The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 343: Praying Through Mary (2025)

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

To love Mary doesn’t mean our hearts belong any less to Jesus. Today, the Catechism explains our Blessed Mother’s role in prayer and why the Catholic Church prays in communion with her. We also explore the origin behind the Hail Mary prayer and other prayers to Mary throughout the Church’s history. Lastly, Fr. Mike reflects on the tenderness and strength of Mary’s motherhood that carries us through the difficulties of our lives. By uniting our prayer to her prayer, we unite our trust with her perfect “Fiat.” Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 2673-2682. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to The Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture, and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church discovering our identity and God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 343. We're reading paragraphs 2673 to 2682. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own catechism in a year reading plan by visiting

ascensionpress.com slash CIY, and you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications because today is day 343. We're talking about our lady and prayer and communion with the Holy Mother of God in paragraphs 2673 to 2682. We have a couple nuggets at the end of today. As we launch into today, remember yesterday we talked about prayer to the Holy Trinity, right, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, how essential it is. Today, Perry of 2673 highlights in prayer, the Holy Spirit unites us to the person of his only son in his glorified humanity, amazing, amazing, through which and in which our filial prayer, right, our prayer is adopted sons and daughters, unites us in the church with the mother of Jesus.

And this is incredible. Mary, she gave her constant affirmation, her surrogation. surrender to the Lord, her submission to the Lord. We know this. We know that as she lives and moves in faith, hope, and love in relation to our God, she also is a model, right? She's the model. She shows us the way of prayer, but also she's been given to us as our mother. And so, yes, she's a model, but she's also our mother. And from the cross, Jesus gave her to every beloved disciple. to be their mother. And so there's something really beautiful about, again,

going back to paragraph 2673, that in prayer the Holy Spirit unites us, to the only son, of course, through which and in which our filial prayer unites us in the church with the mother of Jesus. And so as Christians, we get to be united in prayer with other disciples. We get to be united in prayer with the whole church,

but also we get to be united in prayer with one of those members of the church and a unique, very unique, and very distinct member of the church, meaning our lady, Mary, the mother of God, right? And so we recognize that this is just so, so beautiful. Let's launch into today because we're going to unpack a bunch today. And hopefully to be able to take what we're going to hear today about our lady. The skeleton of the teaching today is the Hail Mary prayer.

And so we pray, let's actually do that right now. Let's ask our lady to bring us to the Father's Son, Holy Spirit, to bring us to her son in the power of the Holy Spirit. If you just simply pray, in the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed are thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God. Pray for us, sinners. Now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Mary, please, bring us to your son, Jesus. Help us to do everything he's asked us to do. Mary, spouse of the Holy Spirit. Please, intercede with God the Father.

and with your son, Jesus, that he will send the Holy Spirit deep into our hearts now and always. We make this prayer in the mighty name of the only beloved son of God, Jesus Christ, our Lord. In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. It is day 343. We are reading paragraphs 2673 to 2682. In communion with the Holy Mother of God. In prayer, the Holy Spirit unites us to the person of the only son and is glorified. humanity, through which and in which our filial prayer unites us in the church with the mother

of Jesus. Mary gave her consent in faith at the Annunciation and maintained it without hesitation at the foot of the cross. Ever since, her motherhood as extended to the brothers and sisters of her son who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers and difficulties. Jesus, the only mediator, is the way of our prayer. Mary, his mother and ours, is wholly transparent to him. She shows the way, Haudigitria, and is herself the sign of the way, according to the traditional iconography of East and West. Beginning with Mary's unique cooperation with the working of the Holy Spirit, the churches developed their prayer to the Holy Mother of God, centering it on the person of Christ manifested in his mysteries. In countless hymns and antiphons expressing this prayer,

two movements usually alternate with one another. The first magnifies the Lord for the great things he did for his lowly servant and through her for all human beings, the second entrusts the supplications and praises of the children of God to the mother of Jesus, because she now knows the humanity, which, in her, the son of God espoused. This twofold movement of prayer to Mary has found a privileged expression in the Ave Maria. Hail Mary, or rejoice Mary. The greeting of the angel Gabriel opens this prayer. It is God himself who, through his angel as intermediary, greets Mary. Our prayer dares to take up this greeting to Mary with the regard God had for the lowliness of his humble servant and to exult in the joy he finds in her.

Full of grace, the Lord is with thee. These two phrases of the angel's greeting shed light on one another. Mary is full of grace because the Lord is with her. The grace with which she is filled is the presence of him who is the source of all grace. Rejoice, O daughter of Jerusalem, the Lord your God is in. your midst. Mary, in whom the Lord himself has just made his dwelling, is the daughter of Zion in person, the Ark of the Covenant, the place where the glory of the Lord dwells. She is the dwelling of God with men. Full of grace, Mary is wholly given over to him who has come to dwell

in her, and whom she is about to give to the world. Blessed are thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. After the angel's greeting, we make Elizabeth's greeting our own. filled with the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth is the first in the long succession of generations who have called Mary Blessed. Blessed is she who believed. Mary is blessed among women because she believed in the fulfillment of the Lord's Word. Abraham, because of his faith, became a blessing for all the nations of the earth. Mary, because of her faith, became the mother of believers, through whom all nations of the earth receive him who is God's own blessing. Jesus, the fruit of thy womb. Holy Mary, Mother of God.

With Elizabeth, we marvel, and why is this granted me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? Because she gives us Jesus, her son, Mary is Mother of God and our mother. We can entrust all our cares and petitions to her. She prays for us as she prayed for herself. Let it be to me according to your word. By entrusting ourselves to her prayer,

we abandon ourselves to the will of God together with her. Thy will be done. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. By asking Mary to pray for us, we acknowledge ourselves to be poor sinners and we address ourselves to the mother of mercy, the all-holy one. We give ourselves over to her now in the today of our lives. And our trust broadens further, already at the present moment, to surrender the hour of our death wholly to her care. May she be there as she was at her son's death on the cross. May she welcome us as she. May she welcome us as our mother at the hour of our passing, to lead us to her son Jesus in paradise. Medieval piety in the West developed the prayer of the rosary as a popular substitute for the

liturgy of the hours. In the east, the litany called the Acathistos and Periclesis remained closer to the choral office in the Byzantine churches, while the Armenian, Coptic, and Syriac traditions preferred popular hymns and songs to the mother of God. But in the Ave Maria, the the Tokoea, the hymns of St. Ephraim or St. Gregory of Nerech, the tradition of prayer is basically the same. Mary is the perfect Orans, a figure of the church. When we pray to her, we are adhering with her to the plan of the father who sends his son to save all men. Like the beloved disciple, we welcome Jesus' mother into our homes, for she has become the mother of all the living. We can pray with and to her. The prayer of the church is sustained.

by the prayer of Mary and united with it in hope. In brief, prayer is primarily addressed to the Father. It can also be directed toward Jesus, particularly by the invocation of his holy name. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God. Have mercy on us sinners. No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. The church invites us to invoke the Holy Spirit as the interior teacher of Christian prayer. Because of Mary's singular cooperation with the action of the Holy Spirit, the church loves to pray in communion with the Virgin Mary, to magnify with her the great things the Lord has done for her, and to entrust supplications and praises to her.

All right, there we have it, paragraph 2673 to 2682. I love how in this section we recognize the role of Mary in our lives, and the role of Mary in the life of the disciple. We also recognize the role of Mary in our prayer. I mean, as Catholics, we pray the Hail Mary all of the time, or the, as they say here, the Ave Maria, right, in Latin, we pray this Hail Mary all of the time. And there's something so powerful. I mean, over half of it is scriptural until we get to the very end where we say, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners down at the hour of our death. But even that is this remarkable acknowledgement of where was Mary? Mary was with Jesus, her son, our Lord, her Lord, from the very moment of his conception in her womb all the way. to the moment of it when he gave up his spirit to recognize that in some ways mary was present to every moment of our god's life on earth so those small moments of conception those moments of quiet in the home of nazareth those moments of joy in the home of nazareth the moments of power of healing the moments of great incredible success and also the greatest moment of desperation the greatest

moment of grief, the greatest moment of loss, the greatest moment of injustice of the passion of Jesus Christ and his death. Mary was there for all of those moments. And just how Jesus lives through the highs and lows and the many middles, right, of life. And because his life encompasses all of them, our whole life gets to be encompassed by our Lord Jesus. But Mary was with our Lord. Mary was with Jesus. And so in this, of course we have our Savior, the Lord God, Jesus Christ, who can transform, redeem every one of those moments, but we have this mom who's with us in all those moments as well. Jesus is the one mediator between God and man, right? He's God. I mean, no one else is God. Father's God's God. Mary's not God. But in order to emphasize this, there is this abandoning of

the rest of the family like an abandoning of the saints and an abandoning of our mom and so what happens is I don't think that the Lord's loved any more when we love his mom less I don't think that we recognize Jesus

is even more God if we don't recognize what our Lord God has done in the life of this human being Mary And I don't know that necessarily our prayer is more robust if we ignore the mom that was given to us. I don't think that happens. I don't think our prayer is more powerful

if we ignore the mom who was given to us from the cross. I don't think our prayers is richer if we ignore this prayer from scripture called the Hail Mary that the church has given to us and the rosary that the church has given to us and history has given to us. If we would just take a moment even and to reflect back on paragraphs 2676 to 2677,

just these two paragraphs that just go line by line over this very brief, very powerful prayer of the Hail Mary. One of the things we get to do is we get to realize that to love Mary doesn't mean our heart belongs any less to Jesus. And to ask for our ladies' prayers does not reduce our trust in Jesus, but we're uniting our trust to her trust. We're uniting our fiat to her fiat. We're making her prayer, which is a perfect prayer, our prayer.

And there's something so good about this. I love this. It says in paragraph 2679, Mary is the perfect orons. It says prayer, right? Pray hyphen er. Not just prayer, but prayer. She's a prayer. She's a figure of the church.

When we pray to her, we are adhering with her to the plan. of the father who sends his son to save all men. That's the whole point of it. Why would you pray to Mary? When we pray to her, we're adhering with her to the plan of the father who sends his son to save all men. Like the beloved disciple, we welcome Jesus as mother into our homes, for she has become the mother of all the living, and we can pray with and to her. And this is remarkable, this last line. The prayer of the church is sustained by the prayer of Mary and united with it in hope. And that we just get to have confidence. We get to, and not just confidence, we could have gratitude. and thank the Lord and praise God for giving us this mom, this mom in this life and in the next

life. Tomorrow we're going to talk about the saints, the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us, and also what are some guides for prayer? But that's tomorrow. Today, I want to let you know this. I'm praying for you. Please pray for me. My name's Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless. Thank you.