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Posts Tagged ‘Virgin Mary’
Our Lady in Scripture and Tradition
In 15 Audio on 2013/10/03 at 12:00 AM“Develop a lively devotion for Our Mother”
In 01 Daily Meditations on 2013/10/03 at 12:00 AMInvoke the Blessed Virgin. Keep asking her to show herself a Mother to you – monstra te esse Matrem! As well as drawing down her Son’s grace, may she bring the clarity of sound doctrine to your mind, and love and purity to your heart, so that you may know the way to God and take many souls to him. (The Forge, 986)
Develop a lively devotion for Our Mother. She knows how to respond in a most sensitive way to the presents we give her. What is more, if you say the Holy Rosary every day, with a spirit of faith and love, Our Lady will make sure she leads you very far along her Son’s path. (Furrow, 691)
Without Our Mother’s aid, how can we manage to keep up our daily struggle? Do you seek it constantly? (Furrow, 692)
Love for our Mother will be the breath that kindles into a living flame the embers of virtue hidden in the ashes of your indifference. (The Way, 492)
Love our Lady. And she will obtain for you abundant grace to conquer in your daily struggle. And the enemy will gain nothing by those foul things that continually seem to boil and rise within you, trying to engulf in their fragrant corruption the high ideals, the sublime determination that Christ himself has set in your heart.–Serviam, I will serve! (The Way, 493)
We go to Jesus–and we ‘return’ to him–through Mary. (The Way, 495)
The Annunciation by Fr. Reid
In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2012/03/24 at 9:11 AM• Today, my dear brothers and sisters, we enter this church with great anticipation. Our hearts are hopeful, for the Virgin Mary has heard that she will conceive and bear the Son of God, the Savior of the World.
• He is to be called Emmanuel, God with us, for this Son is both God and man, our savior and redeemer. In offering this Son to Mary, the Father – through the intrepid service of the archangel Gabriel – has offered to her the very price of our salvation.
• Like those condemned to die for their sins, we look to Mary as the only sure hope of reprieve. Her yes gains us pardon and calls us back to life. Through her fiat salvation is born for all mankind.
• So we beg her this day to answer quickly. As St. Bernard once wrote to our Lady: “Let humility be bold, let modesty be confident. This is no time for virginal simplicity to forget prudence. In this matter alone, O prudent Virgin, do not fear to be presumptuous.”1
• And so it is that our Almighty Lord, Emmanuel, God with us, comes to dwell miraculously within the womb of one of His creatures. To be sure, our Lady is the highest honor of our race, immaculately prepared for her role in salvation history from the first moment of her conception.
• But she is a creature nonetheless, and the annunciation of our salvation and Mary’s acceptance of this august role in the salvation of all mankind is therefore a cause of great wonder and rejoicing, for the mystery of the Annunciation is the sign that God is desires to with us as well.
• Our Lord was with Mary in a very particular way as He dwelt enfleshed within her sacred womb, the tabernacle par excellence. Her fiat opened the door for Him to enter and dwell within her, making her the Mother of God, and by extension, our mother, too.
• But because Mary allowed our Lord to dwell within her, she has now opened the door for Him to enter the world and dwell with the whole human race!
• Though our Lord’s earthly life was a mere 33 years, and though He has died, rose again from the grave, and ascended into Heaven, He still comes to dwell within us: at our baptism.
• It is in that most sublime moment of our lives that we make our own personal fiat, asking Him to dwell within our souls. When we pass through the saving waters of baptism, He comes, as surely as the sun rises in the east every morning, bringing with Him that grace by which we are saved.
• But at our baptism our Lord doesn’t just come to dwell within us. He also takes us to Himself. He comes to dwell within us, but at the same time He makes us a member of His mystical body so that we may dwell within Him.
• At our baptism a covenant is formed between us and our Lord in which we promise to give ourselves fully to Him, and our Lord promises to give Himself fully to us. And every time we receive Holy Communion worthily, that covenant of grace is consummated and renewed.
• But all of this is only possible because one young woman agreed to say yes first. Our Lady with grace and humility, both sublime and gentle, allowed God’s will to be done, and we are the beneficiaries.
• So my dear brothers and sisters, let us give thanks this day to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the handmaid of the Lord, for without her fiat we would all be lost.
• And let us pray to our dear Lord above that we may be made worthy sons and daughters of so noble a mother.
1 St. Bernard, In Praise of the Virgin Mother.
Copyright 2010 by Reverend Timothy S. Reid
Reverend Reid is pastor of St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Charlotte, NC
The Blessed Virgin Mary in the Koran
In 14 Book Corner on 2011/06/07 at 7:59 AM“Mary and the Moslems” is the title of a chapter in Fulton Sheen’s THE WORLD’S FIRST LOVE written in 1952, reprinted by Ignatius Press in 1996. Here are various prophetic, and now timely, excerpts;
“The Christian West barely escaped destruction at the hands of the Muslims . . . at the present hour, the Muslims are beginning to rise again . . . the hatred of the Muslim countries against the West is becoming a hatred against Christianity itself.” p. 200
“There is still great danger that the temporal power of Islam may return, and with it, the menace that it may shake off a West which has ceased to be Christian, and affirm itself as a great anti-Christian world power. . . . I belive that that Muslimism will eventually be converted to Christianity… through a summoning of the Muslims to a veneration of the Mother of God.” p.201
“The Qu’ran, which is the Bible for the Muslims, has many passages concerning the Blessed Virgin. First of all, the Qu’ran believes in her Immaculate Conception, and also in her Virgin Birth. The third chapter of the Qu’ran places the history of Mary’s family in a genealogy which goes back through Abraham, Noah, and Adam. . . . Both books describe the old age and the definite sterility of the mother of Mary. When, however, she conceives, the mother of Mary is made to say in the Qu’ran: “O Lord, I vow and I consecrate to you what is already within me. Accept it from me.” When Mary is born, the mother says: “And I consecrate her with all of her posterity under thy protection, O Lord, against Satan!” p. 202
“…Moslem tradition know the name of Joseph and has some familiarity with him. In this tradition, Joseph is made to speak to Mary, who is a virgin. As he inquired how she conceived Jesus without a father, Mary answered: “Do you not know that God, when he created the wheat had no need of seed, and that God by his power made the trees grow without the help of rain? All that God had to do was to say, ‘So be it, and it was done’.” p. 202
“The Qu’ran has also verses on the Annunciation, Visitation, and Nativity; 41 in chapter 19.” p. 202
“I believe that the Blessed Virgin chose to be known as ‘Our Lady of Fatima’ as a pledge and a sign of hope to the Muslim people, and as an assurance that they, who show her so much respect, will one day accept her divine Son too. . . . The very place where Our Lady appeared in 1917 bears a historical connection to Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed.” p. 203
“Mary is the advent of Christ, bringing Christ to the people before Christ himself is born. . . . Because the Muslims have a devotion to Mary . . . Our Blessed Lady will carry the Muslims the rest of the way to her divine Son.” p.204
Sheen, Fulton THE WORLD’S FIRST LOVE. Ignatius Press.
http://www.ignatius.com/Products/CategoryCenter.aspx?SearchTerm=The+world’s+first+love
“She opens to us the way to the Kingdom of Heaven”
In 01 Daily Meditations on 2011/05/19 at 9:12 AMYour love for Our Lady should be more lively, more supernatural. Don’t just go to the Virgin Mary to ask her for things. You should also go to give: give her your affection; give her your love for her divine Son; and show her your affection with deeds of service to others, who are also her children. (The Forge, 137)
Let us return once again to our everyday experience and see how we behave with our earthly mothers. What does a mother want most of all from her children, from those who are flesh of her flesh and blood of her blood? Her greatest desire is to have them close to her. When the children grow up and it is no longer possible to have them beside her, she waits impatiently for news from them, and everything that happens to them, from the slightest illness to the most important events, concerns her deeply.
Look: in the eyes of our Mother Mary we never cease to be little, because she opens to us the way to the Kingdom of Heaven, which will only be given to those who become little children. We should never separate ourselves from Our Lady. How should we honour her? By keeping close to her, talking to her, showing her that we love her, pondering in our hearts the scenes of her life on earth and telling her about our struggles, successes and failures. (Friends of God, 289-290)
“Mary, Teacher of unlimited self-giving”
In 01 Daily Meditations on 2011/05/08 at 9:30 AMThe Blessed Virgin Mary, Teacher of unlimited self-giving. Do you remember? It was in praise of her that Jesus Christ said: “Whoever fulfils the Will of my Father, he — she — is my mother! …” Ask of this good Mother that her answer, with the generosity it shows, may grow stronger in your soul — with the strength of love and liberation. Behold the handmaid of the Lord. (Furrow, 33)
Ask yourself now whether you are holding firmly and unshakably to your choice of Life? When you hear the most lovable voice of God urging you on to holiness, do you freely answer ‘Yes’? Let us turn our gaze once more to Jesus, as he speaks to the people in the towns and countryside of Palestine. He doesn’t want to force himself upon us. ‘If you have a mind to be perfect…’, he says to the rich young man. The young man refused to take the hint, and the Gospel goes on to say: he went away forlorn. That is why I have sometimes called him the ‘sad lad’. He lost his happiness because he refused to hand over his freedom to God.
Consider now the sublime moment when the Archangel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary the plans of the Most High. Our Mother listens, and asks a question to understand better what the Lord is asking of her. Then she gives her firm reply: Fiat! Be it done unto me according to thy word! This is the fruit of the best freedom of all, the freedom of deciding in favor of God. (Friends of God, 24-25)
