Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Blessed Virgin Mary

  • Mary, the Mother of God

    Mary, the Mother of God

    Today’s readings

    Today, on the Octave day of Christmas, we have an opportunity on this Christmas Day to pause and celebrate Mary, the mother of God. This solemnity is a special one for us as Catholics because people for a long time argued over whether Mary, a human being, could possibly be the mother of God. Eventually, the Holy Spirit led the Church to realize that downplaying Mary’s role in all of this really downplays Jesus’ divinity, so denying that Mary was the Mother of God was a substantial part of the heresy of Nestorianism. To say that Mary is not the Mother of God is, in some way, to say that Jesus is not God, and that of course, is not what we believe. So, for centuries the Church has taught that “Mary is the Mother of God the Word according to his human nature.”

    Sister Sarah made me memorize that line in my second year of seminary, and I’ll never forget it. Basically, there are two parts. Mary is the Mother of God the Word: Mary, chosen from all eternity to be a virgin inviolate and a fit Mother for God, is blessed by conceiving the only Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. Calling Jesus “God the Word” in this definition takes us to the opening verses of the Gospel of John which tells us that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The Word is traditionally believed to be the second person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

    The second part of the definition asserts that Mary is his mother according to his human nature. We know that Jesus was both human and divine, and both natures coexisted in Jesus Christ without any diminishment of either nature at the expense of the other. We also know that only God himself could beget God the Word, but it would have to take a human woman, a very special human woman, to be the mother of his human nature. Jesus is consubstantial, of the same substance, with the Father, as we pray in the Creed, but in a very real sense, he is also consubstantial with us through Mary, in his human nature.

    St. Paul tells us today that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons and daughters.” Today we rejoice in Mary’s faith that God’s promises to the human race would be fulfilled through her. It is because of her faithfulness that God was born into our world in the person of Jesus Christ and became one of us, walking our walk, living our life, dying our death, and leading us to new life that lasts forever. If not for Mary’s fiat – her “yes” to God’s will for her – salvation history might have gone rather poorly. Thankfully, because of her great faith, we have adoption as sons and daughters of God.

    Did Mary understand all of this when she said yes to God’s will when Gabriel came to announce the birth of Christ in her? I don’t know; maybe, maybe not. But she, as our Gospel tells us today, “kept all these things and reflected on them in her heart.” She was able to study the Gospel before it had ever been written, by reflecting on all the events surrounding the birth and life and death of her Son. And because of Mary, we can reflect on it all too, and rejoice that we are sons and daughters of God.

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

  • Our Lady of Guadalupe

    Our Lady of Guadalupe

    Today’s readings

    Appropriately enough, I think, we celebrate a second of Mary’s feasts in the space of just four days.  During Advent, we naturally turn our hearts in gratitude to Mary for her fiat that made possible our world’s salvation.  Last week we celebrated the Immaculate Conception of Mary; today we celebrate a quite different feast, Our Lady of Guadalupe.  We celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe in part because she is the patroness of all the Americas, and so once again, a special patron for us.

    A Native American author of the sixteenth century describes the story of our Lady of Guadalupe in today’s Office of Readings.  He tells us of another Native American named Juan Diego, who was on his way from his home to worship on the hill of Tepeyac.  There he heard someone calling to him from the top of the hill.  When he got to the top of the hill, he saw a woman whose clothing shone like the sun.  She told him that it was her desire that a church be erected on the hill so that all could worship her son Jesus.  She sent him to the local bishop to plead that cause.

    The bishop didn’t believe Juan Diego’s story and sent him away.  He returned to the hilltop to find the radiant Lady once again, and she told him to tell the bishop that she, the ever virgin holy Mary, Mother of God, sent him.  Again the bishop did not believe, telling him that unless he had a miraculous sign, he would not believe the story.

    At that point Juan Diego’s uncle became quite ill.  Juan then set out for the local church to have a priest come to anoint his uncle.  He purposely took a route around the hill at Tepeyac to avoid seeing the Lady and being detained, since the need for a priest was urgent.  But of course, she met him at the side of the hill and spoke to him again.  She assured him that his uncle had already been cured and sent him up the hilltop to find flowers of various kinds.  He got to the top of the hill to find many Castilian roses growing there, which was odd for that time of the winter.  He cut them and carried them down the hill in his tilma, a kind of mantle that he wore for warmth.  She sent him to the bishop bearing the miraculous flowers as proof.

    He went confidently to the bishop and informed him that the Lady had fulfilled his request for a sign.  He opened up his tilma, the flowers fell to the ground, but the great miracle was that the inside of the tilma revealed the image of the ever virgin Mary, mother of God, in the same manner as Juan had seen her on the hill.   The bishop built the church, and devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, as she had referred to herself, has grown ever since.  You can still see the tilma, still bearing the image of Mary, at the shrine in Guadalupe today.

    During Advent we are blessed to have the saints point the way to Jesus.  None of them does this more faithfully than his very own mother, and so we are blessed to celebrate her feast today.  May Mary our mother and the mother of God, lead us one day to her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

  • Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Today’s Readings

    Blessed Pope Pius IX instituted the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary on December 8, 1854, when he proclaimed as truth the dogma that our Lady was conceived free from the stain of original sin.  This had been a traditional belief since about the eighth century, and had been celebrated as a feast first in the East, and later in the West.  So let us be clear that this celebration pertains to the conception of Mary, and not that of Jesus, whose conception we celebrate on the feast of the Annunciation on March 25.  The Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, is the patroness of theUnited States of America, and so this feast is always a Holy Day of Obligation, every single year.

    This feast celebrates the dogmatic belief that God loved the world so much that he sent his only Son to be our Savior, and gave to him a human mother who was chosen before the world began to be holy and blameless in his sight.  This feast is a sign for us of the nearness of our salvation; that the plan God had for us before the world ever took shape was finally coming to fruition.

    The first reading paints the picture for us.  The man had eaten of the fruit of the tree that God had forbidden them to eat.  Because of this, they were ashamed and covered over their nakedness.  God noticed that, and asked about it – obviously he knew what happened, but he wanted to hear them say it.  He knew they had discovered the forbidden tree because otherwise they would not have the idea that their natural state was shameful.  Sin had entered the world, and God asks who gave the man the forbidden fruit.

    This leads to the first recorded instance of passing the buck, as the man blames not just the woman, but also God, for the situation: “The woman whom you put here with me; she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.”  In other words, if God hadn’t put the woman there with him in the first place, he never would have received the fruit to eat.  The woman, too, blames someone else: the serpent.  As if neither of them had been created with a brain to think for themselves, they begin that blame game that traced its ugly path all through history and that we all participate in from time to time.

    This is a pattern we will see all throughout Scripture: God gives a road to salvation, human beings turn away, and so on and so on and so on.  And we still do it today, don’t we?  We have the Scriptures to show us the way, but we don’t take time to read and reflect on them.  We have the Church to lead us in the right way, but we choose to do whatever we think is right, as if we are smarter than two millennia of saints.  We have the Sacraments to fill us with grace, but some hardly ever partake of them.  As the Psalmist says, “The LORD has made his salvation known: in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice.” How will we respond to that grace?  God is always pouring out his generous gifts, and we so often reject them and in doing so, reject the Divine Giver.

    This cyclic state of sin and rejection was never intended.  We are not defined as a people by our sins.  We cannot mess up and say, “hey, I’m only human,” because being perfectly human does not include sin.  The perfectly human One – Jesus Christ – came to show us the way out of the cycle of sin and rejection.  This grace was always intended.  AsSt. Paul says to the Ephesians today: “He chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.”

    And so, in these Advent days, we await the unfolding of the plan for salvation that began at the very dawn of the world in all its wonder.  God always intended to provide an incredible way for his people to return to them, and that was by taking flesh and walking among us as a man.  He began this by preparing for his birth through the Immaculate Virgin Mary – never stained by sin, because the one who conquered sin and death had already delivered her from sin.  He was then ready to be born into our midst and to take on our form.  With Mary’s fiat in today’s Gospel, God enters our world in the most intimate way possible, by becoming one of us.  Mary’s lived faith – possible because of her Immaculate Conception – makes possible our own lives of faith and our journeys to God.

    Our celebration today has special meaning for us.  Because Mary was conceived without sin, we can see that sin was never intended to rule us.  Because God selected Mary from the beginning, we can see that we were chosen before we were ever in our mother’s womb.  Because Mary received salvific grace from the moment of her conception, we can catch a glimpse of what is to come for all of us one day.  Mary’s deliverance from sin and death was made possible by the death and resurrection of her Son Jesus, who deeply desires that we all be delivered in that way too.

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.  Amen.

  • The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    This particular Gospel reading is sometimes difficult to hear, because I think it’s out of context enough that we could get the wrong idea about the relationship between Jesus and Mary.  It almost seems as if Jesus doesn’t care about his mother, and his brothers – whoever they were – that’s a can of worms I don’t care to open this morning!  I just know that if I treated my mother and my family like that, well, let’s just say it wouldn’t be too good.

    But our gut – or rather our faith – tells us that Jesus and Mary had a relationship that transcended that kind of thing.  It wasn’t that Jesus didn’t care about Mary, it’s just that he knew he really didn’t have to worry about her.  She could take care of things herself, and when she couldn’t, well he’d commission John to take care of her at the foot of the cross.

    And that relationship in which Jesus instinctively knew that his mother was okay and he needed to attend more to the people he ministered to is the reason we celebrate Mary’s presentation today.   As with Mary’s birth, we don’t really know anything official about Mary’s presentation in the temple. An unhistorical account tells us that Anna and Joachim offered Mary to God in theTemplewhen she was three years old. This was to carry out a promise made to God when Anna was still childless.

    Though it cannot be proven historically, Mary’s presentation has an important theological purpose. It continues the impact of the feasts of the Immaculate Conception and of the birth of Mary. It emphasizes that the holiness conferred on Mary from the beginning of her life on earth continued through her early childhood and beyond.  We celebrate Mary, full of grace from the moment of her conception and all throughout her life.

    We pray the words of Mary in the Responsorial Psalm today: “The Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.”  Mary was always aware of the amazing grace that sustained her throughout her own very difficult life-long mission.  We are graced like that too, and we celebrate that grace with Mary today.

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God; that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

  • The Queenship of Mary

    The Queenship of Mary

    On this, the octave day of the Assumption of Mary, we celebrate another great Marian feast, that of the Queenship of Mary.  Today we celebrate the fifth glorious mystery of the rosary: Mary is crowned queen of heaven and earth.  The Queenship of Mary has been celebrated ever since Pope Pius XII instituted this celebration in 1954.  But the feast itself is rooted in Sacred Scripture.  In the Old Testament, the mothers of the king had great influence in court.  Certainly this would be the case between Mary and Jesus; we know that Mary’s intercession is a powerful force for our good.  The Queenship of Mary, though, is most properly understood as a sharing in the Kingship of Christ the King.  St. Paul speaks of the crown that awaited him after a long life, filled with fighting the good fight.  And we know that that same crown – the crown that comes from Christ himself – awaits all who believe in Jesus and live lives of faith.

    The origin of Mary’s crown, I think, can be seen at the very end of today’s Gospel reading.  Having heard the overwhelming news from the angel Gabriel, Mary responds in faith: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”  Her faith, a faith that responded to the Lord’s call even though the details were not clear, is the kind of faith we’re all called to model.  This kind of faith responds to God’s movement with absolute trust in his providence.  Mary models that kind of response for us, and perhaps her reward, too, is a model of what we can hope to receive.  Just as she responded in faith and was rewarded with a crown of glory, so we too can hope to have the same crown if we live the kind of faith she did.

    And that’s the goal of our spiritual lives, brothers and sisters.  We are to discern God’s call and respond with faith that leaves the details to God alone.  Mary is always the model for us.  She paves the way to living the Gospel as we are all called to do. But Mary is also the intercessor for us.  She knew the difficulties and the sorrows that taking up the cross of the Gospel means for us, so we can depend on her intercession to help us through it.  So on this feast day of her crowning, may we all look at our own calls in this life, and respond with the fiat: “Let it be done for me according to your word.”

  • The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Today’s readings

    The tradition of the Assumption of Mary dates back to the very earliest days of the Church, all the way back to the days of the apostles. It was known that Mary had “fallen asleep” and that there is a “Tomb of Mary” close to Mount Zion, where the early Christian community had lived. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 tells us that, after Mary’s death, the apostles opened the tomb, finding it empty, and concluded that she had been taken bodily into heaven. The tradition was spoken about by the various fathers of the Church, and in the eighth century, St. John Damascene wrote, “Although the body was duly buried, it did not remain in the state of death, neither was it dissolved by decay . . . . You were transferred to your heavenly home, O Lady, Queen and Mother of God in truth.” The current celebration of Mary’s Assumption has taken place since 1950, when Pope Pius XII proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption of Mary in his encyclical, Munificentissimus Deus, saying: “The Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heaven.”

    And so we have gathered here this morning to celebrate the life of Mary, Mother of God, the first of the disciples of Jesus her son.  And there is plenty to celebrate in her life.  We who would be Jesus’ disciples too, can learn much from the way she lived her discipleship.  We can see in her life, I think, at least three qualities of discipleship.  The first is joy.  She is one who not only allowed something incredibly unbelievable to be done in her, but allowed it with great joy. That she did this with joy tells us something very important about who she was. Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.” Those who live with joy, true joy, do so because God is at work in them and God is at work through them. Mary knew this from the moment the angel came to her.

    The second quality we see in Mary’s prayer is humility. She knew this wasn’t about her; this was about what God was doing in her and through her. It wasn’t she that did great things, no, “the Almighty has done great things for me,” she tells us, “and holy is his Name!”  The third quality is faith: Mary’s simple faith allowed her to say “yes” to God’s will and made possible the salvation of the world.  Because of that faith, she had a bond with our Savior beyond anything we could ever hope for.  Indeed without Mary’s fiat, her great leap of faith, the salvation of humanity may have gone quite poorly.

    What is important for us to see in this feast, though, is that it proclaims with all the joy the Church can muster that what happened to Mary can and will happen for us who believe. We too have the promise of eternal life in heaven, where death and sin and pain will no longer have power over us. Because Christ caught his Blessed Mother back up into his life in heaven, we know that we too can be caught up with his life in heaven. On that great day, death, the last enemy, will be completely destroyed, as St. Paul tells us today.

    Mary’s life wasn’t always easy, but Mary’s life was redeemed. And that is good news for us who have difficult lives or find it hard to live our faith. Because there are those among us too who have unplanned pregnancies. There are those among us whose children go in directions that put them in danger. There are those among us who have to watch a child die. But because Mary suffered these sorrows too, and yet was exalted, we can hope for the day when that which she was given and which we have been promised will surely be ours.

    Mary’s life was a prophecy for us.  Like Mary, we are called to a specific vocation to do God’s work in the world.  We too are called to make sacrifices so that God’s work can be accomplished in us and through us.  We too can be joyful because God is at work in us.  We too are called to humility that lets God’s love for humanity shine through our lives.  We too are called to lives of faith that translate into action on behalf of others, a faith that leads God’s people to salvation.  And we too, one day, will share in the glory that Mary has already received in the kingdom of God.

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

  • The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary II

    The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary II

    Mass for the school children.

    Today’s readings

    I think we’re so blessed that we get to come to church and celebrate so many of Mary’s feasts.  Today is a very special feast because Mary, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, is the patroness of the United States of America, and so she is very special to us.  This is so special a feast for us that this day is a Holy Day of Obligation every single year; the only other holy day that is always a Holy Day of Obligation is Christmas.  So this is a very special day!

    I think today’s readings can be a little confusing.  The Gospel makes it sound like this day is about the conception of Jesus, but it isn’t.  We celebrate the conception of Jesus nine months before he was born, so somebody do the math … that would be March 25th, right?  We call that day the Annunciation, because that was the day the Angel Gabriel came to announce to Mary that she would have a baby, but we’ll talk more about that in a minute.  Today we celebrate the conception of Mary, nine months before her birthday, so if you do the math on that one, her birthday is September 8th, and that was one of our first Masses of the school year.  This day celebrates that Mary was conceived free from sin, the only person other than Jesus not to have sin.

    The other confusing reading is the first one.  Why do we go all the way to the beginning of creation when we’re talking about Mary today?  Well, I think the reason is that Mary’s conception solved a problem that began all the way at the beginning.  And that problem was just what we have been talking about: sin.  From the very beginning, we human beings have been tempted to sin.  Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden, and people have been committing sin ever since.  Again and again, God intervened in history, leading people back to him, giving them prophets to show them the way, and again and again, people turned away from God.  And we continue that today.  Again and again, we are tempted and we sin and we turn away from God.

    But God didn’t want that to be the way things ended up for us.  So he sent his Son to become one of us, and we are preparing to celebrate his birth during this Advent season.  God knew that in order for Jesus to be born among us, his mother was going to have to be pretty special.  So before Mary was ever in her mother’s womb, God chose her to be his Son’s mother.  He made her free from sin so that no stain of sin would ever touch his Son while he was in his mother’s womb.

    Because Mary was so special, she loved God very much.  So when the angel came and told her she would have a baby by the power of the Holy Spirit, she said yes to God’s plan.  I’m not sure she really understood what was going to happen, I’m not sure she really knew how this wonderful event would take place, and I don’t think she fully understood what would happen to Jesus in his life, but she said yes anyway.  We call that her fiat, her “yes” to God’s plan for her.  She took a big leap of faith that day, and we have been blessed ever since.

    This is all very good news.  But there is even more good news: because Mary was so special to God, she shows us how special we are to God.  As we celebrate God’s love for Mary today, we can also celebrate his love for us.  Mary got to hold her Savior – the One God promised us – in her own arms.  When those of us who are old enough come to Communion today, we will be able to hold our Savior – the One God promised us – in the palm of our hand.  Mary’s life was brightened when Jesus was born.  Our lives will be brightened too, this coming Christmas, and every time when we make room in our hearts for Jesus.

    Winter can be a dark and cold time – these days it seems colder than it should be!  But we can also see darkness in the world through crime and hate, and sometimes we can even feel coldness in our own hearts.  But Advent reminds us, with the help of special people like Mary, that God will keep his promises and send us a Savior to brighten our world and warm up our hearts.  Just as Mary was chosen and special before she was even in her mother’s womb, so we are chosen and special to God from the beginning too.  God loves us so much that he sent his Son to free us from our sins and lead us home one day to him.  Praise God for his great love and for the ways he comes into our hearts!

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.  Amen.

  • The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Today’s readings

    Blessed Pope Pius IX instituted the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary on December 8, 1854, when he proclaimed as truth the dogma that our Lady was conceived free from the stain of original sin.  This had been a traditional belief since about the eighth century, and had been celebrated as a feast first in the East, and later in the West.  So let us be clear that this celebration pertains to the conception of Mary, and not that of Jesus, whose conception we celebrate on the feast of the Annunciation on March 25.  The Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, is the patroness of the United States of America, and so this feast is always a Holy Day of Obligation, every single year.

    This feast celebrates the dogmatic belief that God loved the world so much that he sent his only Son to be our Savior, and gave to him a human mother who was chosen before the world began to be holy and blameless in his sight.  This feast is a sign for us of the nearness of our salvation; that the plan God had for us before the world ever took shape was finally coming to fruition.

    The first reading paints the picture for us.  The man had eaten of the fruit of the tree that God had forbidden them to eat.  Because of this, they were ashamed and covered over their nakedness.  God noticed that, and asked about it – obviously he knew what happened, but he wanted to hear them say it.  He knew they had discovered the forbidden tree because otherwise they would not have the idea that their natural state was shameful.  Sin had entered the world, and God asks who gave the man the forbidden fruit.

    This leads to the first instance of passing the buck, as the man blames not just the woman, but also God, for the situation: “The woman whom you put here with me;

    she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.”  In other words, if God hadn’t put the woman there with him in the first place, he never would have received the fruit to eat.  The woman, too, blames someone else: the serpent.  As if neither of them had been created with a brain to think for themselves, they begin that blame game that traced its ugly path all through history and that we all participate in from time to time.

    This is a pattern we will see all throughout Scripture: God gives a road to salvation, human beings turn away, and so on and so on and so on.  And we still do it today, don’t we?  We have the Scriptures to show us the way, but we don’t take time to read and reflect on them.  We have the Church to lead us in the right way, but we choose to do whatever we think is right, as if we are smarter than two millennia of saints.  We have the Sacraments to fill us with grace, but some hardly ever partake of them.  As the Psalmist says, “The LORD has made his salvation known: in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice.” How will we respond to that grace?  God is always pouring out his generous gifts, and we so often reject them and in doing so, reject the Divine Giver.

    This cyclic state of sin and rejection was never intended to be the case.  We are not defined as a people by our sins.  We cannot mess up and say, “hey, I’m only human,” because being perfectly human does not include sin.  The perfectly human one – Jesus Christ – came to show us the way out of the cycle of sin and rejection.  This grace was always intended.  As St. Paul says to the Ephesians today: “He chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.   In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ…”

    And so, in these Advent days, we await the unfolding of the plan for salvation that began at the very dawn of the world in all its wonder.  God always intended to provide an incredible way for his people to return to them, and that was by taking flesh and walking among us as a man.  He began this by preparing for his birth through the Immaculate Virgin Mary – never stained by sin, because the one who conquered sin and death had already delivered her from sin.  He was then ready to be born into our midst and to take on our form.  With Mary’s fiat in today’s Gospel, God enters our world in the most intimate way possible, by becoming one of us.  Mary’s lived faith – possible because of her Immaculate Conception – makes possible our own lives of faith and our journeys to God.

    One of my favorite Christmas songs is “Mary, Did You Know?”  The lyrics are very touching, and they express a lot what we believe about Mary.

    Mary, did you know
    That your baby boy would one day walk on water?
    Mary, did you know that your baby boy
    would save our sons and daughters?
    Did you know that your baby boy
    has come to make you new;
    the child that you delivered
    will soon deliver you?

    But I have one quarrel with the theology. That last line: “the child that you delivered will soon deliver you” is wrong based on the theology of today’s feast. The feast of the Immaculate Conception celebrates that Mary has already been delivered by the death and resurrection of Christ – before those things ever happened – and makes possible that all of us will soon be delivered.

    Our celebration today has special meaning for us.  Because Mary was conceived without sin, we can see that sin was never intended to rule us.  Because God selected Mary from the beginning, we can see that we were chosen before we were ever in our mother’s womb.  Because Mary received salvific grace from the moment of her conception, we can catch a glimpse of what is to come for all of us one day.  Mary’s deliverance from sin and death was made possible by the death and resurrection of her Son Jesus, who deeply desires that we all be delivered in that way too.

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.  Amen.

  • Our Lady of Sorrows

    Our Lady of Sorrows

    Today’s readings

    The more years I live, the more I find myself relating to Mary.  I know that she experienced all of the joys and sorrows we do: frustration, fear, love, worry, and especially what we celebrate today, sorrow.  She was the one who rejoiced at the birth of her son and took pride in what he became as he grew.  But she also worried about him as his ministry brought him to confrontation with the religious leaders, and she wept at the foot of the Cross.

    The Sequence today sings of her sadness:

    At the cross her station keeping,
    Stood the mournful Mother weeping,
    Close to Jesus to the last.

    And so today, and any day when we experience sorrow, we know that we have an advocate in Mary, who experienced our sorrows, but was raised up beyond them in the joy of the Resurrection.

    Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

  • The Birth of Mary

    The Birth of Mary

    Today’s readings

    The birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary has been celebrated since at least the sixth century. This is not a historical feast, of course, and the date was chosen to correspond to the beginning of the Church year in the Eastern Church. The date of her birth also helped to determine the date of the Immaculate Conception – on December 8, nine months prior to today.

    It is said that Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anne, were infertile, and they prayed for a child. They received the promise of a daughter who would be central to the salvation of the world.  That promise was, of course, fulfilled gloriously.  Mary’s birth begins the unfolding of God’s ultimate plan for the salvation of the world.  With her fiat, her “yes” to God’s call, she made possible the birth of many souls into eternal life.

    The Byzantine Church Daily Worship proclaims well the joy that we have on this feast of Mary’s birth: “Today the barren Anna claps her hands for joy, the earth radiates with light, kings sing their happiness, priests enjoy every blessing, the entire universe rejoices, for she who is queen and the Father’s immaculate bride buds forth from the stem of Jesse.”