Do Catholics worship Mary?

Sister Maxine  
This Random Nun Clip is brought to you by A Nun's Life Ministry.

Sister Julie  
This question came in from Jasmine from Oklahoma, and she sent us an email. And she wrote, "Why do Catholics worship Mary, a servant of God and now an angel, when it is a sin to worship anyone but God? I think Scripture talks about this, worshiping angels, in Colossians 2:18."

Sister Maxine  
I would start off, Jasmine, by saying, there's a little bit of a misunderstanding here. Mary is not an angel. She may be a saint, but she's not an angel. Angels are different than human beings, which is what Mary was, although both are created beings.

Sister Julie  
That's right. So as a spiritual being, you have no corporeal form, you have no physical body. But we as humans, as you can see, are very corporeal.

Sister Maxine  
With angels--you know, you see angels who are messengers from God, you see angels who are guiding and protecting human beings, and carrying out the work that God wants them to carry out. So angels are good--Mary, not an angel, though.

Sister Julie  
Yeah, but I mean, certainly awesome in her own right. You don't have to be an angel to be as honored as Mary is and as significant in the history of the Christian tradition as Mary was for us.

Sister Maxine  
So we honor Mary, we venerate her. We don't really pray to her; we ask her to pray on our behalf.

Sister Julie  
That's right. It's sort of like if we have folks in our life that are kind of the people that we turn to when we want some spiritual insight or some wisdom, or just people that we know and trust and love, and we ask them for help or like, "Hey, you know, would you pray for me? I'm going through a rough time," or, you know, "Would you pray for me, I'm really trying to get some insight around how to live a more compassionate life." Whatever it may be. It's like that with Mary, and the saints as well--that we can go to them as if we are going to another person because they are still with us here in the communion of saints.

Sister Maxine  
And we can go to them, and have that be our companion, so to say. For example, praying the rosary: there might be a perception out there that we're praying the rosary to Mary. But it's actually a way to reflect on the life of Jesus, with Mary as our companion.

Sister Julie  
Yeah, I personally think it's great. When I think of the saints certainly, Mary is the first among the saints, as she is known in the Catholic tradition. But I think of her as well as other people like Saint Teresa of Avila, whose presence to me is so real, realer sometimes than the people right around me. Sister Maxine excluded because she's very corporeal.

Sister Maxine  
Oh, I'm real.

Sister Julie  
Oh, you're real! Keeping it real with Sister Maxine! That could be another show.

Sister Maxine  
Yeah.

Sister Julie  
So folks like that, where they have such a profound presence in our life. That is the amazing thing about being Christians and about believing in and holding to be true the communion of saints: that death certainly is a major passageway, but there's a thin veil between life and death, where we're still in communion with those who have gone before us.

Sister Maxine  
And still alive in Christ. In the chat room, Julia says, "This is always the first question that people ask me when they learn I'm Roman Catholic, the question of worshiping Mary." I think that's a that could be a fairly common perception.

Sister Julie  
It's interesting, though, I mean, because we highly venerate someone, that we hold someone in high esteem, that it can look like from the outside that it is worshiping or that is somehow undue attention on someone other than the main figure in in our Christian faith, which is Jesus in the midst of the Trinity, the Creator, Holy Spirit, and Redeemer. Mary does have kind of a pre-eminent position within the whole communion of saints. I mean, not that the communion of saints is hierarchical, because it's really not. It really is a true communion. And whenever I see it pictured by artists, I often see it done in a circle, which does not suggest hierarchy. But Mary is definitely kind of the saint of all saints. And I think that's because she was the first one to literally incarnate God in this world, to bring God forth, and was our first model for how to relate to God in this new way, given the Incarnation.

Sister Maxine  
And how to be a holy woman in the midst of a lot of ups and downs in life. And sometimes I think that for women--in our tradition, we don't often speak about the feminine aspects of God. And in our faith, I think Mary sort of stands in for some of that sometimes, rightly or wrongly.

Sister Julie  
Sometimes we assume that the God part is the masculine part. And so if there's going to be anything feminine, then we're going to have to look to Mary. And that is a that's a false dichotomy. It's a false theology. First of all, that's not what Scripture and tradition have really taught us. They taught us that when we look to God, that we see both masculine and feminine images, and frankly, in Scripture, there are many more images, not just masculine and feminine images, that speak of God. But for so many reasons, we have suppressed some of that in our Catholic tradition. Many people, women and men, then kind of look to Mary for that feminine reflection. While it's good to honor Mary, it's not really good to dissect the feminine from God.

Sister Maxine  
Right. To separate those things. In the chat room, Kimberly said, speaking about the Magnificat, "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my soul rejoices in God my Savior. The Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is God's name." That quote from Luke that is in the mouth of Mary, and Kimberly prays, "May Mary's soul be in each of us to proclaim the greatness of God." And that is certainly what Mary is a great model for: how to proclaim that greatness in the way we live, and how to incarnate that greatness.

Sister Julie  
And I think those would be great responses to folks who do say, "Why is it that you Catholics worship Mary?" Is to redirect that and point out how it is that Mary is in our lives. Mary herself is a is a testimony to the fact of a life lived for God. And so, when we look at Mary, you can't help but see Christ, because she's so lived her life reflecting the love of Christ. To hear full episodes of A Nun's Life podcasts, visit the podcast page at anunslife.org/podcasts.

Sister Maxine  
And if you look at the top right corner of that page, well, and actually any page of the website, you'll see the Donate Now button.

Sister Julie  
And every time someone clicks on that button, an angel gets its wings.

Sister Maxine  
Well, we're not really sure of that. But we do know that this ministry relies on you, and we are deeply grateful for your encouragement and support.

Sister Julie  
God bless.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.