To Jesus through Mary—for the salvation and sanctification of souls.
The saints did not treat devotion to her as optional. Neither should we.
Why every Catholic needs Mary Begin the Marian Way
Ask her for conversion from sin, fidelity to the sacraments, and perseverance in grace. Begin today: let your prayer, your suffering, and your whole life belong to Christ.
Begin the Marian Way Begin with the RosaryTake up the Rosary and contemplate Jesus with Mary. If you are beginning, pray one attentive decade; the companion gives you every prayer and leads onward through the five mysteries.
Choose a companion for the devotion you are practicing. Any saved place stays on this device.
Choose your devotionCROSS brings devotion into the whole of life, so that Mary can lead it to Jesus: identity through consecration, prayer through the Rosary, trials through offering, belonging through the Scapular, and reparation through the First Saturdays.
Every Catholic is called to know, love, and honor Mary. These five practices are ways to live that relationship; begin with one and grow faithfully, according to your duties and state in life. Understand this distinction
Explore the five devotions. Choose one to begin.
Give yourself wholly to Jesus through Mary. The thirty-three-day preparation leads you through prayer, self-knowledge, and a deliberate gift of your life.
Begin the 33 days Read the full teaching on ConsecrationTake up the beads and contemplate the life of Jesus with His Mother. Every prayer and mystery is here to help you begin.
Begin the Rosary Read the full teaching on The Holy RosaryBring Mary the work, joys, and suffering of this day. Unite them to Jesus for the conversion of sinners and the good of souls.
Make an offering Read the full teaching on Offering of SufferingsReceive the Brown Scapular as a sign of belonging to Mary and a call to a life of grace. Learn its meaning and prepare for enrollment by a priest.
Seek enrollment Read the full teaching on The Brown ScapularAnswer Our Lady’s request for reparation: Confession, Holy Communion, the Rosary, and fifteen minutes of meditation, on five consecutive First Saturdays.
Make the Saturdays Read the full teaching on The Five First SaturdaysKeep the Church’s year in the company of Mary.
Open the Church calendarThese are doors into the same Catholic inheritance, not different versions of it. Choose the one that names where you stand today, then take a real next step.
God could have come to us without Mary. He freely chose not to. Jesus took His human life from her, lived beneath her authority, performed His first public sign at her intercession, and from the Cross gave her to the beloved disciple as mother. The pattern is unmistakable: the Christian life receives Jesus with Mary and learns to remain beside Jesus from Mary.
Mary is not an ornament added after Christ. Her fiat stands at the Incarnation; her intercession opens Cana; her fidelity remains at Calvary; her prayer accompanies the Church at Pentecost. To receive the whole Gospel is to receive the place God gave her.
A mother does not compete with the life she gives. Mary’s greatness is precisely that she belongs wholly to Jesus and brings her children wholly to Him. Entrustment to her makes the demands of the Gospel more personal, more concrete, and harder to evade.
Affection alone is not true devotion. The Rosary must reform the mind; the Scapular must clothe a life of grace; consecration must govern choices; suffering must become intercession; reparation must answer the wounds of the Immaculate Heart.
Recognize true and false devotionDevotion to the Most Blessed Virgin must therefore not be mingled with the devotions to the other saints, as if it were not more necessary, and were merely a matter of supererogation.
St. Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin §39
His teaching asks for more than agreement. It asks for a gift of self ordered wholly to Jesus, made through the Mother He chose.
I am all yours, and all that I have belongs to you, O my lovable Jesus, through Mary, your holy Mother.
St. Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin §233
In dangers, in distress, in uncertainty, think of Mary; call upon Mary. Let her never leave your lips or your heart; and to obtain the help of her prayer, do not forsake the example of her life.
Irenaeus celebrates Mary’s obedient faith. Ephrem sings of the Mother who receives the Lord whom heaven cannot contain. Bonaventure invites us to praise God with her. Francis de Sales teaches us to seek her help and imitate her life. Across the centuries, their counsel leads into love of Jesus and a faithful response to His Mother.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux · In Praise of the Virgin Mother, Homily II §17; PL 183, 70D–71AExcerpt, newly translated from the Latin for The Marian Way.
Hear the saints in their own words →Read the saints. Hear the messages of approved apparitions. Join others in prayer.
Let this be the beginning of a faithful habit.