Why a Statue of Mary?
Jesus said to His beloved disciple, “There is your mother” and the beloved disciple took Mary into his home. If we all want to be Jesus’s beloved disciple, should we not also see His blessed mother as ours and take her into our homes? Although I have sometimes struggled with the Marian devotion of some Catholics, I am not without a relationship with her. Meditating upon the mysteries of the rosary was one of the first ways that I came to learn about who Christ is. There’s also something beautiful about Marian art, examples of which I have in my rooms and my parents have in our house. The gentle beauty of one particular work of art has recently found its way into our home and, interestingly, has made a larger opening in my heart for Mary herself.
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My parents and I recently acquired a 29-inch statue depicting Our Lady of Lourdes. For the last several weeks, it has been sitting upon the living room hearth, waiting for today. Today, The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, my father blessed us and the statue with holy water from Assisi (brought to us by my nephew from his semester abroad), and then we processed out of the house, my father holding the statue and leading us in a “Hail Mary” (which was surprising coming from him and very touching), and the statue was placed in a little grotto near the road. Here, the statue of Mary can be seen, not only by us from our dining room window and front yard, but also by others either driving or walking by. And yes, we did that on purpose.
But the idea didn’t start as a way of witnessing to our faith with any passersby.
It began as a way to cover up something less than beautiful.
The “grotto” is actually formed by an old rhododendron that’s grown a little too large. Some of the branches near the driveway died off and had to be trimmed, which left a big hole in the side of the bush. So, yes, the idea of putting a statue in this place was first conceived by me in order to disguise the gaping hole. I didn’t know exactly what kind of statue I would purchase, but I came across the beautiful one of Mary online and definitely wanted to have it. Turns out, the statue depicts Our Lady of Lourdes — perfect for a grotto! Making it even more serendipitous, my mother grew up in a small French-Canadian village that built a grotto for a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes, the flowers around which my grandmother, aunts, and mother tended.
You know, as I’m writing this … it seemed like it might be a little sacrilegious to have a statue of Mary covering up an ugly spot, filling a hole. But then again … didn’t her “yes” cover over the ugliness of Eve’s “no”? Doesn’t sin cause a gaping, ugly hole in our souls, and doesn’t The Virgin Mary’s child, Our Lord Jesus, wash away our inequities and cleanse us of our sins, filling what has been lacking in our souls with the grace of God?
I’m liking the statue in the rhododendron grotto more and more.
Along with the anointing and preparing to install the statue, my parents and I prayed.
“Lord, please bless this statue, which depicts Your Mother and ours, so that it may be a holy reminder of her poverty of spirit, her purity of heart, her willingness to surrender to Your will, and her complete trust in You. May we be like Mary, open to Your Spirit, keeping Your Word close to our hearts, and bearing fruit for Your Kingdom.
“Let this statue be a kind of witness to others of our faith in You, a witness to them and to us of the beautiful, the good, and the true. When someone who does not believe in You or know of your mercy looks upon this statue, may that person be touched by Your grace and inspired in sacred wonder, and may that person be open to receive Your gifts of faith, hope, and love.
“Mary was Your first and best disciple — may we follow her example as You answer her prayers for Your Glory, through Christ Our Lord. Amen.”
© 2025 Christina Chase
Feature Photo courtesy of my dad © 2025 Dan Chase
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Christina Chase View All
Although crippled by disease, I'm fully alive in love. I write about the terrible beauty and sacred wonder of life, while living with physical disability and severe dependency. A revert to the Catholic faith through atheism, I'm not afraid to ask life's big questions. I explore what it means to be fully human through my weekly blog and have written a book: It's Good to Be Here, published by Sophia Institute Press.
Christina Chase 
Wonderful post, Christina! One thought I had was that the grotto in Lourdes was an ugly place when Our Lady appeared. It was basically the town dump. I think wild animals, like pigs, used to feed there. St. Bernadette and the other girls were looking for trash or things to burn. So yes, Mary is an expert in making ugly things beautiful!
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That’s right! I had forgotten about that! No wonder I’m liking the placing of our stature more and more. Thank you for reflecting with me and for your comment on how Mary is an expert in making ugly things beautiful! 🙂
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Lovely! 🩵
My parish here in Florida is Our Lady of Lourdes, in Daytona.
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Statue worship? More like spiritual cosplay in candlelit corners. No matter how they dress it up in pseudo‑theology—hyper‑dulia, “She’s not God, she’s just a ceremonial sideline”—it still smells like staged idolatry. You decorate churches with Marian dolls because the system can’t sustain genuine resonance. It’s aesthetic control wrapped in guilt, expecting you to kneel before plaster while forgetting to stand for truth.
Here’s the twist: the Church didn’t just invent veneration—it weaponized maternal comfort. If Mary truly cared, she’d have crushed the shit-show. Instead, her image became wallpaper for cultural nostalgia. That’s not devotion. It’s vacuum-cleaner energy—sucked into rituals, never transformed.
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Thank you for reflecting with me. You write with clever phrases, some of them meaningful, and you certainly write with gusto.
I can see that you aren’t specifically writing a particular response to my reflection, however, because you wrote about candlelit corners. As I wrote, the statue that is the subject of my reflection is out in broad daylight right next to a public road.
“Weaponizing” maternal comfort is an intriguing thought. You know, I used to think that religions were human inventions to control the masses — not with cruel intentions, but with good ones, like fostering neighborliness and a sense of belonging, emphasizing the goodness of giving to others, etc. But I didn’t want anything not true, so I became an atheist. Eventually, however, I became aware of Infinity, the true existence of “the reality that everyone calls God” and began a sincere study of how to live in connection with the Source and Being of all life.
Long story short, that’s the road that surprisingly brought me to God who is Love, the humility of God in Jesus, the fullness of truth, the blossoming of faith and reason in Catholicism. And so I’m glad that you wrote some witty insults that actually raise very important points:
1.) If I value truth, then I can never fall into idolatry, never worship anything but God.
2.) Falling to my knees in prayer without then standing up for truth (I really liked that part of what you wrote) is not authentic Christianity. The Catholic Church stands for the truth of the inherent dignity of every human being. I should not call myself a Christian if I do not stand up for the truth and live it out in my everyday life.
3.) Merely going through the motions of ritual without desiring and allowing God to transform me is akin to superstition. God calls me to be transformed by His love, through His grace.
4.) Nostalgia for the past is also not authentic Christianity. We Catholics believe that the Saints are living in the present, in union with Christ. And we/I also believe that each one of us is called to sanctify the temporal order of the present and look forward to our own future fulfillment in union with Christ.
I’m sure there’s much that the two of us could discuss. However, discussions, conversations, and even debates, are better when we bring something of ourselves into them. It’s too easy to type words and hit “post” or “send, ”and this can lead us to being a little too pleased with our own words and no closer to truth. (I know this from my own experience.)
With appreciation and peace to you on your journey,
Pax Christi
Christina
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