when I prayed the Joyful Mysteries, I started to
[21:07] understand what it means to say yes when God interrupts your
[21:10] plans. When I prayed the Sorrowful
[21:12] Mysteries, I learned how to stay near to the cross instead of
[21:15] running from it. And when I prayed the Glorious
[21:18] Mysteries, I saw hope not as wishful thinking, but as
[21:24] something that Jesus guaranteed. Mary didn't become my focus.
[21:28] She became my teacher. She showed me what discipleship
[21:32] looks like when it's lived out to the very end.
[21:36] I also start to notice something.
[21:37] The more that I let Mary in, the more I was drawn to the
[21:41] Eucharist because the same Jesus that she carried in her womb is
[21:45] the Jesus that I receive in the Eucharist.
[21:47] So the more I honored the mystery of the incarnation in
[21:50] her, the more I revered it on the altar.
[21:54] So, you know, Mary kind of taught me how to approach him
[21:57] with reverence and with love and with awe.
[22:01] She taught me that the Eucharist isn't just an encounter, but
[22:05] it's a continuation of what began in her body, God really
[22:09] dwelling in US. And that changed my spiritual
[22:14] life. I stopped trying to feel like I
[22:17] needed to feel close to God and started learning how to be close
[22:21] to God through obedience and through prayer and sacrifice and
[22:25] contemplation. And the deeper that I went, the
[22:29] the more I realize that devotion to Mary, it does not distract
[22:32] you from Jesus. It really detoxes your love for
[22:35] him. It strips away this
[22:37] sentimentality and replaces it with surrender.
[22:41] It teaches you that holiness is not about intensity.
[22:44] It's truly about fidelity. And every time I look at Mary, I
[22:49] see a woman who not one time did she say, oh, look at me.
[22:54] She always said, look at him. That's what real Marian devotion
[22:58] does. It really truly magnifies him.
[23:01] Because when your heart learns to honor what God honors, you
[23:05] start to love him more fully. And that's what she does best.
[23:08] She helps you fall in love with Jesus in a way that feels
[23:11] personal, alive and very real and tangible.
[23:16] So if you have ever felt hesitant about Mary, I get it.
[23:20] Maybe you were taught to keep your focus entirely on Jesus,
[23:23] and you should. But I want to invite you to look
[23:26] again at how Jesus himself chose to come to us.
[23:30] He didn't just appear out of nowhere, and He could have, but
[23:34] He didn't. He entered the world through
[23:36] her. He let himself depend on her,
[23:39] learn from her, be comforted by her, and if He, the eternal Son
[23:44] of God, allowed himself to need her, and maybe we shouldn't be
[23:48] afraid to need her to. So here is my invitation to
[23:53] anyone listening. Ask Jesus directly in your own
[23:56] words. Say, Lord, show me how to honor
[23:59] your mother the way you do. No rehearsed prayers, no
[24:01] expectations, just that simple question.
[24:04] And then open your Bible and read Luke chapter 1 slowly, not
[24:09] as a story that you already know, but as a window into God's
[24:13] plan. Notice how much honor is woven
[24:16] through every single line, how the Angel greets her with
[24:19] reverence, how Elizabeth blesses her, how Mary's own song, the
[24:24] Magnificat, glorifies God, not herself.
[24:27] And then try one small Marian devotion this week.
[24:31] Maybe just one decade of the Rosary, which is one our Father
[24:34] and 10 Hail Marys. Or maybe whisper Hail Mary when
[24:37] you're anxious. Do not worry about doing it
[24:39] right. Just do 1 little thing because
[24:41] even if you take one step towards her, she'll take your
[24:44] hand and lead you straight to her son.
[24:47] That's what she's always done and that's what she was created
[24:50] to do. Honoring Mary is not about
[24:52] giving her what belongs to God, it's about joining the family
[24:56] that God himself formed on the cross.
[24:58] Told your mother that wasn't symbolic, that was Jesus giving
[25:02] you a home. Mary was not the reason that I
[25:06] reverted back to the Catholic Church, but she helped me see
[25:09] why Catholicism makes sense. Once you understand who she is,
[25:14] not a distant figure. But as the living ark of the
[25:17] covenant, the New Eve, the Mother of God, everything about
[25:21] Jesus becomes clear. You start to see how intentional
[25:25] God truly is, how he writes the story of salvation through
[25:29] relationships, through covenants, through yeses and
[25:33] her, hers was the yes that opened the door for every grace
[25:36] that we now receive. So if this episode leaves you
[25:39] with one take away, let it be this.
[25:42] Do not be afraid of Mary. Don't treat her as competition.
[25:45] Let her be the one who she's always been, the mother who
[25:49] points you home. And as she said 2000 years ago
[25:53] and she's still saying now, do whatever he tells you.
[25:56] That's her whole mission, her whole heart.
[25:58] And that's why Mary made it make sense for me.
[26:01] That's all for today. Thank you for spending this time
[26:04] with me. If you have any comments,
[26:05] questions or reflections, anything you want to share with
[26:08] me, feel free to e-mail me at theaftermathpodcast@gmail.com.
[26:12] I love to hear from you guys. So thanks again for being here.
[26:16] I'm your host, Anna, and I will see you aftermath.

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