Even though I didn’t recognize it at the time, Mary was at the center of my conversion. I was thoroughly anti-Catholic when Jesus pointed out to me in prayer that she was His mother and that she would do what He told her to do for His purposes and that it wasn’t necessary to consult me or to ask me if I thought it was appropriate. At that point I was five years from swimming the Tiber and longer still from even believing rather than simply assenting to those difficult-for-Protestants Marian doctrines. It was a long and difficult journey for me and although I am very comfortable with my growing understanding of Mary, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still occasionally have some of those Protestant neurons fire and there is a flash of  “Oh dear, what if I am wrong?” And so I pray for Our Lord to protect me from all error, especially my own. To give me all of the graces He would intend for me and take away anything that is wrong. And so I am suggesting to those to all of those who read this, Our Lord answers prayer. Pray to Him and ask Him to help you to have the relationship with His Mother that He wants you to have even if that means showing you that you’ve been wrong for a very long time. Even if it means, giving you a new mind and taking from you your prejudices. That brings me to Behold Your Mother, a lovely book for sitting quietly and thinking about what Mary means to us as individuals and to the Church and imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise.

The author, Heidi Hess Saxton, is also a convert to Catholicism. Like me, she struggled with the idea of asking Mary to pray for us and names herself as possibly the most stubborn and contrary of all her adopted children. I beg to differ. That would be me. In fact, she starts her book of meditations with a a story that had me rolling because I could so relate. I hope she doesn’t mind telling me at least some of it here. I promise I am leaving out an hysterical punchline and you MUST buy the book in order to hear the end. Heidi was lonely and wanted someone to sit with in church. A Catholic friend of Heidi’s had suggested telling Mary about her loneliness and desire to have a friend to sit with in church an idea that didn’t sit well with Heidi at all…..

That Sunday my eyes fell on the medal as I drove into the church parking lot. Almost gingerly I picked it up. It was still cold with winter chill. Closing my eyes, I said, God, I don’t know if I should be doing this. If this isn’t something I should be doing, don’t let anything happen today that I could take as a sign that this is OK.” I pasued, then took a breath and spouted out, “Mary-if-you-can-hear-me-I’d-like-someone-to-sit-with-inchurch-today-Amen.”

I entered the church, went to my usual pew, piled my coat and purse beside me (on the aisle, so no one could slip in while I wasn’t looking), got down on the kneeler, and began to pray.

When the Pastor told us to turn and greet people, I looked up to find a woman about my age standing next to me. “Hi! Can I sit with you? I just moved here a month ago and don’t know anyone yet.” Dumbfounded, I moved my coat and let her slide in.

It’s a fluke, I told myself.

The next week I repeated the same routine, asking God to keep me from error, sending up a quick reminder to Mary that I wanted someone to sit with, then going into the church and barricading  myself in the pew. When I looked up that time, an older woman was standing there. “Can I sit with you dear?”

The third week I knew what was going to happen. “I mean it God. I’m going to keep doing this if You keep sending me pew mates……”

Because God has a raucous sense of humor, I will tell you that a punch line follows. But the big punchline is what happens when a reader of the first edition of this book prays much the same as Heidi did. You GOTTA read that.

Highly recommended reading. I also highly recommend Heidi’s blogs: Behold Your Mother and Streams of Mercy which just “happened” to have an entry today that I think will nicely round out this review.

Finally, a gentle warning. Jesus warned that unless we become like little children, we cannot see the Kingdom of God. It took God many years and quite a number of strippings and humblings before I was willing to say,

I don’t have the answers, Lord. Only questions. You are God, and I am not … You are pure mystery, and my mind is blinded by prejudice, ignorance, and error. Help me. Guide me each step of the way, and take these blinders from my eyes and help me to truly see.”

This is a dangerous prayer, but a necessary one. It’s not enough to read the Bible … one must interpret it correctly as well. We do this not in isolation, but in union with Christians going all the way back to the first apostles. We must not “proof text” isolated Scriptures to harden our hearts and minds, but invite the Holy Spirit to open us to ALL the truth God wants us to understand. Almost inevitably, He does this through the treasury of wisdom that is available to us through the teaching authority of the Church (the Magisterium) and the saints.

And buy the book would ‘ya?….make it worth Heidi’s time to send me another one.