Gerry Bourke SJ recalls his experience of devotion to Mary in Japan; he notes that it has been hugely important to Japanese Catholics going all the way back to the time of St Francis Xavier.

Declan Marmion SM reflects on Mary as the model of faithfulness and generosity in following Christ. He stresses the need to see Mary as a disciple and pilgrim of the early Church who was called to sanctity and to action.

Did Our Lady spend her last days in a small mountainside house overlooking Ephesus? Donald Carroll looks at the background to a great archaeological find near Kushadasi on the Aegean coast of Turkey.

Bishop John Kirby maintains that some ancient statues of the Madonna carved from local trees are proof that devotion to Our Lady of Clonfert dates back over 700 years.

In what it has to say about Mary Vatican II inserted a special chapter into the Constitution on the Church “Lumen Gentium”. By this it was signalling that it wished Mary to be seen as a prototype of the disciples of Jesus. Philip Fogarty SJ develops this spirituality.