12 GIFTS FOR THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE

12 GIFTS FOR THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE

As Catholics we are so blessed to know that it is God's desire for us to veneate the Blessed Virgin Mary and to have a relationship with her so that she can lead us closer to her Son and help us to grow as a Christian. As with anyone who is important to us, it is a sign of our love and appreciation for them to offer tokens of affection for them on a regular basis and especially on specific occasions. Birthdays are definitely one of those important days. September 8 is the birthday of Our Blessed Mother and we can show our love for her by giving her a birthday present. If we missed this opportunity we can offer her a belated birthday present. Gifts do not have to be material in nature; they can be composed of our efforts to grow in virtue in honor of her, prayers and time spent with her, acts of charity, works, etc. The list below includes some "gift ideas" for this special day:

Idea #1:  OFFER HER A CLEAN HEART

Ask her to help you  make a good examination of conscience today and repent of any sins that she helps you to come to terms with. Make a firm resolution to avoid that sin or the near occasion of sin in the future. I know from personal experience that she is eager to help us with this. 

Many years ago, I went through a spiritual awakening and began to pray the rosary on a regular basis. I hadn’t been to the sacrament of Reconciliation for many years at this point so I asked Our Lady to help me make a good examination of conscience. As I was praying my rosary, she gave me a wonderful grace - she brought to my mind the serious sins that I had committed since my last good confession, and with them came a deep understanding of why they were wrong along with a sincere sorrow for them. I didn’t want to forget anything so I wrote them down and went to confession. The priest was so patient with me and let me read my whole list. When I came out of the confessional, the vigil Mass was going on and I immediately felt a strong desire (from the inside of me) to attend. Prior to this I attended out of obligation and not on a regular basis. I knew something was different inside of me because I attended that Mass and even went back with my children the next day. It was at this point that Our Lady led me into a deeper relationship with Jesus in the Eucharist.

Idea #2: LET OUR LADY LEAD YOU INTO A DEEPER RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS IN THE EUCHARIST

Soon after that confession, I visited my parents and I happened to pick up the book “Rosary Meditations from Mother Teresa of Calcutta: Loving Jesus with the Heart of Mary: Eucharistic Meditations on the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary.” It was so good that I quickly read it from cover to cover. The author described how much Jesus longs for us to come to Mass and spend time with him in Eucharistic Adoration and unfortunately in most Churches he is left alone in the tabernacle. As I read this book, my heart began to burn with the desire to console him. I rearranged my schedule so that I could do this. I would drop Nicole off at Kindergarten at 12:00 and then head to 12:15 Mass. On the way Erin (three years old at the time) would fall asleep. She would sleep on my shoulder all through Mass and for at least an hour after Mass while I prayed in front of the tabernacle. As soon as she woke up we would leave.

The Lord used that time to minister to my heart, mind and soul. I experienced his love and closeness so profoundly and received much healing. I would read scripture and pray the rosary using that same book. I learned so much from it and my love and appreciation for Jesus in the Eucharist grew exponentially. My heart was literally set on fire with love for God! I remember continually looking up at the Lord and saying: “I feel like the Prodigal Son! If only, everyone knew about your love here.”

One of the things I would do to try to help my children love Jesus in the Eucharist was to take them to 7:00 AM Mass followed by breakfast at their favorite little restaurant on the way to school. One night I was struggling about whether or not it was God’s will for me to do this. I was up late because of a meeting and realized at 11:00 PM that I still had to make cupcakes for Nicole’s class for her birthday the next day. At the time I was also participating in a protestant bible study on the Lord’s Prayer. I was struggling with guilt over sharing that I believed that the line: “Give us this day our daily bread” for Catholics can refer to the Eucharist.  I had cited 1 Kings 19:7 as a prefigurement of the strength the Eucharist would provide for us to persevere in the long, hard journey to heaven:

“And the angel of the Lord came again the second time, and touched him, and said to him: Arise and eat: for thou hast yet a great way to go.”

I was praying for God to let me know if I should or should not have shared that. I finally went to bed about 1:00 AM and, out of exhaustion and confusion, decided not to set my alarm for 5:30 AM like I usually did. I prayed: “Dear Lord, if you want me to continue to take Brett, Nicole and Erin to Mass like this, please have my angel wake me up.”

At 5:30 AM sharp I heard, inside my head is the only way I can describe it, but it was audible – I believe it was a locution – the only one I have ever received:

“Arise and eat: for thou hast yet a great way to go.”

I believe it was my guardian angel. I jumped out of bed with so much joy and energy. I knew the Lord was telling me to keep making this sacrifice - it was needed and important - and it gave me total peace about sharing this in the protestant bible study. Since then, I have never doubted the importance of making the sacrifice to attend Mass as often as possible.

Idea #3: LET HER TEACH YOU ABOUT REDEMPTIVE SUFFERING SO YOU CAN SEE GOD'S GLORY IN YOUR DEEPST WOUNDS

“In my deepest wound I saw your glory, and it dazzled me” (St. Augustine).

During Eucharistic Adoration the Lord and our Blessed Mother taught me all about redemptive suffering. Growing up I was familiar with the phrase “Offer it up!” but I did not really understand what it meant. Unfortunately, I took it to mean “just deal with it please!”   To know what it really means is life-changing! At least it was for me.

The first eight years of my marriage were full of heartaches – feelings of loneliness, lack of appreciation, misunderstandings, rejection, etc. - but at the time I did not understand the concept of redemptive suffering and didn’t know what to do with the pains of my heart. I knew that if I allowed myself to dwell on them I would not be able to focus on caring for my children so I repressed my emotions and buried them.

One of the first things our Lord did as I spent time with him in Eucharistic Adoration was to teach me the eternal value of pain when it is offered as a sacrifice. As I sat before him in the Blessed Sacrament, reading that book and meditating on it, one by one, he would gently bring to my mind, the painful memories I had repressed during the first eight years of my marriage. I would allow myself to feel the sadness, I would cry and then I would offer that memory up for specific intentions for my family and for Jesus to be loved in the Eucharist.

For example, I learned from that book to offer to God:

• any loneliness I experienced for Jesus to never be left alone in the Blessed Sacrament;

• my faults and failures for his Divine Love in the Eucharist to triumph in every heart;

• all the misunderstandings for him to be understood in the Eucharist by everyone;

• the feelings of rejection for his love to be accepted by all people;

• any feelings of not being appreciated for his love in the Eucharist to be appreciated.

At the time, the tabernacle was in a small side chapel and very few people seemed to know it was there.  Eucharistic adoration took place on the first Friday of the month for a couple hours and only a handful of people attended. I longed so greatly for everyone to experience the love and healing that I was experiencing so I was continually offering all of my heartaches for our parish to have perpetual Eucharistic adoration.

I began to see so many of my prayers answered in truly miraculous ways and about a year later, our Lord and our Lady led me to initiate the efforts to successfully begin perpetual adoration at my parish. 

We had a great response and a large number of people signed up for holy hours. The joy I felt from seeing so many people deep in prayer before our Lord in the Eucharistic far outweighed any pain I had experienced and I began to understand how valuable redemptive suffering is.

Those painful memories from the first eight years of my marriage are now what I consider some of my greatest blessings. I wouldn’t trade them for anything. They no longer have the power to stir up any negative feelings because they have been completely transformed by God’s love.

Christ received the offering of my broken heart as a precious gift – he didn’t belittle my feelings or tell me to get over it and move on with my life. He used it to draw me closer to him and he valued my offering of sufferings so much that he made each one I gave him into a channel of grace for others.

Another thing that happened during this time that confirmed the incredible value of redemptive suffering, was that I was introduced to the story of Our Lady of Fatima. What struck me the most about it was that Our Lady said to the three shepherd children – six, eight and nine years old at the time!: “Pray much and make sacrifices for sinners, for many souls go to hell because there is no one to make sacrifices for them.”

On May 13, 1917, Our Lady asked the children: "Are you willing to offer yourselves to God and bear all the sufferings He wills to send you, as an act of reparation for the conversion of sinners?" They said they were. Then Our Lady replied: "Then you are going to have much to suffer, but the grace of God will be your comfort."

She then taught them a prayer to pray when making a sacrifice or bearing a suffering or difficulty as a sacrifice:

 “Oh Jesus, I offer this for love of you; in reparation for the outrages against the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the conversion of poor sinners.”

This made such a deep impression on me that I began to offer every difficulty I experienced in my everyday life for this intention as well and have spent over two decades struggling to live this way. It has been a great help to me!

Somehow, praying that prayer in the midst of suffering or difficulties, checks the flood of negative emotions long enough to open them up to the presence of the Risen Christ and sends the pain in right direction – away from self as a negative influence and towards others as a channel of grace. This helps to keep the pain from consuming and destroying us..

Idea #4: PRAY THE ROSARY

This is something that Our Lady asks for in many of her apparitions so it must be very important! I personally know this to be true and have experienced many blessings from obeying her request. 

One of them that really stands out I refer to as “The Boat Story."

The Boat Story

My husband, Dan had spent every summer growing up on a boat and had purchased his first one before I even met him so boating was very important to him. When we moved to Texas in the mid 90’s, we kept our boat at a marina that was a lot like Panama City on Spring break - lots of heavy drinking, risqué dancing and everything else that goes along with that. Before I had a spiritual awakening it didn’t bother me very much but afterwards I became increasingly worried about the effect it was having on my children. The last straw came on my son’s seventh birthday at which time he witnessed adults drinking way too much; girls in thong bathing suits and Dan’s boss kissing a woman that was not his wife. We left that night and when we got home I told Dan that we would not be going out on the boat anymore as long as it was docked at that marina. He said that he was going to continue going out on the boat because he had a boat his whole life and that was never going to change. My heart sank because I knew at that moment that I had divided our family but I didn’t know how else to handle it. I had no peace and tossed and turned all night. The next day I went for a drive by myself and cried, begging God to show me what to do. Immediately I looked up and on the car in front of me was a bumper sticker that read “Pray the Rosary.”

I had never seen a bumper sticker like that before and I felt in my heart that it was God’s answer. So I prayed:

“Dear God, if you want me to continue to go out on the boat while praying the rosary for protection please let me see another bumper sticker like this one.”

I ran a few errands and on my way home I got behind another car with the same bumper sticker! I went home and told Dan that even though I was very worried about the influence on our family, we would continue to go out on the boat with him.

I began right away to pray the rosary each day for our family’s protection. A few weeks later, on the Fourth of July weekend, we were out on the lake and one of our boat engines sucked up a plastic bag and the boat broke down. It had to be taken out of the water to be repaired. Week after week went by before it was ready and just when it was about to be put back in the water, out of the blue, the dual engines were recalled by the manufacturer. One came in right away but the other one did not come in until after Labor Day. I will never forget when the boat was finally put back in the water, how Dan looked up to heaven - and not at me - and said: “Now I know what is going to happen. It will be struck by lightning!” I was completely off the hook.

That summer without the use of the boat, Dan had decided to put in a pool. The kids enjoyed that so much that the following summer we didn’t go out on the boat very much at all. The summer after that we had to sell that boat because we were transferred to Georgia.

From the time I began to pray the rosary, it was never a problem again. If I had put my foot down and not gone back out on the boat with him I don’t know if our marriage would have survived. God intervened to protect our marriage and family and I didn’t have to do anything but pray.

Idea #5: ASK YOUR FAMILY INCLUDING YOUR SMALL CHILDREN TO PRAY THE ROSARY WITH YOU.

This is especially pleasing to Our Lady as can be seen in the following story I refer to as "The Angel Story." 

Dan was a non-practicing Baptist for the most part growing up. As an adult he didn’t retain much of the Baptist beliefs except that he was pretty sure Catholics were wrong to have any kind of devotion to Our Blessed Mother and that was an obstacle to his ever becoming Catholic.

I, on the other hand, was growing in love for the Catholic Faith and Our Blessed Mother was a big part of that. I wanted to share this with my family so I prayed for God to help him with this.

About this time we got word that a former coworker’s nine year old son had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor. He had been tossing football with his dad when his vision became blurry. They had taken him in for tests and discovered the tumor. I was devastated! He was so close in age to Brett so I could really relate to their suffering.

A priest had told me that every time we combine offering sacrifices with praying the rosary God sends angels to help the people for whom we pray. So I immediately began praying a decade of the rosary each day with my children for “the boy with the brain tumor” as he came to be known in our house. I also taught them to offer small sacrifices for him (i.e. eating the vegetable they didn’t like, picking up toys without being asked, etc.). It was not easy to do this every day. Many days the decade of the rosary was prayed as Brett, Nicole and Erin were “bouncing off the walls” because they had too much energy to sit still; and some days we missed it altogether but I didn’t give up. My concern for their family kept me going. As we prayed and offered these small sacrifices, I frequently reminded them that God was sending angels to the boy with the brain tumor. Often times, Dan would smirk as I said this.

About a year later Dan was going on a business trip to a convention. I did not like it when he went to these events because of all the partying that went on so I tried to demand that he not go. Thank God I wasn’t able to control that! At the convention he ran into Greg, the father of the boy with brain tumor. They spent the entire day together. He shared with Dan about his son and some of the miracles that had taken place in the past year. He said that during the time his son was on a ventilator, he began to suffer from depression and they were very worried about him. But one day, out of the blue, his spirits lifted. At different times he would get really excited and point to the space next to the doctor or the nurse or to the space between his parents and sister. When the ventilator was removed and he could talk he would say: “Dad, there is an angel next to you” or “There is an angel next to mom.” He told them that the angels were there to help him. One day, several months later, he was crying and when his parents asked him why he was so upset, he told them that he would not be seeing the angels anymore because he no longer needed them.

Dan came home from that convention and told me all about this. I could not believe it! God really had sent angels. A few months after that Dan decided to join the RCIA program and he entered the Church the following Easter.

Idea #6: IMITATE HER VIRTUES

This is from Good Catholic:

We are called to pattern our lives after that of Jesus Christ. When this seems daunting, it’s helpful to turn to the example of fellow human beings who imitated Him well: the saints.

Ultimately, however, no one has imitated Jesus better than His own Mother. Mary, Mother of God and Mother of Souls, has been given to us as an example which we can strive to imitate. When we draw near to her, she leads us to her Son.

In his classic work True Devotion to the Mary, St. Louis de Montfort lists the “ten principal virtues of the most Holy Virgin Mary.”

They are:

• Profound humility
• Lively faith
• Blind obedience
• Continual prayer
• Universal mortification
• Divine purity
• Ardent charity
• Heroic patience
• Angelic sweetness
• Divine wisdom

These virtues may seem overwhelming at first, but there are simple ways to practice them in everyday life with the help of God’s grace. Follow this link to learn about each one and how you can practice it in your life as a gift for our lady.

Idea #7: READ A MARIAN BOOK

One of the best ways to get to know Our Blessed Mother is by reading about her. There are many resources for this. Follow this link for some suggestions. 

Idea #8: JOIN OUR LADY'S A-TEAM AND OFFER YOUR SUFFERING AND SACRIFICES TO HER TO USE FOR THE CONVERSION OF SINNERS AND FOR THE HOLY SOULS IN PURGATORY

Our Lady came to Fatima to begin the formation of her “A Team” – a team of new “missionary disciples” who would be bright lights in a time of darkness, and by living an authentically Catholic life, would mission to people who had received a watered down or distorted version of the Catholic Faith or had never received the true Catholic Faith at all.

Although the Angel of Peace and Our Lady’s messages at Fatima were for everyone, believers and nonbelievers, it seems that their message were primarily intended to reach more deeply into the hearts of those who already believed and were living somewhat virtuous lives. It was a call to advance in sacrificial love through reparation, expiation, prayer and penance. She came to faithful Catholics to increase their capacity to be filled with God’s love in order to cooperate with her to save so many lost souls.

Read the full article here and learn specific ways to cooperate with her in this very important work. 

Idea #9: USE SACRIFICE BEADS TO COUNT YOUR GIFTS TO HER SO THAT SHE CAN USE THEM TO HELP OTHERS

Using sacrifice beads can help us to make our whole day into a prayer and offering for our loved ones - those who are alive and those who have died. Learn more here. 

Idea #10: GAIN INDULGENCES FOR THE HOLY SOULS IN PURGATORY SO THAT SHE CAN USE THEM TO RELIEVE THEIR SUFFERING

The term “indulgences” refers to specific prayers and actions, permeated with a spirit of penance, that are an extra-special channel of God’s superabundant, healing grace. Once a person has repented of his sins and, if necessary, received forgiveness from Christ through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, indulgences help to further the healing process that is needed for himself or for a Holy Soul in Purgatory and for the people that have been hurt by his/her sins. Learn more here.

Idea #11: ASK HER TO JOIN YOU AS YOU SPEND TIME IN PRAYER - CHRISTIAN MEDITATION - EACH DAY SO THAT SHE CAN BRING YOU CLOSER TO HER SON BY FILLING YOU WITH HIS GRACE. 

Learn about Christian Meditation here. 

Idea #12: INTRODUCE HER TO SOMEONE NEW

Her birthday is the perfect time to introduce her to someone. You can simply do this by giving rosaries/novena pamphlets to people, or by simply sharing Marian infographs on your social media accounts.