Your example teaches me that Jesus will work miracles for persevering prayer that springs from confidence and humility. It has been reproduced many times in copies and in book illustrations. Teach me to utter your most holy name that it may fill my heart with hope and burning love for you and that loving you I might reach the Light of the World. My imitation of both Jesus and you depends upon my response to the amount of grace that God sees fit to give me. Mary, My Mother, your name means Star of the Sea. With your foot you crushed the head of the serpent and conquered evil with goodness. Overshadowed by the power of the Holy Spirit, you were to conceive and bear the Messias, and at the same time remain a Virgin in every respect. Mary, Mother of God, help me to understand as clearly as God wishes to let me do so, the value of suffering and sickness. In order to live, not to myself, but to God, I must bear the cross in union with Jesus. Indeed, I will suffer with joy if I realize that Christ is suffering with me and in me and that He sends me the cross only to trace His image in my soul by uniting me closely with Himself. You love me with a Heart human like my owna Heart that can understand my sorrows and problems since you experienced all that I must bear; a Heart that can sympathize with me and befriend me in my hour of need. In God there are no disappointments, no false promises. I already know of your great love for me for the sake of your Son who entrusted the care of my soul to you. 2. Through love you consecrated yourself with all your powers to God as the highest form of beauty and goodness. I am in need of forgiveness of sin, of strength in temptation. What a beautiful example for parents to imitate! You are the channel of all good things after the Trinity, Mediatrix of the world after the Mediator. I can picture you alone with your God, following with devotion the life led in common by the virgins of God's house. In His infinite mercy God chose Abraham who was to be the Father of a Chosen Nation. When still a child you consecrated yourself entirely to God, the Love of chaste souls; and afterwards you would rather be deprived of the great dignity of Divine Motherhood than to lose your virginity. Mary, Mother of God, your Heart is a shrine of holiness, into which the demon of sin has never entered; whose sanctuary was never once defiled by the least touch of evil, whose altar was the chosen resting place of the Holy Spirit. 1. Elizabeth proclaimed that you were the Mother of Christ and declared you blessed among women because you were the most holy dwelling of the Eternal God. 3. Mary, My Mother, you associated yourself with the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus in order that you might share in His glorification. Whatever graces we receive, come to us through your intercession. You are the Virgin most pure. Who could tell the great joy which filled their hearts when they held you in their arms? Feast, February 2 (Novena, Jan. 24-Feb. 1). In your six apparitions at Fatima you made repeated demands for penance and reparation. You became the Mother of a Son who is almighty, eternal and infinite in all perfections, equal to the Father and the Holy Spirit. Feast, August 22Octave of the Assumption (Novena, August 13-21) 1. except through you. I can pray to you with full confidence because you are loved by the Father as the Mother of His Son, loved by the Son as His own Mother, loved by the Holy Spirit as His Immaculate Bride. Your life with Jesus was one of deepest recollection, which gathered all the powers of your soul around the God-Man. He also found joy in His Divine Sonship and glorious human nature, joy in His intellect, with its immeasurable knowledge and the contemplation of God; joy in His will, with its freedom, sinlessness, holiness and unbounded power joy in His destiny as our Redeemer; joy in the future kingdom of His Church, which was to arise from His life and death. And finally when the sacrifice was completed by His death upon the cross you had your place beside Him. The Lord being your portion, you renounced all elsethe honors, the pleasures, and the rewards of marriageand joyously chose the life of a virgin. We obtain everything for our peace of soul in time and eternity from the Father through the Heart of Jesus and everything from Jesus through your Heart. Whatever of sanctity, of dignity, of merit, of grace and of glory, that we can imagine, all is in you. Mary, Mother of God, in the Kingdom of Heaven you are continually employed in deeds of kindness and mercy, therefore you are truly the Mother of Divine Providence. In union with Him you also did the will of God perfectly as He exclaimed "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.". At the same time you had to offer the most intense human suffering, in union with the Passion of your Son. You are our Mother, because you have begotten us to the life of grace. Teach me to imitate your humility by acknowledging my nothingness and seeking the glory of God in everything. Mary, My Mother, you showed your humility by striving to conceal from others the gifts you received from God. In all your deeds you showed the fruits of the Divine Wisdom which had made you the dwelling-place of God. For your generosity the Eternal Father made you, through Christ, the dispenser of the riches of God. This humility was richly rewarded. Your apostolic workto snatch souls from Satan and from sin to make them live the supernatural lifeis the very reason for your motherhood. If Jesus is Our Lord, so you are Our Lady. Let us thank the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit for giving us the best mother in the world, so beautiful, pure and spotless in body and soul, who loves each one of us with so great maternal concern and compassion. How earnestly you invite me to come and partake of this Bread of Life. By consenting to His birth, you made Him King. Mary, Mother of God, you are our Mediatrix. May God dwell in me and may I live to Him alone through frequent Holy Communion and still more frequent prayer so that God may direct my whole lifemy thoughts, words and actionsto His greater honor and glory. In fallen man there is, as Saint John reminds us, "the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" (1 John 2, 16). He is for us the source of all grace, the cause of our supernatural life. Even your earthly sufferings were to deepen your sanctity. Forgetting yourself completely, you were most intimately united with God. Not for this reason alone did He love you. I beg you to pray for me that by the light of the Holy Spirit and your direction, I may see my duty, and by God's grace and your help I may fulfill it. You are Queen because you are the Mother of the Word Incarnate. During your Son's public ministry you seldom appeared, because this was the prudent thing to do on account of your close relationship to the Redeemer. If I put my trust in you, I shall be saved. O powerful answer which rejoiced Heaven and brought an immense sea of graces and blessings into the world! When His lips were tortured with gall and vinegar, a sea of bitterness was poured into your Heart. In you He reposed for nine months, with His whole divinity and humanity. God's grace can also do wonders in me if only I do not refuse to cooperate with it. You were entirely under the influence of Christ's divinity. 2. "Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and shalt bring forth a son; and thou shalt call His name Jesus. When you later returned to your home, you were under the loving care of your mother, Saint Anne. But who can describe the matchless purity and beauty of your soul? No one has found or received such grace as you. You were one of us, and yet you stood above us! Everything inside and outside of me should reflect His divine perfections. Mary, Mother of God, already in your childhood you dedicated yourself to the love and service of God. You became a victim and holocaust to the divine will, the Queen of Martyrs, the most perfect imitator of the Victim of Calvary. How can I ever imagine the emotions of longing and most eager expectation of the Birth of the Divine Child! Jesus is the most beautiful of men; you were His mould, His mirror, and He, yours. I need an advocate with God, and therefore I turn to you, the Mother of God. After the Sacred Heart of Jesus, never was there a heart more pure and more holy. He was pleased to help others for your sake. By Francesca Merlo The Virgin of Guadalupe, like the shroud of Turin, appears on a piece of fabric. To the working of this great mystery you also were chosen to cooperate by your free consent. Let me feel some of the sentiments of loving expectation that you felt while waiting for the birth of your Child, so that I may prepare myself for His coming and the graces of the mystery of His Nativity may bear fruit in my soul. You must have willed your Son's death, because, hard as it was to make this sacrifice, it would have been quite impossible for your will to be the least separated from His. Sanctifying grace likened you to God as it did no other pure creature. Forming with your Divine Son one spiritual body, we experience the rage of Satan until the end of time. When Jesus said to John, "Behold thy Mother," He wanted John to respect and to love you as his Mother. Excerpted from Our Lady of Sorrows by Fr. How fortunate I will be, if at death I am bound with the sweet chains of love to you! I feel myself consumed by original sin and its dread consequences. Mary, Mother of God, you reign in splendor for all eternity with your Divine Son. Then for His sake, be our Help! Your womb was so pure, so immaculate that it became the Holy of Holies, in which Jesus Christ our Lord, the Eternal High Priest, alone found entrance. The glory of the great things that had been done in you, you attributed to God's mercy and power and love. You had a share in that work; it was part of your life-work. As wax melts before fire, so do the devils lose their power against those souls who remember to speak your name and devoutly invoke it. You visited the house of Zachary to serve your cousin Elizabeth for three months. You are the loving daughter of the Father, because, before all creatures, you were predestined to be His daughter at the same moment that He decreed the Incarnation of His Son. You could not accompany the Apostles while they fulfilled the duties of their ministry, but in silence and solitude, by the power of your prayers and the fervor of your charity, you were the master-missionary of them all. Thus was fulfilled the prophesy that Christ would be born of the family of David. They had seen Adam created in grace, and John the Baptist, spotless from his birth, because he had been cleansed from original sin before birth. He overshadowed you at the Annunciation and on Pentecost He made your heart a furnace of divine love. From that hour, we were members of the Mystical Body of Christ. I am happy at the thought that you, a human creature, have escaped completely from the clutches of Satan, that born of a race universally tainted, you are more pure and more brilliant than the most sublime of the angels; and that you are my Mother. Those dangers are to be found in the principles and activities of Communism, the present day Anti-Christ, which tries to penetrate every walk of life, every class of society. For thirty-three years you enjoyed the company of the only-begotten Son of God in the intimate relation of Mother and Son, and under your care, according to the Evangelist, He "advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace, before God and man" (Luke 2, 52). This thought wonderfully strengthens my confidence in you, Help of Christians. As you cradled the new-born Savior and nourished and cared for Him, so at Pentecost you cradled the new-born Church, watched over its frail, delicate body and fostered and nourished it with motherly care. I am unworthy of that. You are a Model easy to imitate because you sanctified yourself in the ordinary, everyday life common to most of us by fulfilling those lowly household duties of a young woman a mother and by leading a hidden, retired life both in joy and in sorrow. Your blessedness was due to your unexcelled sanctity. You conceived Jesus as the Head of regenerated mankind, the Head of a mystical body whose members we are. This marked the beginning of your life of suffering together with Jesus. You will obtain for me grace to be faithful to God during the rest of my life. Feast, September 12 (Triduum, September 9-11). Protect, guard, and keep them in holy fear, in peace, and in harmony of Christian charity. Your Assumption was for you not only the crowning of a holy life, but also a cause of joy and triumph for the human race. Make me a fervent apostle of the Eucharist. Give me charity like yours, which recognized in every human being a brother or sister in Jesus Christ, to be treated with respect and tenderness and to be aided according to the measure of my power. Your Heart, Blessed Mother, is always conformable to Our Lord's will. . Teach me to love Him with some of the love that glowed in your own heart so that my heart may always be His pleasing temple. Mary, Mother of God, no stain of original sin ever defiled your pure soul. 3. We all rejoice because all the graces and spiritual benefits we have received and shall receive, all our future glory comes from this exalted mystery of the Incarnation. With a "fiat" God created light, heaven, earth, but with your "fiat" God became Man. In the fulfillment of the law you gave an example of the most perfect obedience and zeal for the edification of others; for since the real nature of your motherhood was not known to your Jewish neighbors, you might have been the cause of scandal to them if you had failed to comply with the law. Jesus is my Savior and I have confidence in His infinite merits. It is the will of God that His aid should reach me through your heart, because you are my Mother, and motherliness means willingness to help. Mary, My Mother, may the example of your sinlessness urge us to that innocence and purity of life which flees from and abhors even the slightest stain of sin. The Heart of Jesus was a pure Heart, symbolized by the light that St. Margaret Mary saw streaming round it. You possessed, according to the words of the Archangel, such a fullness of grace that you were worthy to become the Mother of God. Let not my sinfulness and human weakness stand in the way of my receiving the graces I need for the sanctification and salvation of my soul. Feast, October 16 (Triduum, October 13-15). You beheld Him suspended by iron nails. You nourished Him, clothed Him, educated Him. . If at any time you had been without Divine grace even for the shortest moment, there would not have come between you and the serpent that everlasting enmity spoken of by God. Today we celebrate our Lady of Sorrows. An event every year that begins at 12:00 am on day 15 of September, repeating indefinitely This intimacy with God was the soul of your soulyour very life. 2. . The Eternal Father takes pleasure in looking upon your Heart as the masterpiece of His Divine power. The title "Our Lady of Sorrows" focuses on Mary's intense suffering during the passion and death of Christ. Mary, Mother of God, your divine maternity places you in a very wonderful relationship with the three divine Persons. All the saints suffered during their lifetime, but you are the Queen of them all as Queen of Martyrs. The foundation of this doctrine is to be found in Sacred Scripture where we are taught that God, the Creator of all things, after the sad fall of Adam, addressed the serpent in words which the Church applies to you, "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head" (Gen. 3.15). You could not of yourself provide the protection and training the Child needed. 1. More than 130 years ago, Mercy Home was first established as the Mission of Our Lady of Mercy. By granting them these graces you have performed a work of the apostolate. You expressed this to Saint Bernadette at Lourdes when you said, "I am the Immaculate Conception.". Mary, My Mother, what a truly marvelous privilege is mine! Angels came to escort you. You formed His Heart, to love us, and His Precious Blood, to shed for us and to be given to us for our drink. God freed His future messenger from original sin and enriched him with grace. If you showed such compassion for the sufferings of others while on earth, and were so ready to relieve them, how much greater must your compassion be now that you are in heaven and understand so much better the difficulties your children meet with and the sufferings that afflict them? Your willingness to suffer and to bear your cross in imitation of His own resignation to the will of God, made you especially dear to Him. During this long period of concealment in your womb, you perfected His bodily faculties for our benefit. When Jesus was conceived in your womb by the infinite power of the Holy Spirit, you possessed the Author of grace, and He so adorned your soul with the richness of His heavenly gifts that you won the admiration of men and angels. Even when I disappoint you by doing my best to shake off the cross God has placed upon my shoulders, you pray for me. Pilgrims approach the grounds of the basilica, in distant view, on the day before the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. But much as your compassionate heart sympathizes with man's sufferings from bodily sickness, you certainly show greater care to relieve the spiritual sickness and weaknesses under which we labor. This universal distribution of grace enables you to exercise your spiritual motherhood, to make your children live the divine life by obtaining for them sanctifying grace and all their actual graces. Mary, My Mother, you are Queen also because your are Co-Redemptrix. In that moment the mystery of love and mercy, promised to mankind thousands of years earlier foretold by so many prophets, desired by so many saints, was accomplished upon earth. According to God's eternal standards, the sanctity proclaimed by Gabriel when he called you "full of grace," was but the beginning of your wonderful growth in holiness. You would be hailed by all generations as blessed above all other women because you are the Mother of God and at the same time a spotless Virgin. It was life of the utmost weakness and helplessness, and yet His is the strength of God Himself. Hence with Holy Church I repeat, "You are all fair, Mary, and the stain of original sin is not in you. Mary, My Mother, I unite myself with you in the spirit in which you offered yourself as a sacrifice of love during your lifetime. At the Annunciation you received Jesus on earth; it was proper that He should receive you in Heaven. In 1482 the feast was added to the Missal under the title of "Our Lady of Compassion." Pope Benedict XIII added it to the Roman Calendar in 1727 on the Friday before Palm Sunday. This posture is not the one usually describing a mourner who is affected with only human grief. For if I have any ability, any worth or goodness, the glory is not mine, but God's. Like you, he was of the tribe of Juda and the family of David. Having once given us Jesus Christ by you, God does not change His way of helping us. Mary, My Mother, you are all beautifulbeautiful in mind, in body, in soul! Through prayer may grace fill my soul with the life of God and transform me into a living image of Jesus, just as you were. Foundation of the Abbey of Dunes, Flanders, in honor of the Blessed Virgin (1128) 3. We can lose our divine adoption, but you can never lose your divine maternity. Through you I hope to reach the heavenly Kingdom. 1. This feast day was approved by the Holy See in 1933 and is celebrated every October 25. Everything that God may send me, or permit in my life, whether favorable or unfavorable, sweet or bittereven illness, is acceptable to me, for I have resolved, after your example to conform myself to the Divine Will in all things. Feast, September 15 (Novena, September 6-14) (See the Feast of Seven Sorrows, Friday of Passion Week), Feast, September 24 (Triduum, September 21-23). Mary, My Mother, give me an absolute trust in your help. I wish to do penance by giving up sin and amending my life, by asking pardon and making reparation to the Heart of Jesus and to your Immaculate Heart, so grievously offended by our sins. Your prayers are those of a Mother and, therefore, have a certain maternal authority with Jesus Christ so that you obtain the grace of pardon even for those who, though guilty of grievous crimes, commend themselves to you. I beg you to take care of me for I am a poor sinful child. How often do we see you restoring health to the sick who have recourse to you with childlike confidence? You knew that thousands even of His faithful followers throughout the world would turn from Him and would make His coming the occasion of their eternal ruin. It was your exclusive privilege to be Christ's Mother according to the flesh. In presenting your only Son you present your all. When I have pain, you are ready to comfort and strengthen me. He follows up in my heart also the aim that brought Him into your wombHe wishes to be born in me, to grow, rule, and reveal Himself. The pangs of this childbirth were the sufferings you felt on Calvary. Teach me the real kind of ambition, that is, greatness in God's eyes. You are the immaculate Virgin whom the Holy Spirit willed to make His bride and in whom He would work the tremendous miracle of the Incarnation. Saints Stories for All Ages Our Lady of Guadalupe Our Lady of Guadalupe Feast Day December 12 Printer Friendly On December 9, 1531, a 57-year-old Aztec, Juan Diego, saw the Blessed Mother on a hill in Mexico City. For He was everything to you, and all else was nothing without Him. The Communion was your life of union with Jesus in the Eucharist after His Ascension. Mary, My Mother, you were not obliged by the Law of Moses to present and ransom your firstborn Son. You will be inspired by the overflow of love for Our Lady. Rather, your sorrows were ordained by God from all eternity as part of the penalty to be paid for sin and were to mingle with the sufferings of your Son in that great sacrifice which was to redeem the world. With your arms outstretchedthose arms in which the Eternal God delighted to rest when He became our Brotherplead our cause. This feast was suppressed with the revision of the calendar published in the Roman Missal of 1969. But we, too, by our union with Jesus, and by the power of His grace, will also be united with Him in His victory over the devil. You called yourself the servant of Him who for thirty years would be subject to you. Joseph, so humble, so pure, so loving respected your consecration to God, and he was willing to live with you a life of spotless virginity. I give you my heart by the gift of a tender and childlike love, because you are my Mother and you love me more than my own mother could ever think of loving me. The story of Our Lady of Guadalupe December 12th is the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. You love us as a mother loves her children.
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