Heart of Courage

There is a story of a young woman that I really only discovered recently. It really had an impact on me, so I will share it below.

    She stares out among the crowd. She knows why they are there. She knows they are expecting something amazing. Or failure. Either one. She sighs. There is only one important thing in all of this: her child. Her child, who needs to be seen much more than ever before. Her child, who has a goodness that people either do not seem to care about or simply do not understand.

    She looks to the future. She sees a fight being lost. She sees massacres and slavery. She sees the people who she loves very much being herded like cattle into pins. She sees her own people nearly being wiped off the face of the Earth. Then there is stillness. But it is not the stillness of peace, but the whole world holding its breath. There is so much worse to come. Governments destroy peoples, and people destroy governments. The entire world watches to see if the entire planet will be destroyed; it is a very real threat. More people will die than ever before. She knows the solution: her battle cry.

    She has given her battle cry before many times. Nobody knew of it for many years but she revealed it for the sake of the world. Many brave people had used it, and many people would, but it was being lost. It was becoming old stone work. People forgot what it really was. What it could really do.

    She remembers back to when the battle cry was first formed. When she first discovered that she was a mother. She found out, no, she chose to be pregnant. She knew the risks. She knew that if people discovered her pregnancy she would die. That was all there was too it. She could only thank God for giving her fiance the grace to understand. It would be revealed in full later, but now was not the time.

    The Lady remembers what followed. Years of struggle. She and her fiance, husband at that point, had to leave their city and travel across the country in order to participate in the census. She was very pregnant at that point, but she looked to the Lord to take care of her. He did, but not at all in the way she expected. She was able to meet her child at last, but only a few years later people wanted to kill him. They had to run. She had to protect her child. She had to fight for him. A skill she would learn to utilize much more later. They stayed in a foreign land for many years before turning home. She enjoyed a relatively normal life until her husband died and her son left. At that point she knew it was time to face the world alone. She looked to God and sighed her battle cry. She would need it as her son traveled and slowly revealed himself to the world. She would need it as she watched him being led into Jerusalem, knowing what was to come. She would need it as he was forced out, carrying a cross on his back. She would need it as she watched Him breathe His last. She would need it when He triumphed on the third day.

    Back to the present, she knows the three shepherd children need her to reveal herself, and more importantly, her Son to the world. She knows what the The world needs her battle cry once more.

    So perhaps this is not as new of a story as we thought. It is really just a retelling of the Gospels and the Fatima story, but it brings out aspects of Mary that I think we have almost forgotten in the Church. Very often Mary is presented in a docile and passive way. However, she is the bravest woman in history. She faced certain death many times. She has been fighting for Jesus longer and harder than anybody has, and she is fighting for us. The rosary is not just a nice prayer we say when we want to feel good. It is not just a tradition that we carry on from our parents and grandparents. It is a powerful weapon. It is a battle cry. While Mary is definitely meek and humble and in many ways small, she is also a warrior for her Son. When we forget this, we forget an aspect of her which is so needed in the world today.