I heard this today. I won’t bother with a source, because it isn’t necessary. I’ve heard similar sentiments before and from many places and the quote is only a springboard from which I would like to give my perspective.

Is it not true that Mother Mary is worshiped and revered by many?  Many carry around beads and charms with her name and image on them.  This seems strange to me and dangerous I think.

What frustrates me is that this sort of judgment is often made of Catholics without ever bothering to ask them about it. I wear not one but two images of Mary around my neck. Those images have been given “the look” to the point where I have quietly slipped them under my clothes because it was so very clear that I was making someone uncomfortable with my jewlery choices. Not once though, never, not one single time has anyone ever asked me why I have chosen the jewlery that I have other than to jump to the obviously-clear-conclusion-that-I-am-worshiping-Mary. This is what I wear around my neck:

Purchased from Vatican Gift. I have never had a bad experience with any purchase I have made from them.

(ETA: CAUTION! WARNING! Click on the link to Vatican Gift at your own risk. I have been informed that clicking on that link consitutes a near occasion of sin. You will note however, that I am only telling you this and not removing the link…..you know you want to…..why should I be the only one guarding my wallet….?) 

I wear it because it is a picture of Jesus and Mary and it reminds me of the importance of my vocation as a mother. Of the love between the two of them and how very much I want to love Him and serve Him as she loved and served Him and part of that is being “just” a mother when I would very much like to be winning worldly approval with a high-powered career.

I also wear this:

From James Avery….lovely jewelry!

This an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Again, many people see that image and think. Mary. Poor deluded Catholic she’s got her focus all wrong.

In fact, when I think of Our Lady of Guadalupe I think of not just a picture of Mary. There is considerably more to the image than just that. [Link opens PDF] You see, the image is a sort of gospel tract written just for the Aztec people. A gospel tract that was so effective that 10,000,000 people converted from paganism to Christianity in the ten years following the miracle…and people still convert to Christianity today because of it. Since we are such a people of written words we forget sometimes that most of the world at all times and places has been illiterate. The Aztecs were such a people. The written langauge understood by most of the common people was images and not written words and the image on the tilma of Juan Diego was written to bring them a very specific message. (Although there was plenty in it for the Spanish as well.) The lady in the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is looking down. This is Aztec image-speak to convey the fact that she was not divine because in their iconography Gods faced forward with their eyes wide open. She is standing on a moon which told the Aztecs that she is more powerful than the god of night but being carried by an angel which conveyed that she was royalty along with the color of her garments. The girdle or bow around her waist is a sign of her virginity, but it also has several other meanings. The bow appears as a four-petaled flower. To the native Indians this was the nahui ollin, the flower of the sun, a symbol of plenitude. The cross-shaped flower was also connected with the cross-sticks which produce fire. For them, this was the symbol of fecundity and new life. The high position of the bow and the slight swelling of the abdomen show that the Lady is “with child”. The light that surrounds her is also a sign of the power of God who has sanctified and blessed the one who appears. The rays of the sun would also be recognized by the native people as a symbol of their highest god, Huitzilopochtli. Thus, the lady comes forth hiding but not extinguishing the power of the sun. She is now going to announce the God who is greater than their sun god. The God who is greater than their sun god is the child that she carries even though she is not God and a virgin.

The Aztecs were expecting this sort of knowledge of the True God because God had prepared them. In 1509 the sister of Montezuma fell ill, dropped into and coma and was thought to be dead. Arrangements were being made for her state funeral when she came to in her coffin and began screaming demanding to be let out. When she recovered she told her brother about a strange dream that she had. A creature all of light and marked with a black cross took her to the eastern coast of the empire and told her that men would come from across the water in canoes marked with black crosses and would bring the people knowledge of the True God. The was another prophecy that had circulated for centuries among the Aztecs. The Aztecs marked time in 412 year cycles. The Aztecs believed that every night the sun sturuggled with the powers of darkness in the underworld and rose triumphant each morning. According to their beliefs any night could be the world’s last and it was to help the sun in the nightly struggle that the Aztecs offered human sacrifice for the survival of the world. At the end of one of these 412 year cycles, the mother of the sun god would appear and give definitive birth to the sun god thus ending the need for human sacrifice. The apparition of Mary to Juan Diego occurred at dawn at the end of one of those 412 year cycles. The mother of True God-True Man, Jesus appeared to give them precisely the True Hope that they were expecting but in Truth and not in a continuation of their pagan beliefs.

I won’t even go into the other miraculous aspects of this image from the fact that you can’t paint such a sophisticated image on cloth made from cactus fiber….not hard to do. Can’t. Nobody in the last 500 years has done it. Or that fabric of this type disintegrates withing 50 years if it is really well cared for and St. Juan Diego’s tilma has lasted for 500 years and for most of that time did not reside in the protective case it now does. Or that the image maintains body temperature no matter what the surrounding temperature. Or that there are no brushstrokes to indicate that the image was painted at all. Or that miraculously survived a bomb blast.

What is breathtaking here is 10,000,000 million brought to Christ in ten years. A miracle so stunnning that we should be shouting it from the rooftops and frankly the only reason I think it isn’t, is because so many people think that all of those Aztecs converted from one form of paganism to another because Catholics aren’t really Christians. A whole people rescued from the terror of human sacrifice and the horror of going to sleep every night wondering if this night the sun would lose the struggle. I think of the HOPE and the LIFE that the Child of this woman brought to those people and to me. Because you see, Jesus is there in that image. She’s pregnant with Him. She OBEYED even though she knew it would cost her her reputation, her standing in the community, and maybe even her life she said “Let it be done to me according to thy word.” Her yes to God mattered. My yes to God matters.

This medal also says that I am Catholic. Something I am proud of having spent more of my life as a vitriolic anti-Catholic than Catholic. This medal was given to me by my best friend and for that reason I wear it too.

It’s not a charm. It’s not Mary-worship. I wear it for a lot of reasons but they all have to do with Jesus….except for the part about my best friend giving it to me. I like my best friend a lot but I don’t worship her either.