The Mother of God has been invoked as Stella Maris – Star of the Sea – for almost as long as she has been invoked at all. Long before the world of satellites and GPS, lighthouses and admiralty charts, those who depended upon the sea called upon her to protect them from the dangers of the waves. Stella Maris is an ancient title precisely because Christianity in its earliest days was a religion of the sea. The first Apostles were fishermen, and it was around the shores of the Mediterranean that the Gospel was first spread. The sea we so often view as a barrier today was the great highway of the ancient world, and along its waters travelled merchants, soldiers, missionaries and pilgrims. The first centuries of Christianity primarily unfolded from one port to another.