A GOOD PRAYER EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT A KNOTT

FEAST OF OUR LADY UNDOER OF KNOTS

September 28

There are dozens of devotions to Mary, but one that has grown in popularity among the Catholic faithful in recent years has an interesting and unusual title: Mary, Undoer of Knots.

The devotion is centered on an image of Our Lady untying a series of knots in a long wedding ribbon. The devotion originated with a troubled marriage on the brink of divorce that was restored to health through Our Lady’s intercession. This event was afterwards memorialized in a painting of the Blessed Mother serenely untying the knotted wedding ribbon which represented the couple’s marital disharmony.

This devotion has become famous around the world because it is a favorite of the Holy Father, Pope Francis. It has now taken root among the faithful as an efficacious means of turning to Mary’s intercession for life’s most difficult problems. We give her our “knots” so that she can unravel them.

God’s providence never leaves us without a remedy; in His loving mercy, He always gives us what we need when we need it. He sees the bad state of our souls, the poor quality of our relationships, and the harmful condition of our societies—and this is not how He wants us to live. Christ died to set men free from sin, so that we could be properly ordered, so that we could be in right relationship with Him and with one another, living in peace and justice. When we go astray, individually or collectively, He always points to a path that will lead us back to Him. The way that He leads us back to Himself is the same way that He came to us: through His Mother.

Christ is so good that He not only wants us to return to Him, He also wants to heal the woundedness we incurred while living outside His will. He knows that we have reaped a tangled mess on account of our own sins and the sins of others. Who better to set things in order than His good and wise Mother? Just as a child goes to its mother with a hopelessly-tangled mess of knots, so too we go to Our Lady.

Mary Undoer of Knots is the devotion that reminds us that we are at war in the battle for our souls and our families. She will take our knots—which are made up of everything that is not the will of God for our lives—and unravel them one by one.