Category: Blessed Virgin Mary

Mary, Mother of Christ, helper

“Mother of Christ,
help me to be willing
to accept the suffering
that is the condition of love.
Help me accept
the grief
of seeing those whom I love suffer,
and when they die
let me share in their death
by compassion.
Give me the faith
that knows Christ
in them,
and knows that His love
is the key
to the mystery of suffering.
Help me,
Blessed Mother,
to see with your eyes,
to think with your mind,
to accept with your will.
Help me to believe
that it is Christ
who suffers in innocent children,
in those who die in the flower of life,
in those whose death is an act
of reparation,
in those who are sacrificed
for others.
Remind me
that their suffering
is Christ’s love
healing the world,
and when I suffer for them
and with them,
I too am given the power
of His redeeming love.”

Caryll Houselander

Our Lady of Champion

Today is the feast of Our Lady of Champion, the first and only approved apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the United States.

In October 1859, Mary appeared to a Belgian immigrant, Adele Brise three times. In the first, Mary stayed silent, leaving Adele’s family to believe it was a holy soul in need of payers. On October 9th, Adele saw the Lady again and told her priest who instructed her to ask the mysterious lady, should she appear to her again, “In God’s Name, who are you and what do you want of me?” On her journey home from Mass, Adele saw the Lady and repeated the words she had been instructed to by her priest.

The Lady then said, ” I am the Queen of Heaven who prays for the conversion of sinners, and I wish you to do the same. You received Holy Communion this morning and that is well. But you must do more. Make a general confession and offer Communion for the conversion of sinners. If they do not do penance, my Son will be obliged to punish them. Blessed are they that believe without seeing. What are you doing here while your companions are working in the vineyard of my Son? Gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation. Teach them their catechism, how to sign themselves with the Sign of the Cross, and how to approach the Sacraments; that is what I wish you to do. Go and fear nothing, I will help you”.

With everything going on today in our country with the loss of innocence in the young, we must truly heed Our Lady’s message to us, to pray for the conversion of sinners, offer Holy Communion, and to teach and catechize the children and youth the faith they need for salvation and in the Sacraments, and know that Mary will help us.

The vision, originally titled Our Lady of Good Help, was formally approved in 2010 by Bishop David Ricken of the Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin. In 2016, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops raised the pilgramige site of the apparition to a National Shrine. In 2023, Bishop Ricken announced that the devotional name had been changed to Our Lady of Champion, both in conjunction with other approved Marian apparitions and to avoid confusion about the name, with the liturgical Solemnity being granted by the Dicastery for Divine Worship to be celebrated on October 9th.

Let us pray:
Lord our God, you chose the Mother of your beloved Son to be the Mother and help of Christians; grant that we may live under her protection and that your Church may enjoy unbroken peace. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

text curated by Josh Mansfield

Mary, Mother of the Church

The title given to Mary –Mother of the Church (Mater Ecclesiae)– has its roots in the 4th century with Saint Ambrose. In later centuries various theologians and saints gave this title new currency. Most recently Pope Francis (in 2018) made the Monday after Pentecost the feast of Mary, Mother of the Church. The hope of His Holiness is to “encourage the growth of the maternal sense of the Church in the pastors, religious and faithful, as well as a growth of genuine Marian piety.”

The perennial teaching of the Church indicates that just as Eve was “the mother of all the living” (Gen. 3:20), Mary is mother of all those living in Jesus Christ.

Francis echoes St. Paul VI, in Credo of the People of God, who explained, “Joined by a close and indissoluble bond to the Mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption, the Blessed Virgin, the Immaculate, was at the end of her earthly life raised body and soul to heavenly glory and likened to her risen Son in anticipation of the future lot of all the just; and we believe that the Blessed Mother of God, the New Eve, Mother of the Church, continues in heaven her maternal role with regard to Christ’s members, cooperating with the birth and growth of divine life in the souls of the redeemed.”

In 1964, St. Paul VI “declared the Blessed Virgin Mary as ‘Mother of the Church, that is to say of all Christian people, the faithful as well as the pastors, who call her the most loving Mother’ and established that ‘the Mother of God should be further honored and invoked by the entire Christian people by this tenderest of titles.’”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church of St. John Paul II teaches us that Mary’s role in the Church is inseparable from her union with Christ and flows directly from it. The Catechism (487) makes it clear –once again, that anything said of Mary is first said of Her Son and Our Savior, Jesus: “What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ.”

Going more deeply into The Catechism (964-965) we read: “This union of the mother with the Son in the work of salvation is made manifest from the time of Christ’s virginal conception up to his death”; it is made manifest above all at the hour of His Passion: Thus the Blessed Virgin advanced in her pilgrimage of faith, and faithfully persevered in her union with her Son unto the cross.

Ultimately, the what the Church believes, teaches and honors about Mary is found in the liturgical prayers of the Mass:

O God, Father of mercies,
whose Only Begotten Son, as He hung upon the Cross,
chose the Blessed Virgin Mary, His Mother,
to be our Mother also,
grant, we pray, that with her loving help
your Church may be more fruitful day by day
and, exulting in the holiness of her children,
may draw to her embrace all the families of the peoples.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

– Collect for the Feast of Mary, Mother of the Church

Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for us.

Theotokos of Guadalupe, Mother of the Americas

Today, December 12, the feast of the Theotokos of Guadalupe, Mother of the Americas

No longer shall the New World lie wounded in useless blood sacrifice, for she who is clothed with the sun has revealed the Son to us. O Mother of the Americas, imprint His Name upon our hearts, just as you wove your image into the cactus cloth. Teach your children to cry out: O Christ God, our hope, glory to You!

(Kontakion, The Theotokos of Guadalupe)

Our Lady of Palestine

Today, as Knights and Dames of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, we honor Mary, the Mother of God under the title of Our Lady of Palestine. It’s a daily prayer Our Lady for the people of the Holy Land and for members of the Order.

With Church we pray:

Heavenly Father, we humbly ask you, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Palestine, to help us overcome all the difficulties which face us in this Holy Land, the land which your Son has made Holy for it is in this land where our Savior took flesh and brought the entire world to Redemption. We beseech you Father, strengthen us in faith, service, and perseverance so that we may be witnesses to that unending act of love, you who live and reign forever and ever.

Read about the importance of the Shrine of Our Lady as a spiritual home for the Patriarchate.

http://www.oessh.va/content/ordineequestresantosepolcro/en/dalla-terra-santa/luoghi-e-comunita/luoghi/il-santuario-di-deir-rafat.html

The Dormition of the Holy Mother of God, the Theotokos

The hagiographers for this feast write:

This feast originated in the fourth century at the dedication of a temple in honor of the Mother of God. This church was located between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, which tradition hallowed as the place where Mary and Joseph stopped on their journey to the city of David.

By the fifth century in the Byzantine East, and by the sixth century in the Roman Church, this day celebrated the death of Mary, her dormition or “falling asleep” as it is called in liturgical poetry.

Apocryphal accounts, iconography, and texts of the feast are embellished with a persistent pious tradition that all the apostles returned to her deathbed from their missionary journeys.

Through the feast of the Dormition, the Church regards Mary as the first to participate in the final deification of all creation. This is only fitting for the Mother of Life, through whom God became one of us, to die and, by his rising, make the passage from death to life an eternal reality. (NS)

Dear little one! how sweet thou art

This evening reflection on the Nativity of our Lord and Savior leads me to a friend’s Christmas card of this year which bears the poem of Oratorian Father and author Wilfrid Faber. Indeed, Father Faber is a terrific and powerful poet who exercised his ministerial priesthood with warmth and insight. Join me in celebrating he birth of Our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Dear little one! how sweet thou art, Thine eyes how bright they shine, So bright they almost seem to speak When Mary’s look meets Thine.

How faint and feeble is Thy cry, Like plaint of harmless dove, When Thou dost murmur in Thy sleep Of sorrow and of love!

When Mary bids Thee sleep thou sleep’st Thou wakest when she calls;
Thou art content upon her lap,
Or in the rugged stalls.

Simplest of babes! with what a grace Thou dost Thy Mother’s will! Thine infant fashions will betray The Godhead’s hidden skill.

When Joseph takes thee in his arms, And smooths thy little cheek, Thou lookest up into his face
So helpless and so meek.

Yes! Thou art what Thou seems’t to be, A thing of smiles and tears;
Yet Thou art God, and heaven and earth Adore Thee with their fears.

Yes! dearest Babe! those tiny hands That play with Mary’s hair, The weight of all the mighty world This very moment bear.

Art Thou, weak Babe, my very God? O, I must love thee then,
Love Thee, and yearn to spread Thy love Among forgetful men.

– Father Wilfrid Faber, Cong. Orat. (1814–1863)

Mary, the bright Star

The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was commissioned by Justino de Neve for the Hospital de los Venerables Sacerdotes in Seville, Spain. The painting is at the Museo del Prado.

“This important Marian feast occurs during Advent, a season of watchful and prayerful preparation for Christmas. She who knew better than anyone how to wait attentively for the Lord guides us and shows us how to make more vital and active our journey to the Holy Night of Bethlehem. With her, we spend these weeks in prayer and, guided by her bright star, hasten to make the spiritual journey that will lead us to celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation with greater intensity.”

~St. John Paul II, Angelus on 8 December 1998

O pure and immaculate and likewise blessed Virgin, who art the sinless Mother of thy Son, the mighty Lord of the universe, thou who art inviolate and altogether holy, the hope of the hopeless and sinful, we sing thy praises. We bless thee, as full of every grace, thou who didst bear the God-Man: we all bow low before thee; we invoke thee and implore thine aid. Rescue us, O holy and inviolate Virgin, from every necessity that presses upon us and from all the temptations of the devil. Be our intercessor and advocate at the hour of death and judgment; deliver us from the fire that is not extinguished and from the outer darkness; make us worthy of the glory of thy Son, O dearest and most clement Virgin Mother. Thou indeed art our only hope, most sure and sacred in God’s sight, to whom be honor and glory, majesty and dominion, for ever and ever, world without end. Amen.

St Ephrem (306-373)