In my Roman Catholic upbringing, The Holy Spirit didn’t factor into our spirituality very much. Our prayer lives were already filled with countless saints who were responsible for specific petitions. Jude for hopeless cases. Gerard for infertility and/or family problems. Dymphna for mental illness, depression, or anxiety.

But the Queen of Heaven was Mary, the Blessed Virgin Mother of God. If you wanted something and it was really important, you went directly to Mary. It’s not that Mary, herself, wouldn’t grant your petition, but as his mother, she had the ear of Jesus, and he’s the guy who could work miracles. Besides, he owed her one after all that sass over the wine at the wedding feast in Caana.

Holy Spirit? In my childhood, She was known as The Holy Ghost. It seemed to me that She was more in charge of happenstance, serendipity, and coincidence. Or, if something untoward happened, it was probably because The Holy Ghost was punishing you for something you might have done recently or, perhaps, even years ago. Maybe even “the sin of your father” (says so in the Bible).

In my house, in my church – at least to my child’s mind – Jesus was The One. The Guy. We might have said 10 Hail Mary’s, but The Lord’s Prayer (“The Our Father”) was the anchor of our prayers in The Rosary, which we said once a day. He was also the center of our prayers on Sunday, and it was his Body and Blood we received in Holy Communion.

God? Well, he was The Father. He was The Creator. There was never any doubt of the male gender of God. Or, his age. Clearly, he was ancient of days, as the one who was there before the beginning. I mean, God practically invented “the beginning.” Mostly, he was the one to whom we owed a huge debt of gratitude for giving us all of creation and creatures and, of course, Jesus.

That said, near as I could tell, it was Mary who was actually the third person of the Trinity. Oh, we might have made the sign of the cross and said, “In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” but we knew that it was, “The Father, the Son and the Blessed Virgin Mary.”

Everyone in my neighborhood had a shrine to the BVM. They may have also had a statue of St. Francis and maybe one of St. Fiacre in their garden, but it was rare to see a statue of Mary out there, all by herself. Typically, she took shelter under an old bathtub that had been half buried in the ground and was surrounded by pots and/or vases of plastic or fabric flowers.

When we were certain our parents were out of hearing range, we called her “Our Lady of the Clawfoot Tub” or “Bathtub Madonna,” or simply “Bathtub Mary.” We may have joked around about that, but when we needed something, we were as serious as a heart attack about going directly to the Blessed Virgin Mary with our petition.

When we moved out of our apartment above my grandmother’s tenement house in the city and to the suburbs, one of the first things my mother got was a Shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary. She was on the lawn to the left of the walkway when you came to the door.

So, every time you came into the house, you had to pass her. My mother’s hope was that we would at least acknowledge her presence and, perhaps, shoot an “arrow prayer” of thanksgiving her way for answering my mother’s prayer.

Now, my mother made lots of novenas to Mary, but the reason for the shrine was the Very Big Prayer she answered. That would be the one Very Big Prayer to save my father from the bullets and bombs of World War II. That my father came home “without a scratch” was enough evidence for my mother of the miraculous power of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

We never talked about the hidden scars and deep wounds of war. She was just glad her husband came home alive.

Indeed, on the stone that marks the graves of my parents, along with their names, dates of births and deaths, my mother had an image of the BVM carved in the middle of the gravestone. The BVM looks very demure and is holding a huge bouquet of roses, as if she has just won the Ms. America pageant.

My mother was very faithful, after my father died, to put roses on his grave whenever she visited. Before she died, she asked me whenever I visited her grave that I would place roses there. I think, since she died in 2008, I’ve visited her grave about six times. Each time, I’ve brought roses. The last time, I brought a pot of baby roses. That would have pleased her.

No, she didn’t want the roses to honor my father or her. The roses were for Mary. There may have been no limit to the power of Mary to work through God and Jesus, but there was also no end to the gratitude my mother felt for her.

Oh, and St. Teresa of the Little Flower. She also liked roses.

There is clearly something about Mary. She’s not the Holy Spirit, who is the gift Jesus gave us fifty days after the miracle of his Resurrection. But if she’s the mother of Jesus, who is fully human and fully divine, it does elevate her status as a mere human.

Mary is not only referred to as “The Theotokos” – the Mother of God – but, as St. Francis called her, she is also “The Spouse of the Holy Spirit.” This provides us with a symbolic expression of her unique relationship to the Trinity, which begins with the conception of Jesus through the power of the Spirit. (“Spouse” is the nice word)

She is also known as the co-Redemptrix with Jesus, a subordinate (of course) but essential participation by the Blessed Virgin Mary in redemption, notably that she gave free consent to give life to the Redeemer, which meant sharing his life, suffering, and death, which were redemptive for the world.

If you’re keeping count, that’s three connections Mary had into the power of the Trinity – God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. I think my mother was onto something. No wonder she had such an affinity for the BVM.

On this Sunday of Pentecost, when we remember the many manifestations of the Holy Spirit: Ruach, Shekinah, the Heavenly Dove, the Tongues of Fire, the Comforter, The Guide, The Advocate, you might consider that there’s something about Mary.

By some mystery born in the deep crevices of the mind of man and the institutional church, Mary is her very own Trinity: The Spouse of the Spirit, the Mother of God, and the Co-Redemptrix with Jesus.

I suppose that’s the closest we’re going to get to an institutional embrace of the Divine Feminine.

Happy Pentecost, everyone. I suspect Mary and Shekinah have something wonderful in store for us today. Why else would everything be decorated in red?