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Mary in the Everyday

by Sarah Reinhard in Family on Sunday, June 06, 2010 11:17 AM

I’ve often encouraged the people around me to picture Mary with them, in their everyday lives. When I discovered Mary’s title Our Lady of Combermere, I found a whole devotion that gave voice to my passion.

It’s a title earned in the most unremarkable way, and yet one that I have a feeling Mother Mary cherishes and saves the way I tuck special drawings and mementos into a remember box.

Combermere, Ontario, is a small town in the woods of Canada, and a community was founded by Catherine and Eddie Doherty called the Madonna House. There was a great devotion to Mary among those living in the community.

In the late 1940s, when things were getting started, there were a lot of physically demanding chores to be done. It was natural, then, to invoke Mary:

What could have been more simple and natural when the pumps would not start, and feet and legs were numb from pushing the gasoline engine pedals, than to call on Our Lady — Mary, the Mother of Jesus — giving her the local musical name of Combermere? “O please, dear Lady of Combermere, help me to start this washing machine… this pump.”
—Madonna House website

From the difficulties of daily humdrum to the isolation of country life, Mary became a light. “Our Lady of Combermere” became an affectionate associate, someone who prayed for the little, necessary miracles that made pioneer life bearable.  She was referenced casually. There was never an apparition or anything flashy to bring this title to attention.

It took years before the title came to attention, and longer still before the use of the title in a public capacity, with holy cards generated by an enthusiastic devotee, could officially be recognized. And then there was the question of how Our Lady of Combermere would look.

The image that was selected, and later made into a statue that can be found on Madonna House grounds, was subtitled “The Questing Madonna” in the magazine where they found it.

She has her arms open, waiting for us to jump into them, and she’s running toward us. Our Lady of Combermere is a visual representation of Mary’s compulsion to pray for us no matter what. Nothing is too small for her. Her smile is wide as she hurries to us, delighted to be a part of the routine and the drama that make up our lives.

As we near her feast day, celebrated June 8, I’m going to pause to pray this prayer for her intercession. Won’t you join me?

O Mary, you desire so much to see Jesus loved. Since you love me, this is the favor which I ask of you: to obtain for me a great personal love of Jesus Christ. You obtain from your Son whatever you please; pray then for me, that I may never lose the grace of God, that I may increase in holiness and perfection from day to day, and that I may faithfully and nobly fulfill the great calling in life which your Divine Son has given me. By that grief which you suffered on Calvary when you beheld Jesus die on the Cross, obtain for me a happy death, that by loving Jesus and you, my mother, on earth, I may share your joy in loving and blessing the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit forever in Heaven. Amen.

Our Lady of Combermere, pray for us.

—Sarah Reinhard writes online at SnoringScholar.com.

image credit: MadonnaHouse.org

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