THE GOLDEN ROSE

 

On 21 November 1964, Saint Pope Paul VI concluded his closing address with reference to Mary. Just as at the invitation of Pope John XXIII he and the Council members had entered the council hall, along with "Mary, the Mother of Jesus", so at the close of the third session they were to leave that temple with the most holy and sweet name of Mary, Mother of the Church. [1]

Above all, Saint Pope Paul VI desired that it should be made clear that Mary, the humble handmaid of the Lord, exists only in relation to God and to Christ, our sole Mediator and Redeemer. The pontiff moreover expressed the hope that the true nature and aims of Marian veneration in the church be illustrated, particularly where many are separated from the church, so that those who are not a part of the Catholic community may understand that devotion to Mary, far from being an end in itself, is instead a means essentially ordained to orient souls to Christ and thus unite them with the Father in the love of the Holy Spirit.

St Pope Paul VI advised the Council members that he had decided to send a special mission to Fatima in the then near future in order to carry a Golden Rose to the sanctuary of Fatima, more dear than ever not only to the people of the noble Portuguese nation, but also to the Council members and the faithful.

In this manner the pontiff intended to entrust to the care of this heavenly mother the entire human family, with its problems and anxieties, with its legitimate aspirations and ardent hopes. St Pope Paul VI concluded with the following prayer: "O Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, to you we recommend the entire Church and our Ecumenical Council.

"You, auxilium Episcoporum, aid of bishops, protect and assist the bishops in their apostolic mission, and all those priests, religious and laymen who help them in their arduous work.

"You who were presented by your Son Himself, at the moment of His redeeming death, as mother to His best-beloved disciple, remember the Christian people who entrust themselves to you.

"Remember all yours sons; support their prayers to God, preserve their faith, strengthen their hope, increase their charity.

"Remember those who are in tribulation, in need, in danger and particularly those who suffer persecution and those who are in prison because of the faith. For these, O Virgin, obtain fortitude and hasten their day of just freedom.

"Look with benign eyes on our separated brothers and condescend to unite us, you who brought forth Christ as a bridge of unity between God and men.

"O, temple of light, without shadow and without blemish, intercede with your only Son, mediator of our reconciliation with the Father (cf. Rom. 5,11) that He may have mercy on our shortcomings and may dispel any differences between us, giving us the joy of loving.

"To your Immaculate Heart, O Mary, we finally recommend the entire human race. Lead it to the knowledge of the sole and true Saviour, Jesus Christ; protect it from the scourges provoked by sin, give to the entire world peace in truth, in justice, in liberty and in love.

"And let the entire Church, by celebrating this great ecumenical assembly, raise to the God of mercy the majestic hymn of praise and thanksgiving, the hymn of joy and of exaltation, because the Lord has worked great things through you, O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary." [2]

The Third Session: The Debates and Decrees of Vatican Coucnil 2, September 14 to November 21, 1964. Faber: 1965. Xavier Rynne. 

[1] The Third Session. Page 388

[2] The Third Session, pp 388 to 389

HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A BLESSED NEW YEAR TO ALL MARIAN PRAISE READERS

Happy Christmas and a Blessed New Year

to all Marian Praise readers.

May blessings be with you and your loved ones

at this time of peace, joy and goodwill.

We pray for an end to the pandemic.

We thank Almighty God for the 

emergence of natural immunity. 

A candle has been lit by Lumiere in 

remembrance of all who are suffering

or have lost ther lives since the

beginning of the pandemic.

Our thoughts are with their families,

colleagues and friends.

MOTHER MARY'S BEAUTY

The true beauty of the Mother of God is in her soul and hence incorruptible.

Giovanni Guareschi, The Little World of Don Camillo

TRADITION: - THE RISEN CHRIST APPEARED TO HIS MOTHER

"Although the gospel accounts of the Lord's Resurrection do not mention the Blessed Virgin Mary, a tradition dating at least to the fifth century maintains that the risen Christ appeared to His Mother. According to the Latin poet Sedulius, Christ appeared first to the Virgin Mary before any of the other witnesses mentioned by the evangelists or St Paul (1 Cor 15:6). Indeed, in this account, Mary who at the Annunciation served as the gate through which Jesus entered the world, now received the good news of the Lord's Resurrection precisely in order to become the herald of His second coming. "

From Mariology; A Guide for Priests, Deacons, Seminarians and Consecrated Persons. Page 662.

Mark Miravalle, (Ed.) 2007. Queenship Publishing, USA, 

ISBN: 978-1-57918-355-7

https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Mariology.html?id=ez0VRbQi1i4C&redir_esc=y

With thanks to Google books

FEASTS IN HONOUR OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

FEASTS IN HONOUR OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

                        Annunciation                                         -          25 March

                        Assumption                                            -          15 August

                        Birth of Mary                                         -           8  September

                        Candlemas (Purification of Mary)         -          See: Presentation of the Lord

                        Dedication of Mary of the Snows          -           5  August

                        Immaculate Conception                         -           8 December

                        Mother of God Solemnity                      -           1 January

                        Our Lady of Guadalupe                         -          12 December

                        Our Lady of Lourdes                              -          12 February

                        Our Lady of Mount Carmel                    -          16 July

                        Our Lady of the Rosary                         -           7 October

                        Our Lady of Sorrow                               -           15 September

                        Presentation of Mary                             -           21 November

                        Presentation of the Lord                        -           2 February

                        Queenship of Mary                                -           22 August

                        Visitation of Mary                                  -           31 May

ASSUMPTION BELIEF IS ANCIENT: BY DR LUKY WHITTLE

 

ASSUMPTION BELIEF IS ANCIENT

For almost sixteen centuries Catholics have believed that the Blessed Virgin’s body did not suffer corruption after death but that she was taken up body and soul into heaven. 

The Catholic Church’s second – and thus far – final Mariological dogma is the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin into heaven.  Solemnly defined by Pope Pius XII (1939-1958) on 1 November 1950, this belief had been entrenched in Catholic tradition since the sixth century or even earlier, when Christians started the practice of annually celebrating the feast of the Assumption on 15 August.

In the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus, Pope Pius XII wrote:

“We proclaim, declare and define as a dogma revealed by God, the Immaculate Mother of God, Mary ever Virgin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into glory of heaven.”

The Bible does not tell us how Our Lady underwent the process of death, to which the Eastern Church so luminously refers as her “dormition” or falling asleep.  

Catholic tradition and/or legend maintains that when Mary’s days on earth had ended, she, surrounded by the apostles, fell into the sleep of death.  Only the apostle Thomas was absent when Mary was carried to the tomb and buried.  

When he finally arrived, he broke down to hear of her death and begged to be taken to her tomb.  They took him to the place.  When they opened it they found that the body had gone.  

In its place a sheaf of lilies, symbolic of purity, was found.  This tradition is captured in a poem by Sister M Angeline SSND titled “Memories of the Assumption”.

         

  They bore her in a reverent group

            To a holy place

            Left her body in the earth

            Her body, full of grace

 

            But Thomas, tardy, slow of foot,

            Absent when she died

            Spent with sorrow, craved to see

            Her of the Crucified

 

            There was a swift intake of breath

            A hurried silent breath

            Startled, they opened the newmade tomb

            To find but lilies there.

Records of debates concerning the Assumption go back as far as the sixth century AD.  One of the first English poems in which the belief that Mary’s body and soul were united in heaven is contained is one written by the poet William of Shoreham in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. He wrote: “The fifth joy of that woman (occurred) when her body came to heaven (and her) soul took to the body, as had been its custom (before death occurred).”           

That it took fifteen centuries before a belief that appears to have been universally accepted in the  Church to be included in its official doctrine bears witness to the endurance to which a writer once referred as “the patience that is Rome.” 

The year 1950 was a golden age for Marian devotion in the Church.  This trend was followed a decade later by an epoch in which some radical Catholics would – in the name of ecumenism - challenge and dispute the renown of Mary.  Pope Pius XII had already forestalled their objections when he wrote in defence of Catholic Mariology in his encyclical letter Fulgens Corona published on 8 September 1953:

 

Non-Catholics and reformers are … mistaken, when … they find fault with, or disapprove of, our devotion to the Virgin Mother of God, as if it took something from the worship due to God alone and to Jesus Christ.  The contrary is true because any honor and veneration which we may give to our heavenly Mother undoubtedly redounds to the glory of her divine Son, not only because all graces and all gifts, even the highest, flow from Him as from their primary source, but also because ‘the glory of children are their fathers’ (Proverbs 17:6).

 

How was Our Lady taken up to heaven?  The human mind with its limited capacity for rapture tends to be constrained in its efforts to contain this glory.  It took a poet with a joint capacity for faith and verbal expression like Sister Dennis OP to give voice to her imagination.  Her Assumption poem which she titled “Flying Birds” was first published in The Tablet of 19 August 1961.

 

            In a compact body, keeping perfect rhythm,

            Above the smoking factory chimney’s crest,

            Regardless even of the beauty of the green fields,

            Waving trees, and joyous, shouting children,

            The birds circle the heavens in their morning flight.

 

            So, surely, must the Angels have borne aloft

            Our Lady on that first Assumption Day!

 

            Intent on the beauty of Him on whom they desire to look,

            They ignore the things of earth and gaze on her

            Whom clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet,

            They bear to joyful reunion with her Son –

            With Him who is also her God.

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

 

In terms of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, the gate which God chose through which His Son entered the world needed to be one untainted by original sin. Thus the conception of Mary uncontaminated by the effects of the Fall was effected through the Will of God. This event - known as the Immaculate Conception - however did not sever either her human identity nor her unity with suffering humanity.

MOTHER OF THE REDEEMER - ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF SAINT JOHN PAUL II

 

IOANNES PAULUS PP. II
REDEMPTORIS MATER
On the Blessed Virgin Mary
in the life of the Pilgrim Church
 

 

Blessing

Venerable Brothers and dear Sons and Daughters,
Health and the Apostolic Blessing.

 

INTRODUCTION

1. The Mother of the Redeemer has a precise place in the plan of salvation, for "when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!'" (Gal. 4:4-6)

With these words of the Apostle Paul, which the Second Vatican Council takes up at the beginning of its treatment of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I too wish to begin my reflection on the role of Mary in the mystery of Christ and on her active and exemplary presence in the life of the Church. For they are words which celebrate together the love of the Father, the mission of the Son, the gift of the Spirit, the role of the woman from whom the Redeemer was born, and our own divine filiation, in the mystery of the "fullness of time."

This "fullness" indicates the moment fixed from all eternity when the Father sent his Son "that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (Jn. 3:16). It denotes the blessed moment when the Word that "was with God...became flesh and dwelt among us" (Jn. 1:1, 14), and made himself our brother. It marks the moment when the Holy Spirit, who had already infused the fullness of grace into Mary of Nazareth, formed in her virginal womb the human nature of Christ. This "fullness" marks the moment when, with the entrance of the eternal into time, time itself is redeemed, and being filled with the mystery of Christ becomes definitively "salvation time." Finally, this "fullness" designates the hidden beginning of the Church's journey. In the liturgy the Church salutes Mary of Nazareth as the Church's own beginning, for in the event of the Immaculate Conception the Church sees projected, and anticipated in her most noble member, the saving grace of Easter. And above all, in the Incarnation she encounters Christ and Mary indissolubly joined: he who is the Church's Lord and Head and she who, uttering the first fiat of the New Covenant, prefigures the Church's condition as spouse and mother.

2. Strengthened by the presence of Christ (cf. Mt. 28:20), the Church journeys through time towards the consummation of the ages and goes to meet the Lord who comes. But on this journey- and I wish to make this point straightaway-she proceeds along the path already trodden by the Virgin Mary, who "advanced in her pilgrimage of faith, and loyally persevered in her union with her Son unto the cross."

I take these very rich and evocative words from the Constitution Lumen Gentium, which in its concluding part offers a clear summary of the Church's doctrine on the Mother of Christ, whom she venerates as her beloved Mother and as her model in faith hope and charity.

Shortly after the Council, my great predecessor Paul VI decided to speak further of the Blessed Virgin. In the Encyclical Epistle Christi Matri and subsequently in the Apostolic Exhortations Signum Magnum and Marialis Cultus he expounded the foundations and criteria of the special veneration which the Mother of Christ receives in the Church, as well as the various forms of Marian devotion- liturgical, popular and private-which respond to the spirit of faith.

3. The circumstance which now moves me to take up this subject once more is the prospect of the year 2000, now drawing near, in which the Bimillennial Jubilee of the birth of Jesus Christ at the same time directs our gaze towards his Mother. In recent years, various opinions have been voiced suggesting that it would be fitting to precede that anniversary by a similar Jubilee in celebration of the birth of Mary.

In fact, even though it is not possible to establish an exact chronological point for identifying the date of Mary's birth, the Church has constantly been aware that Mary appeared on the horizon of salvation history before Christ. It is a fact that when "the fullness of time" was definitively drawing near-the saving advent of Emmanuel- she who was from eternity destined to be his Mother already existed on earth. The fact that she "preceded" the coming of Christ is reflected every year in the liturgy of Advent. Therefore, if to that ancient historical expectation of the Savior we compare these years which are bringing us closer to the end of the second Millennium after Christ and to the beginning of the third, it becomes fully comprehensible that in this present period we wish to turn in a special way to her, the one who in the "night" of the Advent expectation began to shine like a true "Morning Star" (Stella Matutina). For just as this star, together with the "dawn," precedes the rising of the sun, so Mary from the time of her Immaculate Conception preceded the coming of the Savior, the rising of the "Sun of Justice" in the history of the human race.

Her presence in the midst of Israel-a presence so discreet as to pass almost unnoticed by the eyes of her contemporaries-shone very clearly before the Eternal One, who had associated this hidden "daughter of Sion" (cf. Zeph. 3:14; Zeph. 2:10) with the plan of salvation embracing the whole history of humanity. With good reason, then, at the end of this Millennium, we Christians who know that the providential plan of the Most Holy Trinity is the central reality of Revelation and of faith feel the need to emphasize the unique presence of the Mother of Christ in history, especially during these last years leading up to the year 2000.

EXCERPT FROM REDEMPTORIS MATER (MOTHER OF THE REDEEMER). THE ENCYCLICAL MAY BE FOUND AT http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031987_redemptoris-mater.html

With thanks to vatican.va

FOR FINANCIAL AID

 

Knowing that you are our loving Mother, mindful not only of our spiritual but likewise temporal necessities, I come to you, O Virgin Mary, with submissive and humble heart, beseeching you to assist me in my present financial worry. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I am in dire need and financial embarrassment, unable to pay my honest debts. I ask not for wealth, dear Mother, if possession of it is not in accordance with the Holy Will of God. I merely beg for the assistance which will enable me to satisfy my pressing obligations. I believe, dear Mother, that you are the Queen of heaven and earth, and that you have acquired by virtue of your wonderful dignity, a sweet jurisdiction over all creation. I believe that you are not only rich and bountiful, but extremely kind and generous to all your loving children. I plead with you, then, dear Mother, to obtain for me the help I so urgently need in my present financial difficulty. I thank you, dear Lady, and promise to publish far and wide the marvels of your glorious intercession. AMEN.