Our Blessed Mother constantly looks out for us, even when we aren’t thinking about her.
I was reminded of this fact recently when I chanced upon Mary under the title of Our Lady of Charity. I had never heard of this specific title, so I searched the Internet and found a beautiful story of our heavenly mother’s protection and love.
As the story goes, around 1600, on the waters surrounding Santiago, Cuba, three boys were returning from gathering salt so that the townspeople could use it to preserve their meat. As they sailed home, they encountered a fierce storm that threatened to capsize their boat. They prayed to our Blessed Mother for her protection. The storm soon ended, and in the distance, they saw something floating on a piece of wood. As they approached it, they found that it was a statue of Mary holding the Christ Child in one hand and a cross in the other. Inscribed on it were the words “I am the Virgin of Charity.”
The boys took the statue back to their town and told the townspeople about its miraculous appearance. In thanksgiving, they built a church dedicated to Mary, and soon people began making pilgrimages there. Years later, a feast day was established, and in January 1998, Pope John Paul II crowned Our Lady of Charity as queen and patron saint of Cuba.
This beautiful story stuck with me, but what I found truly amazing was that, just two days after I learned of Our Lady of Charity, I was watching a television show from 2002, in which someone was wearing this medal, and one of the main characters then retold the story of the boys on the boat. Had I not just heard of Mary under this title, the story may not have resonated with me, but because our heavenly mother came to me twice in two days under this title, I knew instantly that this was a sign that she wanted me to pay attention.
Yet I understood much more than that. When reminders like this happen, we can be assured that Mary wants to make her presence known so that we will grow in understanding of her love and realize that she is always looking out for us.
Think about that for a minute. How special must we be that our heavenly mother sends us regular reminders of her love? She is truly the perfect mom.
Ever since then, I have pondered Mary under this title, especially the relationship of charity with motherhood, and it became so clear that the two go hand in hand.
While the dictionary defines charity as “generosity and helpfulness especially toward the needy or suffering” or as “benevolent goodwill toward or love of humanity,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church offers a more theological definition. It explains, “Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for His own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God.” It continues,
Charity upholds and purifies our human ability to love, and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love. . . . The practice of the moral life animated by charity gives to the Christian the spiritual freedom of the children of God. He no longer stands before God as a slave, in servile fear, or as a mercenary looking for wages, but as a son responding to the love of him who “first loved us.”
Charity teaches us to love like Christ, and this is the kind of love that motherhood requires, for without it, children hurt, and families weaken.
God has given women a tremendous gift in motherhood, and it’s a gift no one should ever take lightly. Nurturing children, whether biological, foster, or godchildren, requires reflecting the love of Christ so that every child can feel his value.
That is why Mary, under this title, is so integral to those of us who work to build a culture of life. If we are to create a society where all people are respected and the sanctity of life is cherished, we must start with a reverence for motherhood, as a world devoid of charity when it comes to motherhood will inevitably fail.
Creating a more charitable society requires that we first recognize the areas in our own lives where we lack charity and where we fail to love others well. Then we must prayerfully go to God and ask how we can make changes to become more like His mother and more like the children He wants us to be. This requires us to live selflessly, just as Mary did, putting others first because we love our Lord. It requires us to give our own “Yes” to God, to our families, and to a society that sometimes outright opposes motherhood and even denigrates it.
And it requires us to courageously stand up for motherhood and proclaim its blessings, even amidst the disdain for it that we see when women celebrate abortion, when organizations profit off dead babies, and when politicians care so little about human life that they go out of their way to promote abortion. Their actions are the complete opposite of charity, and I believe that Mary understands all too well the tragedy that unfolds when a society teaches women that fertility is something to loathe, mock, and even hate.
Let us thank God not only for His mother but for her loving presence in our lives. Mary continually offers herself as the mother we can strive to emulate, and every time she appears to us, she makes known her immense love. Our Lady of Charity holds her Son, but in reality, she holds all of us, showing us that she is there through the literal and figurative storms of life, just as all mothers should be for their children, and just as society should be for motherhood.
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Of the abortion establishment, we read: “Their actions are the complete opposite of charity.” Also the opposite of the most elementary justice.
Commandment #2 from the Catholic bible:
You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. Exodus 20: 4-6
brian: we should have an entire year of preaching only on the 2nd Commandment. It is the root of all social problems, including social injustice.
Deacon,
Please note that Brian is almost certainly Brian Young, a long-time sniper at things Catholic, and himself an admitted (once inadvertently on these pages of CWR) lapsed Catholic who was drawn into very sincere evangelical sola Scriptura myopia and misplaced literalism.
Here, for example, we see that Christian reverence for motherhood is gratuitously mistranslated–in Brian’s mind–into the “worship” of “idols”.
“gegins”…..typo in the title is a bit off-putting.
Thanks for pointing that out, Susan. It’s been corrected.
“Reverence for motherhood gegins with charity”
*********
Amen.
And a morning cup of coffee & reading glasses.
🙂
brian: we should have an entire year of preaching only on the 2nd Commandment. It is the root of all social problems, including social injustice.
The wonderful women in my life were examples of society’s heavy lifters.
The political bifurcation of the 2nd Amendemnt has caused significant damage to the Republic. The “right”, proponents of the NRA insist that no limit should be placed on gun owners. To include powerful military weapons, AR-15, AK-47, M4 Carbine, Machine Guns: Such as the M249 SAW and M240, used for sustained fire support in military operations. The “left” counters with recent examples of deaths caused by the use of these weapons, especially mass murders in recent years.
Amendment II
A WELL REGULATED MILITIA, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
On February 14, 2018, a mass shooting occurred when 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, using a rapid fire AR-15, opened fire on students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people[note 2] and injuring 17 others.
On the morning of August 27, 2025, a mass shooting occurred at the Church of the Annunciation in the Windom neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The attack took place during a scheduled school-wide Mass attended by the students and faculty of Annunciation Catholic School. Two children, Fletcher Merkel and Harper Moyski, and the perpetrator died in the shooting. Twenty-eight other people were injured: twenty-four schoolchildren and three elderly people from gunfire as well as a victim who sustained non-gunshot wounds. The perpetrator was identified as Robin M. Westman.
Mothers have lost their babies to a mindless ideology.
“Mothers have lost their babies to a mindless ideology.”
Yours certainly did.
The AR-15 is not a military weapon, you hoplophobe and if you think a 5.56 round weighing 60 grains is “powerful”, that’s laughable. I owned one, until I decided I wasn’t able practice enough to maintain proficiency.
In some stands a standard AR-15 isn’t even legal to hunt deep with, due to the potential its light round not to inflict an “ethical kill”.
Even though the M-4 is automatic, it’s being supplanted with weapon, the M-7 with anew round, the 6.8 X 51.
Errata
In some states a standard AR-15 isn’t even legal to hunt deer.
It’s legal here Mr Pitchfork. I’ve enjoyed deermeat given to me by a hunter who used an AR-15.
I think one of the perpetrators Mr Morgan mentioned was lost to the Trans ideology.
MorganD: “Children are dead”
Pitchfork “Rebel”: “Well Actually, 5.56 isn’t that powerful”
That’s not a rebuttal; it’s an evasion dressed up as psudeo-intellectual expertise. 🙄
Not a single sentence in your response addresses the actual argument. Instead of engaging with whether certain beliefs contribute to preventable deaths, you switched to trivia about ballistics.
Nobody claimed the AR-15 is identical to an M4, nor that 5.56 is the most powerful cartridge ever designed. The original point concerned mothers grieving dead children and the role ideology may play in preventing or enabling those deaths. Responding with a lecture on grain weight and hunting regulations is like answering concerns about drunk driving with an explanation of engine displacement. Sure, it’s technically adjacent, it’s also completely irrelevant. Not one word of your response was relevant to the concern being raised. Shifting the discussion from consequences to specifications is weak.
AR stands for”assault rifle”. Its purpose is mass casualty. It has no civilian use and should be 1000% illegal. You may think mass casualties of children is a something to be accepted a la Kirk, but the majority of sane people do not.
To those who responded, thank you.
Mothers have lost their babies to a mindless ideology may be too much for those who focus mainly on the technical details and not the innocent lives lost.
The AR-15 has shaped American firearms culture more than any other single weapon since the Colt Single Action Army. Since it can be modified to a rapid-fire machine gun, some states have restricted it, saying that the feature is not a hunting rifle. The AR-15 has a 30-round magazine. A deer would have no chance.
I hunted during most of my later teens. I used a Remington 12-gauge shotgun with slugs for large game. Then I got married and my hunting years were over. Our first baby got in the way.