Prayers

Hey, everybody!

THis is my last post on BCN. I will be entering the Dominicans in two weeks, so I'm signing off here. Please, pray for me, and also keep this going. The more we share our Faith, the more we grow in love of God, right?

Brian is now a moderator, and Gregg and Ale are also moderators.

If you want to write to me, you can. Go to http://op.org/nunsopsummit/ for the address.

In Our Lady,
Greta

October -- Month of the Holy Rosary

October is the month of the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We are asked, during this month, to recall the mysteries of the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.

The history of the Rosary, given here in the Catholic Encyclopedia, gives a glimpse into the long history of praying the Rosary, in its manifest forms, over the centuries.

I was thinking that we could all maybe comment on our favorite mystery or expound on some point of the devotion that can help us more devoutly and with greater understanding pray for the salvation of sinners and our own salvation.

September -- Month of Our Lady of Sorrows

Holy Mother Church has dedicated this month to Our Lady of Sorrows. As foretold in St. Luke's Gospel at the Presentation, Our Lady's Heart was pierced with seven swords, each due to Her closeness to Our Lord.

These seven swords pierce Our Lady's Immaculate Heart:

• at the prophecy of Simeon;
• at the flight into Egypt;
• having lost the Holy Child at Jerusalem;
• meeting Jesus on his way to Calvary;
• standing at the foot of the Cross;
• Jesus being taken from the Cross;
• at the burial of Christ.

Let us recall, then, during this month, these sorrows of Our Lady, which show Her union with Christ as well as showing us how to unite ourselves more closely to Him.

August 22 – Feast of the Queenship of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary

The Feast celebrated by Holy Mother Church is three-fold. These three parts, all involving what has been revealed to us by the Holy Spirit about the Blessed Virgin Mary, point back, in the wonderful and mystical way that all Sacred Tradition does, to Christ. I will try in my own miserable and very limited way to explain these three parts. Please help me, through comment and subsequent posts, to expound on this better.

Part I: The octave day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven

We have, in liturgical tradition, a magnificent reminder of the timelessness of God. Eight days ago, in the time we experience as human creatures, we celebrated the Assumption of the Blessed Mother into Heaven. Like Our Lord, Our Lady is united body and soul together in Heaven. She was lifted up by Divine Will into the Beatific Vision. Unlike Her Son, Who being God ascended to Heaven by His Own Will, She needed to be assumed, taken up by Another, into eternity. Our Lord gave Her this grace. This grace is both a promise fulfilled and a promise yet unfulfilled. Allow me to explain.

The promise fulfilled is due to Our Lady being united more perfectly than any other human being ever to the Trinity. She is a daughter of God the Father through obedience; She is the Spouse of the Holy Spirit through love; and She is the Mother of God the Son through humility, which is love and obedience united together. All of this She is through grace, of course. Her three-fold vocation, as daughter, spouse and mother, is one for which She was given an extraordinary gift, that of being not merely cleansed from the effects of Original Sin through the Sacraments but conceived entirely free from it. As She Herself told St. Bernadette, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” It is this fact about Her that the Angel Gabriel was able to greet Her with, “Hail, full of grace!” Being free from Sin in this way, God saw fit to give to Her what we all will have on the last day, Her Soul, immaculate and totally filled with love, united forever with Her Body, glorified and perfect. She was then Assumed into Heaven to be with Her Father, Spouse and Son forever. This is the promised fulfilled for this Most Blessed among women.

The future promise is shown through this, as well. As Our Lady’s Body and Soul are so united, we are given a glimpse, through Her, of what shall happen to us. Our souls and bodies will, at the Resurrection, be united again with our souls. Wherever our choices and God’s justice and mercy have seen fit to send us, either Heaven or Hell, so too will our bodies go, to be joined with our souls, to receive their reward or punishment. It was enough for us to witness Our Lord’s Ascension, but God in His great mercy and love has also, so that we do not despair in our own human frailty, given us this most beautiful of examples. A fully human person who is not God, united to God as much as is possible for us lowly creatures, was raised up, body and soul into the Beatific Vision. We have hope in the Resurrection through the Resurrection of Christ, but we have child-like certainty in it through the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I do not mean to imply that this child-like certainty is somehow greater than the hope that we already have, but that it is a facet of this hope. It is for our sake, for our darken intellects and our easy despair, that we have been given the Assumption of Mary, a creature like us, through whom God came into the world, to look to and imitate, even as She looked to and imitated Her Son. It leads back to Him always, as She has so simply and honesty told us, “Do whatever He tells you.”

The timelessness consists in this: the Assumption, celebrated eight days ago, happened from our perspective nearly two thousand years ago. But it is happening now in the ever-present Now of eternity.

Part II: The Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth

On the octave day we celebrate the fifth glorious mystery of the Rosary, the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth. It is foolish to think that She was at any point not our Queen, however, in the incarnational way the Faith has of letting us glimpse here below the wonders of Heaven, we imagine this day the coronation ceremony that took Heaven a week to prepare.

While She was on Earth, the Blessed Mother was Queen of the Apostles, Mother of the Church. She does not relinquish these titles now that She is in Heaven. On the contrary, She is now even more so our Mother, more so our Queen. She has dominion over the Angels and all the Church. How can this be, a mere human creature elevated even above the Angels?

Part III: The Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

As was said above, the Blessed Mother was conceived without Original Sin ever having touched Her Soul. The purity of Her Heart, flowing from both this special grace and from Her love of God, is second only to Our Lord’s Most Sacred Heart.

The following is a quote from St. Cyril of Alexandria. He is saying what I have poorly tried to above:

"We salute you, O Mary, Mother of God, treasure of the universe, inextinguishable flame, crown of virginity, scepter of the true Faith, indestructible temple, tabernacle of the One Whom the world cannot contain, and Mother and Virgin. In your virginal womb you enclosed the Immense and Incomprehensible One.

Through you the Trinity is glorified and the Cross is celebrated and adored everywhere on earth. Through you the heavens exult with joy, the Angels and Archangels are glad, demons are put to flight, the demon temptor is cast out of heaven, and our fallen nature has again been assumed into heaven.

It is through you that the only-begotten Son of God, Who is light, shone amid the nations who were seated in darkness and the shadow of death. What human voice can ever worthily celebrate the ineffable greatness of Mary? She is Mother and Virgin at the same time. Through her peace has been restored to the world. What peace? Our Lord Jesus Christ, Whom Mary has brought forth!"

This triple feast of Our Lady, Mediatrix of All Grace, to bring us always back to Her Beloved Son. Everything that She is to Catholics lead us back to Him, always.

Please forgive the lateness and the rambling-ness of this post. There is much more I would like to say, but in my own limitedness I cannot do so, so please help me out or write your own posts. God bless you and Our Lady keep you.

Feast of the Dormition of Our Lady

Today is the day on which we remember the "falling asleep" of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Tradition relates the story thusly:

The Apostles, knowing Our Lady's time was coming to pass from this life to the next, began to gather at Her bedside. Only St. Thomas was absent. Whether She died or merely appeared to die is still a question debated today, but we do know that the Apostles thought She died. They laid Her in a tomb, rolled a stone over the entrance, and mourned for Her. Two days later, St. Thomas finally arrives, and is heartbroken to find the Mother of God has passed away. In typical fashion, he demands to see Her body, so that he may mourn for Her properly. When they roll the stone back from the tomb entrance, they see a shower of roses falling from Heaven and they know that She has been taken up, body and soul, to rejoin Her Son, with whom She had suffered, loved and lived.

The feast of the Dormition is celebrated with slightly more solemnity in the East, but is recalled throughout the Church Universal on this day, so that we may remember that, as we have received our Savior through this most humble Handmaid, we also must follow into death to new life in Him.

August-- Month of the Immaculate Heart

The month of August is dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

During this month we honor with special attention, especially on August 22, the Heart of the Mother of God.

Pure, full of love, and pierced with a sword, the Immaculate Heart of Mary shows us the attitude of faith and love we ought to have for Her Beloved Son.

A quote from our Holy Father, who says this better than I could:

"According to Matthew 5:8, the "immaculate heart" is a heart which, with God's grace, has come to perfect interior unity and therefore "sees God". To be "devoted" to the Immaculate Heart of Mary means therefore to embrace this attitude of heart, which makes the fiat—"your will be done"—the defining centre of one's whole life. It might be objected that we should not place a human being between ourselves and Christ. But then we remember that Paul did not hesitate to say to his communities: "imitate me" (1 Cor 4:16; Phil 3:17; 1 Th 1:6; 2 Th 3:7, 9). In the Apostle they could see concretely what it meant to follow Christ. But from whom might we better learn in every age than from the Mother of the Lord?"

July -- The Month of the Precious Blood

Holy Mother Church has seen fit to dedicate this month, July, to the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

The first of the month, since 1849, has been celebrated as the feast of Sanguis Christi. Holy Mother Church has asked us, both as Her children and as those who have been washed clean of sin in the Blood of Christ, to recall on this day, and throughout the month, that it is by the shedding of this Most Precious Blood that we have even the hope of salvation.

"O Blood and Water, which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus, as a fount of mercy for us, I trust in you!"

" O GOOD Jesu, according to Thy great mercy, have mercy on me. O most merciful Jesu, by that Precious Blood which Thou didst will to shed for sinners, I beseech Thee to wash away all mine iniquities and to look graciously upon me, a poor and unworthy sinner, as I call upon Thy holy Name. Therefore, O Jesus, do Thou save me for Thy holy Name's sake. Amen."