By Fr. Roy Cimagala

Words of Mary to the servants at the wedding in Cana. (cfr. John 2:1-11) While the festive celebration was going on, the mother of Christ noticed that wine was running out. She approached him to inform him of the problem, but her request at first was denied. “Woman, what is that to me and to thee? My hour is not yet come,” he told her. But Mary knew how to handle that situation, and in the end, Christ’s first miracle took place.

This is a beautiful story that highlights the fact that a good son would always try his best to accommodate whatever his mother would ask, even if such a request may involve some difficulty. Mary did not force him to accede to her request. She simply made things easy for such requests to be eventually granted.

It cannot be denied that mothers somehow enjoy certain privileges with their children, if they are good children. Thus, Mary did not make an issue of the denial she at first received.

It’s this privilege that Mary enjoyed and continues to enjoy with Christ that a saint once said that she is “the safest, easiest, shortest, and most perfect way of approaching Jesus.” It would be a pity if we failed to realize how effective Mary can be as an intercessor for us. Not only that, she actually can anticipate our needs as dramatized at the wedding in Cana.

Indeed, Mary is the epitome of motherhood, who knows how to be a mother even to God and to all of us. All of that because of her perfect identification of her will with the will of God, giving us a concrete example of how a human being can be so identified with God’s will that she becomes God’s perfect image and likeness, as God wants her and also us to be.

We are often incredulous, even skeptical, about this possibility. But she managed to do it. Obviously, she was given the necessary graces for that. But she also corresponded to those graces with everything that she had, reflecting in the most perfect way the redemptive mission, full of suffering, of her son. How our Lady was and continues to be should also be how we should be.

And she is all there to help us achieve that dignity of being true children of God who can even be a mother of God and a spouse of God, as our Lady was the most dutiful daughter of God the father, mother of God the Son, and spouse of God the Holy Spirit.

Let us just imitate our Lady’s perfect faith shown, especially when she said, “Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum,” (Be it done to me according to your word) during the Annunciation. With that faith which for sure she could not understand completely, she put herself entirely under the designs and dynamics of God’s will of love, of redemption, toward mankind.

Let’s see to it that our devotion to her grows. And if it is practically dormant, if not dead, then let’s stir it up to life again. She is important to us. In fact, she is indispensable to us. She cannot be treated as an optional feature in our spiritual life, nor something decorative or appendical only.

While she is not God and, therefore, not to be accorded with the worship that is only due to God (latria), she rightly deserves to be given the highest form of veneration (hyperdulia) among all the saints who are already with God in heaven./WDJ