“You’re my second favorite mommy.”

My five-year-old daughter and I pittered around the kitchen together.

“Mommy.”

“Mmm hmm.”

“You’re my second favorite Mommy.”

I looked up from what I was doing and into her light blue eyes.

“My first favorite Mommy is Mama Mary,” she informed me.

I stood in silence as I wondered: Where did that come from? What was she just thinking about? How did I receive the gift of being the mother of this wild and beautiful child?

I broke the quiet: “Me too, honey. Mama Mary is my favorite Mommy, too.”

I did not grow up in a family that prayed the rosary or had a particular devotion to Mary. My relationship with Mary has been gradual, picked up like little treasures a child gathers at the park or on a hike or simply walking along.

A treasure as a little girl—Even when I didn’t speak to Mary often or formally, I felt her motherly affection when I brought her a rose from my father’s garden and sang Hail Mary, Gentle Woman at my school’s annual May crowning.

A treasure as a young mother—She gave me a mother’s strength when my now five-year-old daughter was in the hospital with RSV as a nine-week-old and I prayed Hail Marys on repeat.

A treasure as a daughter in need—I am very close to my own mother, and when she inhabited a space of disease, I needed to be a stronghold for her. Our roles were reversed, and I still needed a mother.

And so I came to Mary as a little child, scared and in need of her care, and she took me under her mantle and loved me with a tender love I didn’t know was there.

I remember a particular morning I sat on my sofa in the quiet of sunrise and set my eyes upon small image of Our Lady of Guadalupe my husband brought back from a trip to her shrine in Mexico City. I just looked at her, not capable of other prayers. And as I looked at her, I felt deeply—you are the most beautiful mother, you are my mother.

She speaks to us as she spoke to Juan Diego all those years ago:

Listen, put it into your heart, my youngest and dearest son, that the thing that frightens you, the thing that afflicts you, is nothing: do not let it disturb you…Am I not here, I who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the hollow of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Do you need something more? Let nothing else worry you or disturb you.

Happy Mother’s Day to mothers, grandmothers, women religious, and other spiritual mothers! And today, let’s speak words of love to our favorite Mommy, Mama Mary.