The Marian Option Quotes

“All grace,” says St. Maximilian Kolbe, “ultimately comes to us from God the Father, through the merits of Jesus Christ, His Son, and is distributed by the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit, in distributing all grace, works in and through Mary.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“Pope Pius X said. “If we were to lose Mary,” the pope explained, “the world would wholly decay. Virtue would disappear, especially holy purity and virginity, connubial love and fidelity. The mystical river through which God’s graces flow to us would dry up. The brightest star would disappear from heaven, and darkness would take its place.”23 Sadly, we need not look too far to see what a culture that has lost Mary looks like and why it is so essential that we bring her back into our hearts and homes.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“The story of Lourdes starts centuries before young Bernadette encountered the beautiful woman at Massabielle. While the area of Massabielle was known as a decrepit place during Bernadette’s time—fit only to feed swine and gather kindling—it hadn’t always been regarded as such. In 778, Charlemagne approached the Muslim stronghold in the Aquitaine region of Southern France. On the edge of the Pyrenees mountains, the fortress of Massbielle was the last refuge of the indefatigable Saracen fighters who had occupied the area for forty years. Led by the fierce Saracen Mirat, the fortress was impregnable. Mirat was determined to fight to the death because he had made an oath in the name of Mohammed that he would never surrender to a mortal man. Charlemagne and his soldiers were left with one option: starve them out. After weeks passed, resources inside the fort were running low. An eagle dropped a trout inside to the desperate men. The starving Mirat, rather than devour the fish, flippantly threw it back at the enemy soldiers, as if to indicate that their food was still plenty in hopes that it would break their resolve, and Charlemagne and his men would leave. Suspecting a trick, the local bishop of Le Puy, Roracius, requested an audience with Mirat. After seeing the sorry state of the Saracens, but knowing of Mirat’s oath, the bishop said, “Brave prince, you have sworn never to yield to any mortal man. Could you not with honor make your surrender to an immortal Lady? Mary, Queen of Heaven, has her throne at Le Puy, and I am her humble minister there.”2 Mirat saw that agreeing would free him from his oath; he promptly surrendered to the Queen of Heaven. He and his men became subjects to the Queen; all were baptized, and Mirat was given a new name, Lorus. Charlemagne knighted him, and Lorus went on to command the Fortress of Mass-abielle. It is the name Lorus from which the name Lourdes comes.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“Mary isn’t simply another saint; she is the singular mode through which Christ came and comes to us. She has been given a unique role in salvation history through the Trinity. She makes this clear in her apparitions, and many a pope, saint, and Church document has reiterated this over the ages. Pope St. John Paul II explained that we are living in very unique times and facing a struggle unlike that of previous generations. He said, “We are today before the greatest combat that mankind has ever seen. I do not believe that the Christian community has completely understood it. We are today before the final struggle between the Church and the anti-Church, between the Gospel and the anti-Gospel.”4”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“the moment of her conception, Mary was fruitful through the Holy Spirit while simultaneously acting as a mirror to humanity of what the Holy Spirit looks like. Mary makes concrete and material that which is only spiritual in the person of the Holy Spirit.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“St. Benedict and every Benedictine who has followed (one prays) understood that the monastery is not a place to hide from problems; it is a place to face them, whether they are personal sin, human brokenness, persecution, or civilizational collapse. Through the ordered and penitential life of monks, the disorder of the world can be tamed, silenced, and renewed.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“However, one visible societal element that has been lost is the proper understanding of women and their role in Protestant churches. Professor Catherine Tzacz talks about her experience studying with some Lutheran women and their surprise at the centrality that women play in Eastern Orthodox liturgy. The Protestant Reformation unwittingly erased many of the places where feminine spirituality—a spirituality profoundly different from masculine spirituality—flourished: “The Reformers, Patricia Ranft has shown, attacked institutions within Christianity that fostered women’s visibility and high status, specifically monasticism, saints, and Mariology.”13 One commentator went so far as to suggest that “the Protestant rejection of the veneration of Mary and its various consequences (such as the really ‘male-dominated’ Protestant worship, deprived of sentiment, poetry and intuitive mystery-perception) is one of the psychological reasons which explains the recent emergence of institutional feminism.”14 Without giving women an authentic outlet for their fundamental need to worship and the unique way they go about doing it, Protestantism has pushed them in another direction—that is, eyeing those roles previously reserved for men because the feminine roles have been decimated. This argument has been made among Protestants themselves. Blogger”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“As Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman has pointed out, “Son and Mother went together; and the experience of three centuries has confirmed their testimony, for Catholics who have honoured the Mother, still worship the Son, while Protestants, who now have ceased to confess the Son, began then by scoffing at the Mother.”11 Newman experienced this firsthand in post-Reformation England, but it is also clear that mainline Protestantism has lost much of its faith—particularly as it capitulates further with secular and godless cultural trends. What Newman and others have recognized is that devotion to Mary doesn’t mean passivity; rather, her “spiritual motherhood promotes a childlike docility and expectation with regard to her ability and authority to form us into other Christs.”12 Many of the saints have testified to the transformation that has taken place in their lives because of their devotion to her.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“In one of Mary’s apparitions to Bernadette, Our Lady asked her to dig in the dirt. As she dug, a spring trickled through the dirt. The water from the spring proved itself to be miraculous, healing those who bathed in it. Even today, six million visitors come to Lourdes annually. The humble Bernadette and the healing waters of Lourdes confounded both the medical community and the enlightened philosophes, such as Émile Zola, who had poisoned the minds of millions with atheism and an uncritical worship of science. Zola even made a visit to Lourdes in the hopes of discrediting it, only to witness the miraculous healing of a woman suffering from three incurable diseases. Upon seeing her restored to wellness, he puffed, “To me she is still ugly,” and dismissed the miraculous event. He dug his heels in even deeper, saying, “Were I to see all the sick at Lourdes cured, I would not believe in a miracle.”7”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“Salette, France (1846) The next apparition at La Salette happened four years later, in 1846. High up in the French Alps, Mary appeared to two children—Maximin, eleven; and Mélanie, fourteen—as they tended sheep. What they saw when they came upon her was unique among apparitions; she sat as a lady sobbing, her hands covering her face in grief. Indeed, looking at the turmoil in France and beyond, Mary had much to grieve over. France’s anti-Catholic streak had even reached the small village of La Salette, where Mass and the sacraments were neglected as fewer and fewer people valued the faith of their fathers. Cursing was preferred to prayer, sexual license erased purity, and greed and self-indulgence superseded piety and sacrifice. Even the children to whom Mary appeared had little faith or formation. They rarely went to Mass and were barely able to muddle through the Our Father or Hail Mary. The messages from La Salette are significant because of their length and detail.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“St. Andrew of the Woods, Rome, Italy (1842) The next apparition took place in 1842 and was directly related to the first. Alphonse Tobie Ratisbonne was a twenty-eight-year-old Jewish man in the prime of his life who had just gotten engaged to marry. He was a lawyer from a wealthy family and was charming, good looking, and good humored. Prior to his wedding, he decided to spend the winter in Malta. At all costs, however, he wanted to avoid Rome because he hated Catholicism; the conversion and ordination of his brother Theodore had only fanned the flames of his already intense hatred of the Faith. But somehow, because of a delay with boats out of Naples and his own restlessness, Ratisbonne found himself in the Eternal City. With a few days to spend before his boat left for Malta, Ratisbonne caught up with some friends, including Baron Theodore de Bussières, who gave Ratisbonne a Miraculous Medal as a challenge to Ratisbonne’s fierce anti-Catholicism. The baron argued, “If it is just superstition, then it won’t harm you in the least to wear this or to read the memorare prayer.” Then on January 20, 1842, while waiting for the baron in the church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte (“St. Andrew of the Woods”), Ratisbonne saw a vision of the Blessed Virgin. The brief vision of blinding beauty didn’t include an exchange of words, but by the end of it, Ratisbonne said he knew “all the secrets of divine pity.”3 He immediately converted to Catholicism, joined the priesthood, and moved to Israel with a ministry to convert the Jews. Ratisbonne’s conversion was so significant that even the pope heard of it and wanted to learn more about this “miraculous medal” and the nun who had it cast. The medal’s popularity swelled and Sister Catherine’s waned as she remained just another cloistered nun among many.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“Clearly, not all Muslims are radical militants. Lebanese journalist Mahassen Haddara wrote a prayer to Jesus and His Mother in the wake of the martyrdom of Father Jacques Hamel in France in 2016: O Mary! Jesus! Do not delay! We beg you, Virgin Lady of the women of the world, ask Jesus to quickly come to us, because we are no longer able to endure what is going on … Our world, from Jerusalem to Iraq suffers from divisions … Our churches and mosques are desecrated, our priests are being killed, our children are being killed, and we are helpless … We beg you, Mother, help us with your prayer … Jesus, do not be late … Come to us, because we suffer.12 This prayer is a sign of hope that many conversions are ripe among Muslims. Islam in general has very little tenderness. The Muslim faith exacts submission, not love, not filial care, and certainly there is no mother to offer tenderness, hope, and healing in the face of harsh realities. Mary remains a bridge in mysterious ways. ______________ 1James L.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“There are also new stories pouring out of Iraq as Islamic State–controlled territories are losing ground and Iraqis are reclaiming Christian territories. One miraculous story is of seven young college women who hid under beds for eight hours as Islamic State fighters used their room as a hideout during an assault on the city of Kirkuk on October 21, 2016. “When ISIS entered our room, they didn’t see us, [and] we feel that the Virgin Mary closed their eyes from seeing us,” one young woman recalled.10 Father Roni Momika, who was in cell phone contact with two of the girls as they hid, said, “The Virgin Mary was with them.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“Additionally, more than one hundred thousand of the Christians in Bishop Doeme’s diocese have fled elsewhere for safety, leaving roughly sixty thousand to fend off the radical Islamic militants.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“Just a few years ago, Nigerian bishop Oliver Dashe Doeme told the international press about his own experience with the Rosary: “Towards the end of last year I was in my chapel before the Blessed Sacrament … praying the rosary, and then suddenly the Lord appeared.” In the vision, Jesus didn’t say anything at first but extended a sword toward Doeme, who in turn reached out for it. “As soon as I received the sword, it turned into a rosary,” the bishop said, adding that Jesus then told him three times: “Boko Haram is gone.” “I didn’t need any prophet to give me the explanation,” Bishop Doeme said. “It was clear that with the rosary we would be able to expel Boko Haram.” The group is responsible for kidnapping three hundred schoolgirls, some of whom have been returned either pregnant or with babies conceived by their captors, while still others remain missing and unaccounted for.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“Mary’s Fingerprints The most significant era where her fingerprints have been left is medieval Europe. The word medieval today has many negative connotations; if something is medieval, it’s backward, crude, superstitious, and/or illogical. Most of this stems from modern faith in science and technology, which have mistakenly become the signs of progress and human achievement. While certainly we have much to be grateful for in regards to science and technology, Christians know that true faith isn’t in laws of nature but in the Lawgiver; it isn’t in the created but in the Creator. And no matter how rustic and backward medieval culture might be to some, there is much to be said about it and learned from it. Philosophy Medieval culture has the most to offer modernity in the realm of philosophy. The rigor, the tight arguments, and the demanding intellectual climate—like flint sharpening flint—resulted in mental giants who are head and shoulders above the rest of Western civilization. During the scholastic era, under the guidance of Our Lady Seat of Wisdom, Marian devotion flourished in the work of St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, and Blessed Duns Scotus. In addition to their erudite treatises—which have been influencing theology, philosophy, and law ever since—these scholars emphasized the importance of Mary.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“As historian Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975) noted, civilizations rarely die simply from external assault; they are first hollowed out by internal moral decline. “Civilizations,” Toynbee wrote, “die from suicide, not by murder.”1 They are weakened from the inside out, like an old tree rotted to the core and knocked”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“the Marian Option offers the key to personal and societal transformation in ways that no other saint or noble leader can, precisely because of who she is—the Mother of God, our spiritual mother, and the perfect link between heaven and earth. The Marian Option is a type of spiritual “hunkering down” where we pick up our rosaries and other Marian devotions and follow the lead of the world’s most powerful woman. Finding the Real Mary There might be many reasons we overlook or are unaware of Mary’s power and efficacy.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“Living the Marian Option does not require a change of address, career, or nationality; what it does require is going deep in one’s faith by both living the sacramental life and acknowledging Mary as our spiritual mother.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“We normally look to prayer to change the external realities of our life, but the Polish pope also knew the power of prayer could change the internal. Like the sinking Peter, who panicked when he saw a storm while walking on water, Christ reached out to grab him instead of calming the storm. In other words, Christ did not make the storm go away but instead came straight to Peter to pull him back up, just like He can vivify our hearts with His grace without actually taking away our crosses; the grace simply helps us carry the cross.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“Give me an army saying the Rosary and I will conquer the world.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“When the storms of temptation encompass you, look up to this star, invoke Mary. When the waves of pride are washing over your ship, look up to this star, invoke Mary. When the burden of sin and the thought of judgment to come terrifies you, think of Mary. If you follow her, you will not go astray. And if you hold fast to her, you will not fail.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“St. Louis de Montfort said, Mary “is the safest, easiest, shortest and most perfect way of approaching Jesus.”2”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“Explaining hell, Lúcia wrote, “Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or equilibrium, and amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“Mary doesn’t waste opportunities; she plants seeds over the ages. Sometimes it can take centuries for these seeds to come to fruition.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“Mary’s strength is not just military or political. At its heart, her influence is always directed to the will of Christ and the salvation of sinners, but with a maternal touch.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“the height of European culture was centered on devotion to Our Lady. In the places where European culture soared, so too did devotion to Our Lady, and perhaps vice versa: where devotion to Mary soared, so too did culture.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“the monastery is not a place to hide from problems; it is a place to face them, whether they are personal sin, human brokenness, persecution, or civilizational collapse. Through the ordered and penitential life of monks, the disorder of the world can be tamed, silenced, and renewed.”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis

“To eliminate her from Scripture is to deform the story—to not tell it correctly—and actually dishonors Jesus. Consider how much the common man honors his own mother. How much more so does a perfect Man honor His perfect mother?”
― Carrie Gress, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis