Our Lady — Her Many Titles, Apparitions & Prayers
One Mother, many titles. Every Marian devotion explained — the apparition story, the theological meaning, the prayer, and how to begin a novena.
Marian devotion is the honour Catholics give to Mary as the mother of Jesus, and the practice of asking her to pray for us. Her many titles — Our Lady of Guadalupe, of Lourdes, of Sorrows, Undoer of Knots — are not different Marys but one woman remembered for different things: a place she was seen, a grief she carried, a need she is asked about. AngelGuard publishes the story behind each title, the prayer that belongs to it, and how to keep a novena.
Pray with her
- How to pray the RosaryA bead diagram, every prayer in full, and today’s mysteries.
- The MemorareThe full prayer, and the Flying Novena: nine in a row, plus one.
Nine days rather than one prayer: the Undoer of Knots novena.
All Marian Devotions
Mary, Mother of God
A title that was settled to defend who Christ is
Our Lady of Sorrows
The seven sorrows, and the feast that follows the Cross by a day
Our Lady of Lourdes
Eighteen apparitions, a spring, and a medical bureau that says no
Our Lady of Guadalupe
Tepeyac, 1531, and the image nobody painted
The Immaculate Conception
Whose conception it refers to, and what 1854 actually settled
Do Catholics worship Mary?
No. Worship belongs to God alone. What Catholics offer Mary is honour, and what they ask of her is intercession — that she pray for us, as any mother would. The Church has kept the distinction explicit for centuries precisely because it is easy to blur from the outside: the Hail Mary ends by asking her to pray for us sinners, which is a request made to a creature about God, not a prayer offered to a god. Every Marian devotion on this site ends where it began, with Christ.
Why does Mary have so many names?
Because people met her in different places and remembered different things. Our Lady of Guadalupe is Mary as she was seen on a hillside in Mexico in 1531; Our Lady of Lourdes as she was seen at a grotto in France in 1858; Our Lady of Sorrows is not a place at all but a way of looking at her, through the seven griefs of her life. A title is a doorway, not a different person. Catholics often keep to one because a particular story matches something in their own, and that is the whole reason the titles multiplied.
Do you have to believe in the apparitions?
No. Even the approved apparitions are private revelation: the Church may judge that nothing in them contradicts the faith and that they are worthy of belief, but no Catholic is bound to accept any of them. That is not a technicality — it is the reason these pages tell you what was reported, what the Church has formally said about it, and where the two differ. What is binding is the faith itself; what Lourdes and Guadalupe add is encouragement, freely taken.