Marian Devotions for Men

A few years ago I was preparing for a men’s retreat and realized that the opening Mass was scheduled for September 15th, the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. I was a little thrown off of balance as I tried to figure out how to celebrate and preach a Marian Feast to a group of guys. I know there are many men who have a deep devotion to Mary, but I had generally struggled to cultivate my own relationship with her. This is despite the fact that my own reversion to the faith in my mid-20’s was in large part due to praying the rosary.

I started to look over the Mass readings for that day and got bogged down in several overly complicated ideas of how to connect the scriptures, Mary and the men’s retreat. I began to do some research on the memorial, its background, history and devotions and I was struck by an image I found. It was a depiction of Our Lady of Sorrows holding out her heart that had 7 huge swords thrust through it. Her face was serious and something about it made me think that she was saying, “What else ya’ got?”

It reminded me of scenes in the Marvel Comic book movies where Captain America is losing a fight and then stands back up, lifts his fists and says, “I can do this all day.”

It hit me that my personal struggle with developing a Marian devotion had more to do with the aesthetics of most images of Mary than anything else. I know there are endless amounts of images of Our Lady, but it had always seemed to me that most of them represented her as a very delicate and dainty young woman–almost too fragile to relate to–and that had little to no appeal for me.

I love Our Lady of Sorrows because she is older and weathered by her experience of human life and suffering, but mostly because it depicts her having the strength to keep getting back up. She is a strong and confident optimist in the face of an often cruel and brutal world. This is precisely the kind of example of leadership and devotion that speaks to me.

There are several devotions for Our Lady of Sorrows including a scapular, a novena and even a particular way of praying the 7 sorrows of Mary with a rosary–different from the Sorrowful Mysteries. You can even find little chaplets and bracelets that are designed to pray one of the sorrows a day for a week–for the time-crunched crowd.

Accompanying my devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows is my profound awe regarding the mysteries of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I had the privilege of seeing the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and learning about it during a summer spent in Mexico to learn Spanish.

The truly miraculous qualities of the tilma of St. Juan Diego have been scrutinized and studied by scientists and experts of many varied disciplines over the centuries–many of them non-believers. The discoveries their research has yielded are truly mind-boggling and appeal to my endless curiosity and respect for scientific research and history.

One of the other-worldly phenomena of the image is that the appearance of Mary changes slightly, dependent upon proximity and angle of view. Scientists have no explanation of this and have said that subtle changes in skin tone and facial features are analogous to the diversity of people in the Americas. Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patroness of all of the Americas, North and South. She is a messenger of the beauty of unity in the midst of diversity.

The message of diversity has always been timely, but it is especially necessary now…

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!

Our Lady of Guadalupe has been the cause of millions of conversions since the presentation of the tilma in 1531, and millions are still drawn to it every year.