Of grace and gratitude

Days leading to Thanksgiving and the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, I was exploring Portugal and paid homage to Our Lady of Fatima.

- DOROTHY DELGADO NOVICIO

To be Catholic is to be Marian. But I don't think reverence to Our Lady is exclusive to our faith.

My multi-cultural friends once out of curiosity asked about our devotion to the Virgin Mary. We enlightened them of her very human qualities and so they learned to admire her courage and humility. Years back, a non-believer former colleague and her husband attested to have experienced "very positive energy" (despite the haunting image of a sorrowing woman and her dying son) as we stood in front of Michelangelo's "Pieta" at St. Peter's Basilica inside the Vatican. While veneration to the mother of God remains touchy among Christians, for us Catholics, she is our Mother. We Filipinos revere her specially, we call her "Mama Mary." Dec. 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, has since been declared a national holiday.

In "Witness to Hope," one of my most favorite books and biography of St. John Paul II penned by Catholic theologian and scholar George Weigel, the teenage Karol Wojtyla was said to have regarded Mother Mary as his own mother after his mother Emilia died when he was only eight years old. In my religious and secular circles, the Virgin Mary is either a reality or an enigma, yet she undeniably stays an inspiration.

So influential is Our Lady's staying power in our lives, a group of friends of mine have sustained a tradition of honoring her through the rosary. What started as a small group of expatriate ladies in Beijing 19 years ago has expanded and evolved. Now we rely on technology, to pray virtually every Tuesday from Europe, Asia, America or anywhere in the world we are stationed. Together we pray, hence our friendship stays with our best friend named Mary.