Since tomorrow is the Solemnity of All Saints, I thought I would focus today’s “Mondays with Mary” on just that – Mary and the Saints. Realizing that I have written quite a bit on what the Saints have said about Mary, I thought I would gather those blog posts together in one blog post for you to read. However, before I get to those posts, let’s take a look at what Hans Urs Von Balthasar has to say about Mary’s relation to the communion of saints.

In the book, Mary – The Church at the Source, a book he co-authored with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Von Balthasar writes the following on why Mary stands out in the Communion of Saints –

…”Mary can never be isolated from the communion of saints. She can be called ‘Mother of the Church’ because she is the Mother of Christ and thus all of his mystical members; in spite of that, she remains our sister and is glad to be so…Mary, as the purest of all creatures, irradiates what is her own least of all. Everyone within the communion of saints has something Marian about him…perhaps it is precisely our time that especially needs to see Mary. To see her as she shows herself, not as we would like to imagine her…she shows herself and defines herself as the archetypal Church, whose form we have to take as our pattern.”

Two points here to mention quickly, I completely agree with Von Balthasar when he says that Mary can never be isolated from the communion of saints. She is the glue that holds the communion of saints together since she is our mother. Our mother, because she is given to us by Jesus on the Cross through St. John, and yet even still, our sister in Christ too.

And second, there is no doubt in my mind that Mary is needed in all times of history, Lepanto in 1571 and Vienna in 16883, however, our time needs her more than ever. To bring us back to Jesus, we will need his Mother to lead us back to him. We see this concretely in her apparitions from the nineteenth century on, which all have similar themes to them – St. Catherine Laboure, St. Bernadette at Lourdes, Melanie at La Salette, to the children at Fatima.

As we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints, let us pray for the intercession of all saints, those canonized by the Church, and those family members of ours that have gone on before us. Let us ask the apex of the Communion of Saints to always lead us closer to her Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Below are the blog posts I mentioned above:

“Mondays with Mary – The Love the Saints Have for Mary

“Mondays with Mary” – The Saints and Popes on the Holy Rosary

“Mondays with Mary” – 5 Quotes from the Saints on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

“Mondays with Mary” – Mary, Queen of All Saints 

Queen of All Saints…Pray for Us