Can You Love Mary Too Much?

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Can one love Mary too much?

If so, I just might.

If Jesus is the sun, then my faith right now is a moonlit path. I do not see Him or feel His warmth, all I can rely on to see at all is Mary, the Moon.
This worries me. Lately I have not felt God at all. I have had no emotion in my faith for Him. Intellectually, I can worship Him, but not with my emotion. Instead, my emotion is spiked by Mary. I feel extremely intensely her motherly love, and it easy for me to return that love.

To God, it is harder to get fired up about emotionally. I cannot seem to find Him or see Him. I am very lost in my spiritual life.

For Jesus, because I know about His wonders intellectually, I can worship Him, especially in the Eucharist. But I do not have the EMOTIONS of “falling in love with God”. Oh but I have most certainly fallen in love with Mary.

Right now, for prayer, I say the Rosary and Little Office of the BVM. I wear the scapular and Miraculous Medal and am a member of Militia Immaculata. I cannot stop reading about Mother. I love her.
But CAN I love her too much?
 
If you speak of ‘love’ as a feeling, no, you cannot love Mary too much.

If you speak of ‘love’ as a decision of the will, yes, you can love anything or anyone too much if that thing or person takes precedence over God in your life. One must not violate the First Commandment (OT or NT) in putting God first, above all others.

From what you’ve written, ialsop, it doesn’t sound like you are in this position of putting Mary before God. You recognize her position as always pointing us towards God.

Enjoy your loving relationship with Mary and imitate her. She is a wonderful example of how to live as Christ has taught us to live and she will always lead you back to her Son.

Be at peace.
 
No, I don’t think so. It isn’t a matter of quantity; it’s a matter of the type of love we show the Blessed Virgin. So long as we revere her for who and what she is - the Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, Immaculate Conception, Perpetual Virgin, Sinless and Intercessor - and do not worship her as if she is divine or equal with God, then we cannot love her too much. Indeed, if loved the right way, we can’t love anyone too much. 🙂
 
ialsop said:
Can one love Mary too much?

If so, I just might.

If Jesus is the sun, then my faith right now is a moonlit path. I do not see Him or feel His warmth, all I can rely on to see at all is Mary, the Moon.
This worries me. Lately I have not felt God at all. I have had no emotion in my faith for Him. Intellectually, I can worship Him, but not with my emotion. Instead, my emotion is spiked by Mary. I feel extremely intensely her motherly love, and it easy for me to return that love.

To God, it is harder to get fired up about emotionally. I cannot seem to find Him or see Him. I am very lost in my spiritual life.

For Jesus, because I know about His wonders intellectually, I can worship Him, especially in the Eucharist. But I do not have the EMOTIONS of “falling in love with God”. Oh but I have most certainly fallen in love with Mary.

Right now, for prayer, I say the Rosary and Little Office of the BVM. I wear the scapular and Miraculous Medal and am a member of Militia Immaculata. I cannot stop reading about Mother. I love her.
But CAN I love her too much?
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No, as long as you stay within the parameters defined by the Church. See St. Louis de Montfort for a Catholic saint who certainly loved Our Blessed Lady a great deal. 🙂

The only way a person might transgress is if he went beyond what the Church teaches about Our Lady and our devotion to her. For example, I’ve come across a kooky website (no links, they don’t need the publicity) which claims that God the Father is a fake, and the true Trinity is Jesus, Mary and the Holy Spirit. That would be gravely erroneous and sinful. 😦
 
Was it Fulton Sheen that said that you can never love Mary more than her son loves her?
 
So here is a follow up question:

How do we know if our love for Mary is TRUE love, not sensationalized fake “love” for something Mary is not?
 
Except, the Blessed Virgin Mary never kept any glory for Herself. She never has, and She never will. When St. Elizabeth was visited by Our Lady, she was surprised and asked how the Mother of Our Lord should come to her. And Our Lady responded by saying that Her soul magnifies the Lord, and Her spirit rejoices in Her Lord and Saviour. [Luke 1:46] If anything, whatever love and honor you give Our Lady, She will always, give it to Our Lord and Master. She cannot help but do so.

Ah, but you cannot say the same for most people, not even close. Whatever love you give most people, fellow Catholics, friends, even close family, usually they will tend to merely keep it, even with the best intentions, even on a subconscious level. It is not necessarily meant to be a slight to them, no. However, no one can ever come close to loving Our Lord and Master the same way, that Our Lady can. No one. She was so lost in Him and so completely attuned to Him from the very beginning of Her life. I would suspect, and actually argue, that it is a mere projection of our own selfish desires, whether conscious or subconscious, that makes us doubt that She could ever love God this much, to the point that we start unconsciously believing that She would keep any love we pay Her, for Herself. Because… well, that’s what we would do 😉

I contend that it’s not possible to love Her too much at all.
 
ialsop said:
Can one love Mary too much?

If so, I just might.

If Jesus is the sun, then my faith right now is a moonlit path. I do not see Him or feel His warmth, all I can rely on to see at all is Mary, the Moon.
This worries me. Lately I have not felt God at all. I have had no emotion in my faith for Him. Intellectually, I can worship Him, but not with my emotion. Instead, my emotion is spiked by Mary. I feel extremely intensely her motherly love, and it easy for me to return that love.

To God, it is harder to get fired up about emotionally. I cannot seem to find Him or see Him. I am very lost in my spiritual life.

For Jesus, because I know about His wonders intellectually, I can worship Him, especially in the Eucharist. But I do not have the EMOTIONS of “falling in love with God”. Oh but I have most certainly fallen in love with Mary.

Right now, for prayer, I say the Rosary and Little Office of the BVM. I wear the scapular and Miraculous Medal and am a member of Militia Immaculata. I cannot stop reading about Mother. I love her.
But CAN I love her too much?
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We are supposed to get sanctified and become like Jesus. And no one can love Mary stronger than Jesus Himself. So, I don’t think there is any danger.
 
ialsop: You speak of the emotion of love. Many spiritual trials have nothing to do with feelings, that feeling part of an emotion. but has to do with the knowledge and choice of the situation of love. We pray not because we feel anything. We believe not because of feeling, but because we act on our knowledge and beliefs. The truest form of love is an act of the will. I do something because I truly love God with my mind and will, even though I feel nothing. Because we are human, we do feel, but the greatest act of love and courage are our commitment to pleasing God, and doing the right thing in spite of our feelings. If God grants us the religious sentiments of love, then we gratefully accept them, and He does on occasions. You are loving Mary and God when you are doing what they expect of you, and that is to love God with your entire being (as much as is possible to you) and to love your neighbor. This true form of love is one of resolve, commitment, and sacrifice of one’s own desire for the spiritual well being of another because of the love of Christ. This amounts to dying to self, and living in Christ. No greater love has one, then to give his life for another. Do not equate your love for Mary, by how you feel about her, but by how you follow her example, and desires for you, and that is your committed love for her Son. This would please her exceedingly. It’s her message to the world.
 
Consider yourself very fortunate for the grace you’ve been given to love her deeply and endlessly.

If you take into account the countless things we should have gratitude toward God, one cannot help but have a profound love and trust in His divine mercy.

If your heart is wounded with a love of Mary then it was struck by the same Love of Whom she serves.

Here are some quotes from Father Maximilian:
She is bound to feed the soul with the milk of her grace, raise it as lovingly as she nourished, looked after, and raised Jesus. At her knee the soul must learn to know and love Jesus. From her Heart it must draw love toward Him, or even love Him with her heart and become like Him through love.
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Yet, the more keenly a soul understands that all acts of love are addressed to the Father, who is the ultimate goal, and that in the Immaculata such acts take up an immaculate purity—while in Jesus they obtain infinite value worthy of the Holy Majesty of the Father—the more it will blaze forth with love for Jesus and Mary.
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I just would like to mention that we cannot possibly settle for any ordinary type of love for the Heart of Jesus, but—in keeping with what is written on the MI enrollment card—must aspire to a most perfect love, that is, to loving with the Heart of the Immaculata, and only with a love of that kind.
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Using the language of our Order, in the apparitions at Lourdes, the Immaculata proclaimed, “Penance, penance, penance,” to refresh the memory of the “Order of Penance” in which and through which she wants to halt souls in their race toward the pleassures of life, entering their hearts, taking possession of them and directing them toward true happiness, to God, by the path of self-denial. The Immaculata wants to prepare in these souls the throne for Divine Love, for the Dinine Heart. She wants to teach them how to love Him, by inflaming them with Love. She herself wants to love this Heart in and through them, and become one with them so that they may become one with herself.
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You can’t love her too much, just don’t love her more than God. 🙂
 
Don’t think it’s possible to love someone too much, especially Mary, but I do believe that it’s possible for some people to be confused with their love and end up worshipping her
 
I don’t believe you can love anyone or anything too much. IF you are wearing the scrapular’s and her medals, you already love her and out of your own post you are loving her because you are wondeirng about her, which means maybe you aren’t loving her as much as you ought to! ever think of that? I personally love Mary, and for someone to say that they can’t love her as much as Jesus’ would be ridiculous, because Jesus loved his mother, and as Jesus’ mother you are able to love your mother, your able to love her because you know that she is probably in heaven and you know that she is watching over you, just as she appeared to different people throughout time, and is guarding you, more than you know, because if you were dying, and in need of someone to pray for you, wouldn it not be jesus’s very own mother?
 
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