How did I let so much of May go by without writing something Marian? Shame on you for not reminding me.

The Church’s first expressions of Marian devotion were beautiful and memorable. They’ve been passed intact from generation to generation, and they’re still used today. She is there in the early creeds (“born of the Virgin Mary”), there in St. Ignatius of Antioch’s professions of faith. In the middle of the second century, St. Justin described her as the New Eve. Like the first Eve, Mary is mother of all the living — now those who are truly alive in Christ.

The earliest recorded Marian prayer was in use in Egypt in the 200s (and possibly earlier). Catholics still pray that prayer today: “We fly to your patronage, O holy Mother of God. Despise not our petitions in our need, and keep us from all danger. O ever glorious and faithful Virgin Mary!”

The oldest surviving images of Mary show her cradling the baby Jesus at her breast. Probably the earliest is a fresco in Rome’s Priscilla Catacombs, painted probably around 250 A.D. The earliest Egyptian Madonna is exquisitely engraved in stone.

The earliest surviving record of a Marian apparition is also from the 200s. She appeared St. Gregory the Wonderworker, and you can read the story here, as told by St. Gregory of Nyssa.

If you have not yet read Mary and the Fathers of the Church: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought by Luigi Gambero, please do yourself the biggest favor and order a copy today. Do it for your Mother.

If you’ve read Gambero and you want more, take a look at On the Dormition of Mary: Early Patristic Homilies by Brian Daley, S.J.