Mother Most Chaste - THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST BY THE OPERATION OF THE HOLY GHOST

THE FAIREST FLOWER OF PARADISE - CONSIDERATIONS ON THE LITANY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN, ENRICHED WITH EXAMPLES DRAWN FROM THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS BY Very Rev. ALEXIS M. LEPICIER, O. S. M.

The Holy Spirit as a dove in the Annunciation, by Philippe de Champaigne, 1644

"The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee, and therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." (Luke, i, 35.)

THE Incarnation of the Word is not only a mystery of our Faith, it is also the greatest miracle that the power of God has ever accomplished.

Nothing, in fact, more surpasses the powers of nature, than the union of a Person, divine, uncreated and infinite, with created and finite human nature. But God willed that another stupendous miracle should be added to the first: namely, the virginal conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary, who, by an altogether singular privilege was visited by the Holy Ghost. The power of the Most High covered her with His shadow, in order that she might conceive and bring forth the very Word of God.

As there can be no higher dignity in a pure creature, than that of cooperating immediately with the Holy Ghost in forming the body of a God, so it is not to be wondered at that God should set aside the laws of nature in order to safeguard the virginity of His Mother.

Wonder unspeakable! How dearly it makes known to us the love of the Holy Spirit for His Spouse; and how it enhances in our sight the sublime dignity of the Mother of God!

* * *

The virginal conception of Jesus Christ in Mary's womb, like every other wonderful work of God, must be ascribed to the common operation of the Three Divine Persons, who having the same nature, unite in all their works ad extra. However, it is to the Holy Ghost that we attribute this virginal conception, and that for several reasons.

In the first place, the Incarnation is a work of love, since God became Man because of the love He bore us; now the Holy Ghost is precisely, in the Holy Trinity, the con-substantial love of the Father for the Son, and of the Son for the Father.

Moreover, by its union with the Word, the most holy Humanity of Jesus became the greatest marvel of spiritual perfection, having been raised, ennobled and made glorious above all created things by the light of the Godhead: now, it is to the Holy Spirit that we attribute the work of grace, and all the fruits of sanctification flowing there-from.

Finally, the Incarnation had for its end the redemption of the human race, which Jesus Christ was to admit to participation in the graces, whereof He possessed the fullness. Now, this sanctification, which has its origin in Jesus Christ, is precisely the work of the Holy Spirit. It is just, therefore, that we attribute the accomplishment of this great mystery to the Third Person of the Holy Trinity.

For these reasons, Mary is the chosen temple, the unique sanctuary of the Holy Ghost: a sanctuary so beautiful, so rich in divine gifts, that all other sanctuaries pale in comparison.

Rejoice, O my soul, that such blessings have come to us by the operation of the Holy Ghost in Mary. Repeat with a holy exultation these words wherewith the Heavenly Bridegroom delighted to address this incomparable Mother: "Thou art a garden enclosed, my sister, my spouse; thou art a sealed fountain: thy plants are a paradise of delights." (Cant. iv, 12-18.)

* * *

The virginal conception of Jesus Christ in Mary's womb, not only brings to the fore the doctrine of the Divine Maternity together with that of the Divinity of Jesus Christ, but it is also an eloquent proof that, beyond the natural order, there exists a supernatural life, which is the end of all things created.

For, if God willed that such a miraculous intervention of the Holy Ghost should take place in the conception of the Redeemer of mankind, we can deduce from this fact that the scope of the Incarnation is beyond all that the order of nature comprehends. In fact, Jesus Christ became Man in order to give us grace in this life and the recompense of glory in the next.

Let us give thanks to the Holy Ghost for His having overshadowed Mary and thereby having given to ourselves the knowledge of this great truth: that we are made for heaven, and for heaven alone.

Example 

St. Elizabeth Of Hungary

St. Elizabeth, daughter of Andrew II, King of Hungary, and wife of Ludwig, Landgrave of Thuringia, was from her earliest youth most devout to the glorious Queen of Heaven. She always took delight in venerating her and in causing her to be venerated by all with whom she came in contact. She never wearied of saying the Angelical Salutation in honour of the Mother of God.

Among the virtues most conspicuous in St. Elizabeth, was her love of holy poverty. This she learnt in the school of our blessed Lady herself, for the Queen of heaven and earth practiced poverty during the whole of her mortal life. This spirit of poverty inspired St. Elizabeth with so great a scorn for earthly possessions, that she detested all that was not strictly necessary, and would not even retain what was befitting her dignity as queen. Once, on the Feast of the Assumption, while assisting at the solemn Mass, she took off her royal crown before all the bystanders and pushing away the cushions set for her, knelt on the bare ground, declaring that such adornments were not befitting a servant of Jesus Christ, seeing that He, the King of heaven and earth, had always lived poorly and died crowned with bitter thorns.

After her husband's death, Elizabeth underwent the fiercest persecutions. Through the envy and hatred of the great nobles, it was spread about that by her alms-giving she had wasted the Crown treasury. On this account she was driven from the court, exposed to every sort of insult, and finally obliged to take refuge in a little hut, where she suffered terribly from hunger and the severity of the weather. In the midst of these tribulations, always borne with heroic patience, she was lovingly helped by our blessed Lady, her sweet Patroness, who even deigned to appear to her and speak to her.

At last, St. Elizabeth was restored to her original dignity. But instead of peacefully enjoying the pleasures and honours of her rank, she turned her back on all the things of the world and asked to be clothed in the poor habit of St. Francis. For the rest of her life she never ceased to exercise herself in the practice of penance and humility. At last, invited by her heavenly Spouse to the wedding-feast of paradise, she exchanged the tears of her exile for the joys of heaven, dying at Marburg, in Germany, on the nineteenth of November, 1231.

Prayer

Glorious Virgin, Spouse of the Holy Spirit, wonder of the universe, I praise and exalt thee because of the matchless conception of Jesus Christ in thy virginal womb. Grant, I pray thee, that keeping always bright within me the lamp of faith, I may inherit one day the promises made to those who serve thy Son with fidelity. Amen.

The Lady Was Immaculate By Daniel A. Lord, S.J. Part 6.

ADDED LOSSES

All men and women are conscious of what St. Paul calls the “war in our members.” The pagan poet referred to this in that familiar expression: “I see the better things and approve of them, and then find that I go chasing off after the worse.” We are often amazed at ourselves: What makes us, in the midst of good resolutions, suddenly find ourselves acting like beasts? Why do we in holy places have evil thoughts? Why does the flesh lure us to stupid and criminal acts?
Why does my mind say “Do” while my senses say “Don’t?”
Why am I so easily thrown off balance? So easily upset? So quick to break my best resolutions So prone to evil?
What about all this that is called concupiscence, the concupiscence of the eye, the concupiscence of the flesh, and the pride of life?
Was man made that way?
Does God delight to see him torn apart between resolutions and failure, high ideals and low temptations?
All this is part of Original Sin. Adam and Eve were created in perfect balance. They saw things clearly. Their will was strong and firm. They could measure temptation with a just appraisal. Their flesh was under control and never rebelled against them. They were part of the perfect balance that they saw in the world around them. The stars followed the paths marked for them without erupting into fantastic forays on other stars. Nature moved in its calm and beautiful cycles. Even the animals obeyed God’s natural law. And so did Adam and Eve.
But their rebellion threw all that out of balance. It was a strange, cruel, unreasonable, illogical thing which they did
- to turn from God to the serpent, to believe the lies of the Adversary instead of the firm and beautiful promises of their Father and Creator. They did not sin out of a great, fierce temptation, coupled with hot rebellion of the flesh. They sinned almost coolly, gravely, calmly, without great pressure and in the face of sublime knowledge and great internal power.

OUR LOSS FOREVER

So it was that their minds were clouded and darkened. They had thrown their natures out of balance; their wills were sick and weakened. Concupiscence, formerly in calm control, now broke loose and caused endless trouble. They had unsettled themselves and unsettled the whole human race. And that unsettlement too came to us with Original Sin.
We find it slow to learn. We see darkly and often confusedly. We swing wildly between right or wrong, good and bad. We find ourselves ever battling with our flesh. We are unsettled, unbalanced, at war with ourselves and often at odds with the universe around us.
Had Adam been faithful, we would have known his calm and balance, clear vision and strong will. He sinned, he lost this almost automatic control of himself; and his confusion and unbalance and rebellions came down to us.
So Original Sin is really not a personal sin at all. It is an inherited loss. It is a deprivation of something God wanted me to have and Adam threw away before I even got the chance to inherit it. It is a kind of spiritual bankruptcy, a sort of susceptibility to spiritual bad health passed on from my ancestors, as material bankruptcy and bad health pass along from careless or wastrel forebears.
Original Sin shows itself in a weakness of soul and a sinister strength of rebellious flesh. It is clearly shown in my inclination to senseless and stupid and destructive ill and evil. It accounts for the fact that repulsive sin seems attractive and the Devil in a thousand disguises can trick us with apparent ease.

CHRIST WINS BACK

But in the Providence of God, things were not to stay wrecked.
What one disobedient son had ruined, an obedient Son would restore. The wreckage of the first man was to be rebuilt into order and beauty by the Greatest of the Sons of Men. Since man had destroyed, man must repair. Since a son had gone bankrupt, a Son must win back the inheritance. What Adam had thrown away in reckless prodigality, Christ would regain in labour and suffering and final death.
That is the simple Christian belief.
Christ came into the world, the perfect Son of God.
As man He was and had all that Adam had once been and possessed.
As man He would win all this back for all mankind.
But this time God would not give it freely as He had to Adam. Each man who would come to the age of reason would have to decide for himself whether he wanted to be God’s son, to inherit Heaven, to possess the divine life or grace, and to win those strengths and aids that would help him rebalance his nature.
Christ won all this on Calvary.
He gave the sacramental system to the Church, beginning with Baptism, by which men can with God’s grace take for themselves what Adam had lost, what Christ Himself possessed and won for all of us, and what God in His Providence desires us all to hold now and forever.

AS FOR MARY

We are all conceived in Original Sin.
But we all have it in our power to win back, as life progresses, the things which were lost in Original Sin. Was this the case of Mary?
Christians who thought rightly never really believed that it was. They knew that the Mother of the All-Pure must be immaculate. Since Christ was to be born as the new Adam, Mary could not be like the sinful Eve. Since He was to conquer the Adversary, how could He bear the scornful laughter of that Adversary who would cry out, “Once on a time, your Mother was in my power. The flesh that gave you birth was once inclined to evil. You are the Son of God, but once on a time, your Mother was not the daughter of God. You are the Fountain of Grace, but once at her conception your Mother was graceless. Yes, you are with her now; but there was a time when the Lord was not with her.” Such mocking laughter might well make hideous disharmony in the plans of Christ.
So Christians knew that Mary could never have been stained and soiled and tainted by Original Sin. She had to be God’s daughter always. She must ever be full of grace. The Lord would have been with her from the beginning. And her flesh could never have known the concupiscence, or her nature, the constant unbalance that is the consequence of Original Sin.
They all knew it had to be.
But how?

REASON FOR DELAY

That is why the proclamation of the dogma came so late. The Church had always believed Mary was immaculate.
The Saints called her Mary Immaculate. Theologians were sure this was true. But they had a difficulty: In point of time, Mary comes before Christ.
She was conceived and born long before He had brought about our salvation.
So since our salvation had not been won until Christ died on Calvary at the age of 33, when His Mother was at least forty-eight, how could she have been free from the guilt of Adam at the moment of her conception, almost five decades before?
Slowly they saw the explanation.
They had always been sure of the fact. Original sin in Mary? How dreadful! How out of line! How totally undignified for the Mother of the world’s Saviour.

BUT HOW?

Well, they knew that there were Saints in the days before Christ came to earth. True, when they died they did not go to Heaven, however holy they might be, not until Christ had come, died, and released them from Limbo (the Limbo of the ancients). They had been forced to remain in Limbo until our Redemption had been completed. Yet they had won back their right to Heaven; they had become adopted sons of God; they had gained grace, and the strength to balance their lives and hold their passions in check. This they had done by faith in the Messiah and the hope that He would come to save them. They had anticipated His death; and in anticipation of His death and because they believed He would come and save them, they got the grace before He actually died. They could not enter Heaven. Yet they had been saved by what He would do when His time had arrived.
So, said the theologians in a sudden burst of light, it’s really very simple:
Mary as a daughter of Adam would have been in Original Sin.
God, however, looked ahead and saw how pure and holy her life would be under any circumstances. She would have shunned temptation and lived without personal sin.
Here was someone who might well be chosen to be the Mother of the Saviour.
But the Mother of the Saviour must be protected against those evils which lie in Original Sin. She must always be the adopted daughter of God. She must always have the divine life of grace. If she is to welcome God from Heaven, she must have the right to Heaven. And God must see that she has the balance of life, the clearness of mind, the strength of character and will which befit the Perfect Mother of the Perfect Man.
So in anticipation of the death of her Son, because He would win back all that Adam had lost, God gave to Mary in advance what He gave to the people of the Old Law through their act of faith and gives to us today through Baptism and the other sacraments.
As Pius XII states in his Marian Year encyclical, the infinite dignity of Jesus Christ and His office of universal redemption is not diminished by this, but rather is greatly increased.

HAPPY TRUTH

In an age when the purity of women is so attacked and smirched, at a time when pure mothers are vitally important, when sin must be conquered at its roots, and the Adversary, now winning so much support in powerful quarters, must be completely vanquished, the Church determined to remind the world of what Christians had always believed.
The Mother of the Immaculate Christ is herself immaculate.
Of course, she never knew personal sin. She loved God too much for that.
But because she was to be the Mother of the Saviour, she was saved from taint in advance of His death. She was without touch of Original Sin from the first moment of her being. She was brought into the world with all the gifts that God had given to Eve. Never even slightly was she under the power of man’s enemy and God’s Adversary.
Mary is our pure Mother and the spotless example for womankind.
This is the meaning of the Immaculate Conception.
Could anything be more reasonable?
Could anything more completely explain the facts?
********

The Lady Was Immaculate By Daniel A. Lord, S.J. Part 5.

 

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

What does the Church mean when it speaks of the Immaculate Conception? Of the many, many non-Catholics whom I have heard object to this teaching, not one has ever really known what it meant. They were all angry about something the Church never taught. They objected to a supposed truth which is not Catholic truth at all.

Even George Bernard Shaw, I caught explaining the Immaculate Conception as if it meant that Mary had no father.

“I violently object to your Immaculate Conception,” says my good non-Catholic friend. “Only Jesus Christ was born without a father.”

“One virgin birth is enough for Christianity,” says another, expressing the same objection slightly differently. “I believe in Christ’s Virgin Birth; I do not believe in any other.”

Now it is very important to remember that the Virgin Birth of Christ and the Immaculate Conception of Mary are two entirely different things.

Jesus had no earthly father. Mary certainly did.

Jesus was not born as the result of marital relationship between a husband and a wife. Mary was.

Jesus had one divine Father in Heaven; one human Mother on earth. Mary had a father, Joachim, and a mother, Ann.

The birth of Jesus was a miraculous thing. The birth of Mary was wholly natural.

SOMETHING FAR DIFFERENT

The fact is that most people who object to the Immaculate Conception haven’t the slightest idea of what is meant by Original Sin. And if you don’t understand Original Sin, it’s a waste of time talking about the Immaculate Conception.

The word “immaculate” is clear enough in use. It means that a person is absolutely pure, spotless, without taint or blemish, and totally filled with grace.

We speak of an immaculate or spotless reputation. In so doing we are using the word a little carelessly, but we know what we mean. We say a man has immaculate or unquestionable honesty. Here is a girl of such purity that we think of her as immaculately virgin. That is a very high compliment, and hard to merit.

Now when we speak of the Immaculate Mary, the Immaculate Virgin, the Immaculate Mother, we use the adjective correctly. We mean that she did not know sin in any way that touched herself. She did not sin in thought or word or deed or desire. She was “full of grace” in all the states of life that were hers; and “the Lord was with her” every moment of every day.

But we Catholics believe that this immaculate character of her soul was something that began the instant her soul was created. At the very instant that her parents united in their marital love and her tiny germ-like body was formed in Ann’s holy womb, the soul that came to give it life was totally free from sin.

She was immaculate the instant she was conceived. This is what we mean by the Immaculate Conception.

ADAM’S STRANGE SIN

But, the puzzled will insist, isn’t that true of everyone?

Am I suggesting that the rest of the human race is guilty of sin when the soul enters the body at conception? Is a little tiny infant, without power or will or reason or movement, capable of sinning? Isn’t this absurd? What makes Mary any different from any child of good, sound, wholesome, God-fearing parents?

To understand that we have to backtrack a bit and remember Adam and the first human sin of all.

The sin of Adam was a sin of disobedience. God had given him a simple command which was the test of his obedience and love and gratitude. Adam disobeyed God, broke the command, and sinned.

This was, of course, his own personal sin. The guilt rested on his own soul. Because of it, he was no longer God’s friend. He had lost the right to call himself the son of God. His soul was dead within him; the divine life of grace destroyed.

Thus far, except for his greater light and knowledge and strength of character and closer association with God, his sin was like all human sins. He was a disobedient son, but the world has been filled with disobedient sons. He had flouted the law of God, but so would countless millions of murderers and criminals. He had turned to the love of a woman, preferring her to the all-good, all-generous, all-loving Father, as other millions would do as long as men are men and women women. He had become the partner of Satan, God’s relentless enemy; but then, the Devil was to win the co-operation of more men than he bothered to count until they were checked in for final judgement.

This personal sin was terrible, but was not the end.

For Adam was the Father of the Human Race.

So the sin of which he was guilty, under a second aspect was called Original Sin.

ORIGINAL SIN

Sometimes we talk of Original Sin as we talk of original music or original inventions. You’d think it was something fresh and new and different and hitherto undiscovered. In a way, that is true, for this was the first sin, the start of sin, something new on the earth. Yet some of the angels had sinned through disobedience in Heaven. They had rebelled and tried to drive God out of His own kingdom. In the sense of first and fresh and new and undiscovered, this angel rebellion was the original sin.

Adam’s Original Sin means something different. It is sin at the origin of our race, It is sin of the original man. It is the sin committed by him, Adam, who is the originator of life for all the rest of mankind. It is the origin of our woes and misfortunes. It originated the great problems that were to stain the course of history and the record of human life.

To understand this a little more clearly, let’s take a comparison: Suppose that somewhere back in history you had a rich and noble ancestor. He is trusted by his country, high in the confidence of the king, honoured with titles, and rich in lands and resources. It happens to the amazement of his contemporaries and the bewilderment of historians ever since, that your ancestor turns traitor. He goes over to the side of the invader; he rebels against the country, government, and king; he takes up arms, fights with the rebels and invading forces and in the end goes down with them to defeat.

His crime of high treason is, of course, his own.

What he suffers by way of just punishment when he falls into the hands of the king and the loyal government is his own personal affair.

Unfortunately for you, however, that is not the end. He had those titles, that rank, those lands, that wealth. All are lost when he takes part in the rebellion. He was a rich man; he dies poor. He would have left you a title, the castle, his vast wealth. Actually he leaves you nothing, for he has nothing left to leave.

Today you look back regretfully and wonder why he was such a fool. People have a way of remembering you are a descendant of a famous traitor. You have none of the things he once had and tossed away in the folly of his rebellion. You may blame him; you are poorer because of his crime. Though you are not punished by the present government because of his personal crime, you actually suffer very considerably because of things you might have had but never will have because he threw them all down the drain by his crime of treasonous rebellion.

THE PARALLEL IS SIMPLE

We do not share in Adam’s and Eve’s personal sin.

That was their own crime, and for that they knew their own personal punishment.

But Original Sin is something different. It is the loss of all the precious things, those supernatural and preternatural gifts, which God had given Adam for himself and, through him, for us and which he lost in his treason and rebellion.

You see, there are certain things which God gave us that belong to our nature: our power to digest, to propagate, to walk, to use our senses; our power to think, to choose right or wrong; our immortality. This is part of our nature; and God took none of these things away from the rebellious Adam and Eve.

But in addition to these, God had given His son and daughter marvellously generous gifts. They did not properly belong to human nature but were added to it. That is why they were called Supernatural Gifts, gifts above our nature.

Man was immortal; but God added to this the promise that our immortality would be something like His own eternity. We would be happy not as mere men could be, but as God is; for we would possess Him and see and know and love Him as He sees and knows and loves and possesses Himself.

To make that possible, God adopted Adam and Eve as His children and gave them divine power which we call grace. This is a tremendous power, like the very power of God. We have no right to it by our nature; God gave it to men because He wanted them to be like Himself.

God gave Adam and Eve the right to inherit Heaven. God’s own Heaven at the end of earthly life would be theirs.

All this they lost in their treason. Had they kept these lovely and gloriously rich blessings, they would have passed them on to us their children. Once they were lost, Adam had nothing to leave us. He was poor and we were born poor.

This loss of those things which God had given to Adam and Eve is Original Sin. We are born in Original Sin because we are born without the right to Heaven, without grace which is the divine power, and without the “adoption of the sons of God.”

The Lady Was Immaculate By Daniel A. Lord, S.J. Part 4.

HER CONSENT
The Angel Gabriel knew his mission and was swiftly about it. He came because the Redemption of mankind was at hand. But as man had been responsible by disobedience, for the Fall, so a man had to be responsible by obedience for the beginnings of our restoration. A maid had unleashed upon mankind the evils of the Fall; a maid must speak the words that restored mankind to its lost heritage.
In a moment the Angel would ask her consent to mother the coming Redeemer.
His angelic eyes would have turned away from her had she been a child of sin.
Could the destroyer of sin, about to come, enter the world through a woman stained by Adam’s and Eve’s guilt?
Mary was too important for Redemption to be herself unredeemed. She was soon to mother the all pure Son of God; she dare not be herself even slightly soiled.
She was to be Mother of the Son of the Most High, Partner with the Eternal Fatherhood of God, Bride of the Holy Spirit. Could such a one be the victim of Sin, her own personal sin or sin inherited from the father of the human race?
Gabriel knew he stood before the body that was to give flesh to the stainless Redeemer of mankind. She must be pure in thought, word, will, and affection.
He was in the presence of the soul that was to envelop Christ from conception through all His formative years. She could not be, even in passing, the partner of the Devil, the Adversary, the Spirit of Evil.
Her character and cast of thought were to be passed on to her Child. She would teach Him and be the model for the long years of His human development. God would not take her for so precious and exacting a task if He found her spotted and warped and out of true balance and line.
What Gabriel saw was a woman not touched by grace, but full of it; not a girl of whom God approved, but with whom God had taken His abiding residence.
This was no ordinary saint, nor even one of the extraordinary souls selected by God for some high responsibility among men. Here was a woman filled by God with grace from on high. Here was a maid fit to be mother to the Son of the Eternal.

FARTHER BACK STILL

The story of Mary goes far, far back into history, long before we even hear her name.
It begins with the sin of a woman. Eve too had been full of grace. Because she was to be the mother of all God’s children upon earth, God had given her His love and His grace. Then in the sad flirtation of Paradise, she turned from God’s love to embrace the love of the crawling serpent, evil in its most repellent form. Her hand had led her husband to temptation and her love had lured him into sin. And as the unlucky two gazed upon the ruins of their world, they heard the rustling of the underbrush where the serpent slithered away in slimy triumph.
Dead was their inner life.
Gone was their right to call God their Father.
Already they felt within them the stirrings of vicious temptations from which they had been spared. They had used their will to choose God’s enemy in preference to Him and their will felt sick within them. All history opened before them ready to be written in blood and tears.
And they knew their guilt.
Then the voice rang out in promise. The slithering in the underbrush stopped as the voice of God brought the
Adversary to sharp halt. This time the threat was directed at him.
“I will place enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed; and she shall crush your head; and you shall lie in wait for her heel.”
Falling back from his reared position in the dead leaves, Satan must have heard the words in bewilderment. The woman? what woman? He was surely not afraid of Eve. He had already won over her the easiest of victories. Was there some woman soon to come with heel destined to grind his head into the mud? As he scampered away to drop his evil disguise and to resume in hell and on the earth he had wrecked his thousand still uglier forms, Satan must have puzzled, wondered, watched, appraised every good woman who resisted him to some extent, grown a little cynical about the threatened woman, and finally become almost careless.
He probably invented for womankind the title “the weaker sex.” Eve had sorrowed, but she had not sought him out to slay him. She had wept, but she had not caused him any major anxiety. Actually she saw sin triumphing about her.
Her strong first-born, Cain, invented murder to practise it upon her dearly loved Abel. She bore her children in pain to see them reach the age of reason and turn it into the age of sinful consent. Satan soon lost all fear that Eve would be the woman, her heel finding his head.
The Jewish nation produced more than its share of notable and noble women. The Greeks and the Romans were proud of Vestal Virgins and devoted matrons. Each in turn Satan regarded with speculative eyes. Their heels never sought or by chance found him. His head they did not bloody or bow.
Sometimes we can believe that Mary was hidden away in the obscure village of Nazareth and in the tiny cottage of Ann and Joachim in a divine and effective effort to hoodwink the Adversary. Undoubtedly he was watching the palaces and the mansions. He did not dream that from pious poverty and the humble home of a royal line would come the Woman of Prophecy.
Yet Mary was the one. From her would come the Seed which descended from Abraham, the Seed that would conquer the prolific seed of Satan. Her virginal heel would rest squarely upon the head of the Adversary. He would, while she lived and once she was enthroned in Heaven, dread her with unholy hatred born of experience. Mary would never for a moment be in his power.
He would be under her heel, not she under his.
She would be neither his partner, his pawn, his victim, nor his slave.
She would bring forth the expected Seed that meant the ruin of the Adversary, Satan, the brutal enemy of God. Her otherwise gentle heel would force his head back into the depths of hell.
All this demanded untouchable purity. All this meant a woman far beyond the power or dominion of Satan. All this implied an immaculate Maid who was a spotless Mother, and who had never been other than Full of Grace and with God.

The Lady Was Immaculate By Daniel A. Lord, S.J. Part 3.

1954

The year 1954 is a highly significant year.

Because of its meaning, the Pope, Pius XII, pronounced it a Marian Year.

One hundred years ago from it, the Holy Father, Pius IX, speaking out of the power that was Peter’s, whose power had come with the voice of Christ, pronounced that belief in the Immaculate Conception of Mary was an article of Christian faith. We call it the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception.

Actually 1854, one century and more removed from us, is recent history by the standards of the Church. Christ had been dead and ascended into Heaven over eighteen hundred years. The body of revelation had been closed with the death of St. John the Evangelist eighteen centuries before.

How then did it happen that in that recent year, late in the Christian era, the Holy Father gave the world “a new dogma”? Even the word “dogma” has an unpleasant sound to many a non-Catholic ear. They forget that it simply means a Christian teaching, a revealed truth, one of God’s guideposts along the road to Heaven, a basic principle by which men can more inspiringly and effectively live, a rule of right conduct, a basis for deeper inquiry intoGod’s truth.

But “a new truth in 1854!” Isn’t this something added to Christian teaching? Isn’t it strange that at that late date Catholics are called upon to believe “something they had never believed before”?

OLD AS CHRISTIANITY AND OLDER

The fact is t hat the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception is as old as Christianity. We’ll explain it a little later, just what it means to Catholics. But now, turn instead to the first time that in Christian times the truth was declared.

The scene is a lovely little house in Nazareth where an engaged girl is busy about the kitchen of her old mother Ann and father Joachim. The leading characters are the Angel Gabriel, recently sent from the Throne of God with history’s most important message, and the young woman who was shortly to marry the village carpenter whose name was Joseph.

In the stark, detail-less mastery of essentials that characterizes the Gospel, we hear the Angel speak.

“Hail, full of grace!” he cries. “The Lord is with thee.”

Never had words, since “Let there be light” rang out from the Creative Voice of God, been so packed with meaning.

“Hail!” he cried, addressing her as one who rated the greeting of high Heaven. “Full of grace,” he called her. He did not call her “holy” or “saintly” or “my good woman!” He looked upon her with the vision of an angel and found her full of grace. More than that, at a time when the Gates of Heaven had been slammed shut by sin and God no longer dwelt with the children of men, the Angel saw that here was an exception: the Lord God was with her. Because she was full of grace, she knew the indwelling of God. And because God was with her, she was filled with grace.

THIS BEFORE CHRIST CAME

Now it is important to remember that Christ had not as yet come to redeem us. In fact, His coming hinged on a decision which this young woman would presently make. Mankind had not yet been saved. Grace was not flowing in the abundant streams that were to be released by the hands of the Saviour. It was an almost graceless world, a world without God’s intimate and affectionate presence.

Yet the Angel looked upon Mary and found her different.

She was not just a good woman, she was filled with the grace of God. She was not someone upon whom a remote God smiled in approval; the Lord of heaven and earth was with her.

Now the Jewish wise man had said gravely that the just man falls seven times a day. Mary was more than merely just; she was filled with the life and power of God which is grace. She was pleasing in the sight of the Creator Who turned away in distaste from sin and defect and evil.

In a world of sin, Mary shone like the bright Morning Star.

Her beauty of soul was the Aurora preceding the coming of the Sun of Justice. The clear vision of the Angel saw her for what she was, saw her with the vision of God Himself, and he hailed her as no creature was hailed before or since.

This was not a goddess; Christians have never claimed or thought she was. Here is a woman beloved of God.

Here is not infinity; but perfect cleanness of soul.

The Lady Was Immaculate By Daniel A. Lord, S.J. Part 2.

 

DEAR, FAMILIAR STORY

All who bother to learn the story of Mary, love it. It comes second in charm and graciousness to the story of Christ, her Son. Yet actually the two stories are so closely intertwined that the threads are often hard to distinguish. Where Mary is, Christ goes along. Where Christ goes, Mary follows Him.

The story of Mary had and retains its vivid and radiant climaxes:

The maiden of the Annunciation, dearest and best beloved figure in the whole history of painting. The swift-moving and tender nurse of Elizabeth, whose child John was born to prepare the way for her Son. The poetess of the Magnificat.

The incredibly beautiful Mother of the Nativity and the Queen of uncounted Christmas Days. The modest, humble worshipper offering her Son in the Presentation in the Temple.

The “safe conduct” that guaranteed the safety of the Holy Child in that wild and hazardous flight into Egypt. The dear companion of His Egyptian exile, and the guide of His safe return.

The loving mistress of the Holy House of Nazareth.

The successful pleader for His first miracle at Cana.

The self-obliterating watcher of His Public Life.

The heroic martyr upon Calvary.

The Mother whom He presents to mankind as a kind of final and climactic gift.

The security and centre of the frightened disciples during their wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

ENDLESS TRADITION

Out of the vast volumes of legend and memory, of safe tradition and exaggeratedly pious fancy, the Church had preserved the lovely facts about Mary which the Gospels do not mention. It was not likely that the early Christians would easily forget the Mother who gave them Christ and who remained after His Ascension to be the Mother of the early Church.

All the Christians have loved to recall the presentation of the Child Mary in the Temple, and the years she spent there serving the sanctuary and mastering the law and the love of God. They dwell with affection on Ann and Joachim, her parents, and the wonder of her too-long-delayed birth. They cherish her betrothal to Joseph and the day of their chaste and unselfish marriage. Saints have meditated on what a house that contained Jesus and was managed by Mary would be like and have joined their souls in meditation to that perfect household. And all Christianity from the earliest days knew that the body of Mary, which had been tabernacle to the Lord of Life, would not know captivity in the grave. The Assumption of Mary and her Coronation by her Son as Queen of Heaven is not something recent piety invented; it was being recalled when Christians spoke their glorious good news in whispers and by night within the catacombs.

MARY’S RETURNS

No generation has allowed the figure of Mary to seem a remote and distant reality. Her picture took on the features of every nation and race that painted her . . . and all of them did. Something extremely fitting suggested to Christians that they name their churches for her: if her body had housed the living presence of the Incarnate Son of God, her name seemed to fit perfectly upon the churches which retained His living Eucharistic Presence.

And lest she be for a moment forgotten, God sent her back to earth in a perfect litany of apparitions. Mary has beautifully woven together earth and Heaven by her gracious comings and goings. From Our Lady of the Pillar to Our Lady of Fatima, Catholics have found it singularly right and proper that this daughter of earth who became the Queen of Heaven would return to the sons and daughters entrusted to her by her Son on Calvary. You who do not accept Catholic Faith may not accept the visions by which Mary repeated her presence upon earth. We with the Faith would find it almost strange if she did not return. We think it the restless love of a Mother for her absent children that brings her back recurrently to their waiting hands and eyes and hearts.

Important Indeed

Candidly, we love Mary.

We love her for what she did for Christ, our Redeemer, and for the unbreakable connection she bore Him.

We love her for the dear Maid and gracious Mother she was in herself.

We are proud that the perfect Christ should have had for Mother the Perfect Woman. We are glad that the years of Christ on earth were spent in the pure, devoted, utterly unselfish companionship of earth’s most radiant yet modest, glorious yet humble, exalted yet retiring, brilliant yet (seldom and then poetically) eloquent Maid and Mother.

We think it important that God’s Son should have God’s own choice for His Mother. And we doubt that God would pick less than the best.

The Lady Was Immaculate By Daniel A. Lord, S.J. Part 1.

Statue of Our Lady of Fatima. Lucia Fatima Seer

AREN’T we fortunate? At least we can always brag that we had one perfect woman. That should be important for us of this century. We haven’t made up our mind how to treat women, and women haven’t made up their mind how they want to be treated. We don’t quite know what we want from them, and they are very confused about what they want from us.

Yes, the twentieth century has got women all mixed up. We moderns idealize them and commercialize them; we adore them and we degrade them. We demand that they lift us up and insist that they let us drag them down. We are maudlin about mothers, but we give the publicity to the childless divorcees.

Two generations ago [from 1954] a famous theatrical producer talked about “Glorifying the American Girl” and started fashions that have been pretty tough on the decent.

We make them the mistress of our purses, but we fill those same purses by using them in advertisements that must make them blush, and bait our commercial hooks with their beauty.

Today marriage is the climax of all romantic fiction and theatre; and the start of the problems of the divorce court, the soap opera, and the sessions on the psychiatrist’s couch.

One of our standard jokes, along with the mother-in-law, is the Before and After Marriage Jest.

“Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Pardon the laughter!

That was before,

But this is after.”

ONE PERFECT WOMAN
Yet poets and philosophers, painters and theologians, saints and historians have a way of agreeing that we had and still have one perfect woman. “Our tainted nature’s solitary boast,” as the Protestant poet Wordsworth sang in one of literature’s most frequently quoted lines.

Strangely enough, Buddha is the world’s most reproduced male figure: more artists have carved him in stone and painted him in frescoes than any man that ever lived. But Mary is the world’s most painted woman. More women are called Mary or one of the names taken from Mary (Marian, Marion, Miriam, Marie, Marilyn, Maureen, and so on) than are named after any other woman that ever lived.

Wise Jews are proud that she comes in the long line of their distinguished Jewish women. Moslems usually speak of Jesus as the Son of Miriam. And only in very recent times, when some off-brands of Christianity thought to honour the Son by plaguing and distorting the Mother, has any Christian failed to be proud that Christianity gave the world the lovely Maid, the pure Virgin, the glorious Mother, the outstanding Heroine of all history.

IT STARTS WITH CHRIST
Catholics never forget that Mary begins with Christ.

In point of time, of course, it is the other way around. In point of importance and logic and understanding, the Mother begins with the Son.

But that is true of our whole Catholic world. Everything really begins or takes its new and true meaning from Christ.

The New World and the New Age begin with the Son of God.

He is the fulfilment and climax of one half of history, the fountain and inspiration of the other. He unites the universe as the eternal Son of God comes to earth from heaven to show us the face of the perfect God made the perfect man. Divinity glows in the star of Bethlehem, the Transfiguration on the Mount, the miracles and prophecies of a lifetime, the perfection of His character, the splendid heroism of His death, the utter wisdom of His teachings, the amazing purity of His law. His humanity is ours raised to heights which become our most challenging aspiration.

He is all-simple and all-wise;

He is all human struggle and all human power;

He is the subject of four small volumes and the study of the ages;

He is the sinless among the sinful, the brilliant among the dull, the consistent among the inconsistent, the clear among the confused, the brave among the weak, the pure among the fleshly;

He is the Carpenter who, before He handled hammer and saw and planks, had given form and law to the universe. Here is human perfection, the Perfect Man for whom philosophers had wistfully sighed. Here is our humanity at its highest, since it is divinity in humble disguise.

WHO FOR HIS MOTHER?
This is Jesus Christ, the man the world has never dared forget, however uncomfortable it finds His law. This is man, as man would be, if he truly were like God; and God, as God became, when He stooped to the level of our earthbound existence.

For this perfect man, whom could God select as mother?

For that matter, had we the selection, what kind of woman would we pick?

Certainly God would insist on a perfect mother for His perfect Son. And our sense of the fitness of things makes us give the same answer: Nothing less than feminine perfection to mother the perfect man.

Christ had for His one and only Father the all-perfect God. The mother chosen for that perfect Son by the all perfect God would in simple logic need to combine all the finest qualities we expect of motherhood, whether we mean the purity that precedes it or the absolute loyalty and gentleness, the care and tenderness that follow it.

Thus Christians (until very recent times) unanimously believed. They could not conceive a perfect Christ and a tainted Mother, an unselfish Son and a selfish, petty, irritable Dame. Like all mothers she gave Him life, was the very fountain from which His human nature took its origin; and then like all good mothers she gave Him His human education and training, her soul and heart and mind the sources of that “wisdom and age and grace” that marked His development. The Divine Nature of Christ proceeded from the Father in the mystery of the Blessed Trinity; the Human Nature was conceived by the Holy Spirit of the Mother on earth. It is inconceivable that that Mother should be other than as perfect as God’s grace and her co-operation could make her.

Mother of God, Mother of Men Part 1. By Father Hilary, O.F.M.CAP

Very early in the book of Genesis we are told that Adam called his wife’s name Eve because she was the mother of all the living. We might suspect a divine irony in those words of the Holy Spirit because before ever Eve became a mother she had sinned and led Adam into that sin which had death for its wages and so she merited rather to be called the mother of all the dead. Eve had to suffer for her sin. With dismay she heard the divine judgment of banishment and pain and woe; but even as the dread sentence of God’s justice fell upon her ears there came with it a promise which cheered Adam and herself and gave joy and hope to the many generations which followed them until that promise became a blessed reality in the fulness of time. To the infernal serpent the Lord God said: ‘I will put enmities between thee and the woman and thy seed and her seed.’ In these words of the Lord is presaged another Woman whose enmity with the devil will be as absolute as the enmity of her Seed, the Divine Word made Man, a woman who will be associated with the Redeemer in crushing the head of the serpent. The Son of God became man ‘that He might destroy him who had the empire of death, that is to say the devil.’ Thus from the very dawn of revelation the Woman and her Child are placed together by God Himself.

“HAIL, FULL OF GRACE . . ,”

It took long centuries for God to prepare mankind for the fulfilment of this promise. But when the fulness of time was come the bountiful Lord admirably made good His word. Then, as St. Paul writes to the Galatians, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law that he might redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. From the beginning and before all ages He had chosen the Woman who was to be His Mother. To her predestination the Church applies in a spiritual sense, intended by the Holy Ghost, words which primarily apply to the eternal generation of the divine Word. ‘I was set up from eternity and of old, before the earth was made. The depths were not as yet and I was already conceived. . . . When he prepared the heavens I was present. . . . I was with him forming all things.” The one chosen was the humblest maiden of all the people of God, the lowliest of all the children of men. Whilst nearly all young Israelite maidens laid up in their heart the hope that they might perhaps be the woman of promise, the Virgin whose name was Mary never dreamt of such an honour for herself. One day as Mary, the virgin of Nazareth, the comely daughter of Joachim and Anne, poured out her soul in prayer in her lowly home, the Archangel Gabriel was sent to her by God with a breath-taking message. Being come in to her he said: ‘Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.’ The humility of the prudent virgin took fright at this unusual greeting. The Greek word translated ‘full of grace’ is used instead of Mary’s proper name and it means one endowed permanently with grace or favour. Little wonder that Mary was troubled at his word and kept wondering what this greeting might mean. Her trouble was set at rest by the heavenly messenger who said to her: ‘Fear not, Mary, for thou has found grace with God.’ Then he went on to unfold to her the divine plan of redemption.
‘Behold, thou shalt conceive in the womb and shalt bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great and shall be called the son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give him the throne of David, his father, and he shall rule over the house of David forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.’ These words left no doubt in Mary’s mind that she was being offered the motherhood of the Messiah, nay more, the motherhood of God. But again she wonders, not doubting the power of God as Zachary did, and she asked: ‘ How can this be done for I know not man?’ These words, as Catholic tradition holds, point to the fact that Mary had vowed her virginity to God even though she had entered into marriage with Joseph. Once more the archangel set her mind at rest by explaining to her the admirable design of the Creator: ‘ The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee and therefore the Holy One that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.’ What a marvellous plan! The whole human race had fallen in Adam, its head; all mankind is to be redeemed by the new Adam, the true Head of the race. Eve cooperated with Adam in the downfall of man; the new Eve was chosen by God to co-operate with the new Adam in the restoration of the race. So is she the true Mother of all the living. She plays an essential role in the working out of the redemption, and she is the only human person who does. She was predestined and chosen in the same decree of divine providence as her Son. To minimize or overlook Mary’s part is to reject the Incarnation as God willed it and falsify God’s design. It is just as important to believe that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary as to believe that He was conceived of the Holy Ghost as the Creeds remind us. The early Fathers of the Church pay eloquent to Mary’s role as the Second Eve through whose co-operation the world was redeemed.

MARY’S DECISION

Mary was chosen, but she also freely chose. In His courtesy towards man God asked her consent, to be given on behalf of all mankind, to the espousals of human nature by the divine Word. From all eternity of course God knew that she would fall in with His designs; but yet her consent was free and richly meritorious. Not a moment did she hesitate as soon as the divine plan had been explained to her, but made that perfect reply ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy word.’ This was the word for which heaven, earth and hell waited breathlessly. If Mary consented heaven would have a new queen, earth would be redeemed, hell would be finally defeated. Mary’s words were the most perfect answer to God’s invitation. By them God got His way absolutely in the soul of Mary. Her Fiat meant a new creation in grace for mankind; her Ecce ancilla Domini was the echo of the words of her divine Son who at that very instant had become man in her womb: Ecce venio; ‘Behold I come to do thy will, O God.’ Mary’s submission to the divine will of the Father was as absolute as that of Jesus. And so it was immensely meritorious. From her reading of the prophets, especially Isaias, she knew that in consenting to be the Mother of the Messiah she was to share in His sorrows, that she was to become the Mother of Sorrows and the Queen of Martyrs. Theologians teach that Mary’s grace was vastly increased at the moment of the Annunciation because of her perfect conformity to the will of God as well as because the divine Word then took up His abode in her.

MOTHER OF GOD

No sooner was the Blessed Virgin’s consent given than the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. The Messiah so long expected and desired was our Emmanuel; the Incarnation was a fact, man’s redemption had begun. At that blessed moment Mary became in literal truth the Mother of God. This is a fundamental dogma of our Catholic faith and indeed a touchstone of orthodox belief in the Incarnation of the divine Word. It was solemnly defined at the Council of Ephesus in the year 431 against the insidious heresy of Nestorius. This Patriarch of Constantinople objected to Mary’s title Mother of God and contended that she should be styled only Mother of Christ. His error was a complete misunderstanding of the hypostatic Union of the divine with the human nature in the one Person of the Word. Nestorius held that there were two persons in Christ, the one human, the other divine. Mary was, in his view, only the Mother of the human person and therefore could not be styled Mother of God. This heresy struck at the very foundations of the doctrine of the Incarnation and the Redemption. The true teaching is that there is no human person in Christ but only the divine which subsists in two natures. We do not claim that Mary is the Mother of the divinity which exists from all eternity, but she is the Mother of the divine Person. St. Leo the Great wrote that just as the mother of an ordinary human being is the mother of the whole being, not merely of the body, although she begets only the body, so Mary is truly the mother of the divine Person of the Word. Nestorius found a doughty opponent in St. Cyril of Alexandria who pointed out that the term Theotokos was consecrated among the Fathers and doctors of the Church from early times and had even been used by Julian the Apostate. Cyril’s teaching was defined by the Council of Ephesus amid the plaudits of the Christian people who accompanied the Fathers of the Council to their lodgings with lighted torches. The Christian consciousness of the faithful realized that a basic dogma had been vindicated. The definition of the Council was couched in these words: If anybody does not confess that Emmanuel is truly God, and that the holy Virgin is therefore “Theotokos” (Mother of God), since she brought forth according to the flesh the Word of God who became flesh, let him be anathema.’ The Person of the Word, the term of Mary’s motherhood, is identical with that of the fatherhood of the First Person of the Blessed Trinity. To Jesus Christ the eternal Father and Mary could both say with perfect truth: ‘ Thou art my beloved on, this day have I begotten thee.’
It is true that in Sacred Scripture Mary is not called in so many words ‘ Mother of God,’ but Scripture is not the sole rule of faith. The New Testament, however, frequently calls her the Mother of Jesus, and surely according to the Gospels and Epistles Jesus is God. The archangel declared that Mary’s child would be called the Son of the Most High. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Ghost, greeted Mary as the Mother of my Lord. St. Gregory Nazianzen writes that anyone who does not believe Mary to be the Mother of God is far from God. Luther himself, in one of his more lucid moments, could write: ‘All Mary’s glory is implied in calling her the Mother of God. And nobody can proclaim anything greater about her than that.’ St. Thomas Aquinas, the prince of Theologians, speaks of her dignity as all but infinite. Jesus Christ is essentially Son of God and Son of Mary, Son of God by His eternal generation by the Father, Son of Man by His conception in the fulness of time in the chaste womb of the Virgin Mary. Thus Mary can he said to enter the hypostatic order, or, as some of the Fathers of the Church put it, to border on the confines of the divinity.
Perhaps we have grown too used to the title ‘Mother of God,’ and, as the poet says, use lessens marvel. But when we reflect on it we realize at least dimly the all but infinite dignity bestowed by God upon a child of Adam’s race. The Man-God was her very own child, bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh, yet He was also God, the Word who eternally proceeds from the Father, who with the Father breathes forth the Holy Ghost. To what dizzy heights does not this lead our minds. But contemplate it how we will Mary’s dignity remains a sublime mystery the contemplation of which will rejoice our souls eternally, The title Theotokos is a summary of the whole mystery of the Incarnation, a touchstone of orthodoxy. To deny her that title is to make shipwreck of the faith. St. John Damascene wrote: ‘The word Theotokos implies the whole mystery of the Incarnation, for if she who conceived and brought forth is Mother of God, then surely He who is born of her is God. But He is also fully man.’

CONCEIVED WITHOUT SIN

The Son of God was Mary’s Son too. He had for her all the tender affection which a good son bestows upon his mother. He chose her before all ages and, in the words of liturgy made her a fitting dwelling-place for the godhead. Now when God loves He gives—love is the gift of self. He gave to His Mother with a truly divine profusion. The fulness of grace was hers from the first moment of her conception, and grace, as we know is the life of God shared by the creature. Mary, it is true, had need of redemption because she was a child of Adam. The Church has defined that Mary’s Immaculate Conception is a singular privilege of grace bestowed on her in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race. Her redemption therefore was unique. All others are redeemed by being freed from original sin which they have contracted in their conception. She was redeemed by being preserved from original sin by the infusion of sanctifying grace in the very instant of her conception. In her Magnificat she sang ‘He that is mighty hath done great things to me and holy is His name.’ So did God prepare for himself a worthy mother, untouched by sin, full of divine life, never for an instant in the power of the infernal serpent which deceived Eve. Mary’s fulness of grace and immunity from sin imply that she was free also from the harmful consequences of sin. That is why Christians style her Mater Amabilis, Mother most lovable, since it is sin and its consequences that mar the lovableness of a human being. We are all attracted by the innocence of a child; something of the divine seems to shine out from those candid eyes; and yet that child has been touched at least by original sin. What then must be the lovableness and attractiveness of Mary, more innocent than any child? Sinlessness is but the negative aspect of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. The positive aspect is her fulness of grace which made her God’s masterpiece, the most beautiful soul ever created by God if we except the soul of her divine Son to which hers was most like. The infused virtues were hers in the highest degree; the gifts of the Holy Ghost were poured out in profusion upon her. Her soul was as a lyre responsive to the slightest touch of the divine Musician. Like her Son she lived entirely for God. Not only was Mary more richly endowed with grace and the virtues than any other creature; she corresponded most perfectly with every grace received and so grew more pleasing to God at every instant.

MARY’S BEAUTY

The beauty of her soul irradiated her body. She was specially chosen by God to be the only earthly parent of the most beauteous of the sons of men. The likeness between the mother and Child must have been very striking, and so Mary was in body the most comely of women. Hence she is at once the inspiration and the despair of every great artist. He conceives an ideal of lovely womanhood and tries to express it on canvas, in stone or in bronze, but he fails. No human artist could perfectly imitate the masterpiece of the divine Artist. What painter or sculptor could limn the beauty of her features, express the loveliness of those eyes, the windows of a soul where all is purity and grace? Surely the divine Artist must have contemplated with complacency this masterpiece of His creation.

ASSUMED INTO HEAVEN

Because Mary was His Mother, because God had dwelt in her body, and because too she was immaculate, her Son anticipated in her regard the general resurrection of bodies at the end of the world. Her comely body was not permitted to suffer the corruption of the tomb; her heart of flesh, the symbol of her interior life of love for God and man, was not destined to crumble into dust. When her earthly pilgrimage was ended she was assumed body and soul into heaven. Such had ever been the belief of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, and this belief was solemnly defined by Pope Pius XII on the feast of All Saints 1950. Later the same Pope proclaimed her universal Queenship. She reigns in heaven on the right hand of her divine Son, Queen of heaven and of earth, Queen of angels and of men. There her lovely hands and eyes are ever raised to the face of Jesus in supplication for her earthly children. She has been well styled Omnipotentia supplex almighty in her prayer.

EVER VIRGIN

Mary is a mother, but could God’s Mother lack the special splendour which virginity confers on body and soul? No, in this respect too God wrought a miracle for His Mother, conferring on her together the two naturally incompatible perfections of motherhood and virginity. ‘Unheard of privilege,’ writes St. Augustine, ‘but a fitting one. A virgin could have no child but God, God could have only a virgin for His Mother.’ Mary was a virgin before giving birth to Jesus; she remained a virgin in His actual birth and ever after. This is one of the most treasured doctrines of the Church regarding Our Lady. It was prophesised in the Old Testament by Isaias to whose prophecy the archangel obviously referred when he brought the good tidings to the humble virgin of Nazareth. The vindications of this privilege of Mary written by the Fathers of the Church against its deniers still vibrate with holy indignation.

Lourdes: "I Am The Immaculate Conception" Part 2. By Monsignor John T. McMahon, M.A., PH.D.

The Way of the Cross

The layout of the Stations of the Cross at Lourdes is the work of a true artist. I think he must have begun with the 14th, and worked backwards. A mighty cleavage in the rocky, steep shoulder of the mountain which rises sheer behind the Basilica gave the artist a wonderful opportunity to create a living tableau of the laying of the Body in the Sepulchre. The life-sized figures carrying the Body of the dead Christ are just about to enter the cleft cave. Mary and John and the faithful women follow. The tomb is hewn out of the solid rock, and gives a most realistic picture of the burial.
The fourteen groups are gifts from national pilgrimages. They are life-sized bronze figures, and the artist has set them in positions that create a sense of activity.
At ten o'clock in a morning of bright sunshine we began the Way of the Cross. As our pilgrimage was so large it was decided to do the Stations in groups. A priest was assigned to each group. As one group moved off from each station another arrived. The result was to give an echo-like effect to our prayers and hymns. The prayers and the verse of the Stabat Mater which we had finished came to us like an echo as the other group took our place.
The Stations are placed on either side of the narrow, cobble-stone path which winds its way up the steep shoulders of outspurs of the Pyrenees. The sun was hot, the going uneven, and the loose stones were uncomfortable as one knelt for the prayers. The ‘Stations were tableaux vivants of the fourteen episodes on the way from Pilate’s court to the tomb. The figures are life-like and aid one’s mental picture of what happened on Good Friday. The effort of the climb and the rough going created a mood in sympathy with the Passion. The climbing and the kneeling were unpleasant that hot fore-noon, and we felt it was a penitential way for all, especially for the old.
But I must confess that my meditation brought me closer to Jesus and Mary one moonlight night when I climbed that path alone. All the street noises were hushed and nothing broke the stillness of the night except the chimes from the Basilica tower singing the Lourdes “Ave, Ave.” The higher I climbed the nearer and clearer was the “Ave,” and its message blended fruitfully with my meditations on Mary’s part in the Passion of her Divine Son. That is one reason why I must return to Lourdes. I want to walk again the Way of the Cross up the sides of a mountain, to walk alone in the silence of the night with only one voice to break into my meditations, the “Ave” of Lourdes.
Up, ever up, we slowly made our thoughtful Way of the Cross until, at the 12th Station one of the pilgrim priests celebrated Mass, and I preached on Mary’s share in that Via Dolorosa. Here are the ideas I proposed to the pilgrims brought there by the Irish Dominicans, and gathered round that altar in the glorious sunshine of an October morning.

The Mother of the Irish

We yield to no one in our love and devotion to Mary: she is, and always will be, the Mary of the Gael, the Mother of the Irish. In our ancient tongue she is linked with God in all our salutations. We say Dia is Mhuire Dhuit, and I have heard my grandparents always add to the invocation: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,” the words “and to Mary the Mother of God.” So in our history, in our tradition, and in our language, the devotion to Mary has always been the devotion of filial children to a loving Mother. So Our Lady of Lourdes must be very happy looking down upon us here this morning. Here we are children of Mary, children of the Gael, come from afar to do her honour. We have made sacrifices in coming, but we are glad to do so if it will bring us nearer to Mary.

Ephesus, the City of Mary

I want you to go back with your imagination to a scene in the city of Mary, the city of Ephesus. That is the city where the Evangelist took Mary when he went there as its first Bishop. When Our Lord looking down from the Cross, said to John: “Behold thy Mother,” the gospel tells us that John from that moment took her to his own. He brought her to Ephesus where she lived with him while he was Bishop of that See. And oh! what a scene that was each time St. John said Mass assisted by Mary, the Mother of God!

Mary Never Forgets

Mary never forgets, and in gratitude for the hospitality which she received from that city of Ephesus, she is now about to confer on that same city the signal honour of declaring to the world that she is the Mother of God, her greatest, her grandest, her unique title. The year is 431 and the Bishops of the Catholic world are assembled at Ephesus to debate whether Mary was in truth the Mother of God, and not merely the Mother of Christ made Man. The people of Ephesus are excited, and late one evening there comes from the council chamber the news, that the Bishops have decided to proclaim to the world as a dogma of our faith, that Mary is truly and really the Mother of God, So they rush from their homes, and light torches, and as the Bishops leave the council chamber they escort them to their houses, filling the streets of Ephesus with their jubilant cry of “Mary, Mother of God.” That must have been a wonderful scene, and we will recall it each time in our processions while we are here in Lourdes singing the Lourdes “Ave,” that’ long ago at Ephesus that cry, that jubilant, grateful cry, of “Mary the Mother of God” filled that city.
Mary never forgets. She remembers all that the children of the Gael have suffered in her name and for her sake, and if we cling to the faith of our fathers today, it is because of Mary’s protection. She recalls the family Rosaries said in stealth behind closed doors during the long night of the penal days when the priest was hunted and the Mass was stopped, but in the fingers of old and young were Mary’s beads recalling to them that Mary was still in her high heaven protecting the children that she loved.

Our Inheritance from St. Patrick

Now come with me to another scene. This time it is in Rome. It is the same year 43I. and a young bishop kneels at the feet of the Pope, Pope Celestine, to receive from the Pope his commission to bring the good tidings of the Gospel to a pagan people across the seas. And as Celestine puts his hands upon the head of the young bishop he must have spoken to him about this new dogma of the Mother of God and told him to teach that dogma to the people among whom he was to bring the good tidings of the faith.”Bring to them a love of Mary,” spoke the Pope to the young bishop, “give them a devotion to Mary as the Mother of God.” How well that young bishop did that you can answer for yourselves by looking in upon yourselves while here in Lourdes and realise the feeling of being close to Mary in this holy spot.
That young bishop was our own St. Patrick, and if we, children of the Gael, are devoted to Mary, it is our inheritance from his teachings to our forefathers many centuries ago. There is no sacrifice great enough, or big enough, that we children of Mary are not prepared and willing to make for her sake, and for her honour, and so we have come to this holy place of Lourdes, and we are going to make a greater sacrifice still for we are going to cross three countries until at last we arrive at Fatima again to do her honour.

The Sorrows of Thy Mother

We have made the Way of the Cross and let us always remember that admonition: “Forget not the sorrows of thy Mother.” To go frequently to Mary in her sorrows is to draw closer and dearer to her. We have walked in meditation along the Way of the Cross in this inspiring setting, up the steep sides of the Pyrenees. The way has been steep, it has been difficult. The life-size figures of each Station have aroused us, and our imagination has painted the scene more vividly than ever before. In each of those Stations Mary has a part, but she comes vividly before us at the 4th, when she meets her Divine Son, sees the depth of His Sorrow, feels the intensity of His sufferings, and she stands there before Him helpless, unable to do a thing to alleviate that suffering. He looks at her, the only creature who has no part in His condemnation, and seeing her suffering, His own sorrows become more painful.

Mary Walks the Irish Roads

While here at the 12th Station she stands beneath the Cross, the sword of Simeon pushed in to its very hilt, the Mother of the Man of Sorrows has verily become the Woman of Dolours. And who of any race, or of any time have followed closer to Mary along the Via Dolorosa, than our Irish mothers? Mary has ever walked the Way of the Cross along the roads of Ireland. Over the cobblestones of sorrow and sadness she has trod with them who have known so much suffering, so much grief at parting, so much hunger and want, for her sake. No wonder Mary loves the Irish mother, no wonder the Irish mother loves Mary. And you, Irish mothers, who year by year, send your sons and daughters out from your homes into the foreign missions, how dear you are to her who freely and willingly gave up her own Son for the sake of others.
And now, here at the 12th Station, she stands by His Cross to see Him die. That gift of the mothers of Ireland towards the spread of our faith outside her own shores has brought the greatest blessing upon the people of Ireland. Mary accepts your sons for the priesthood and the teaching orders of brothers, and your daughters for all the religious communities of women as a precious gift to her Son; and so out from their own kith and kin they sail, but they leave behind them a fragrant memory of sacrifice made for the love of Mary.

A Gift from Irish Mothers

What a noble part those sons and daughters are playing in the vineyard of the Lord today! The missionary spirit of the Irish flourishes today as it did in the days when Irish monks took the countries of Europe in their stride. That was a golden age, it is no less golden today. The very name of Ireland overseas is linked with missionary zeal and activity. May that zeal flourish, for the extraordinary thing about the gift of faith is that the more you share it, the more you give it away, the more it grows within you. And all the sacrifices that the people of Ireland are making for the missions, and what sacrifices they are, everybody knows, not only in money, but in the gift of their sons and daughters, that is the greatest crown that Ireland can wear. Hers is a great spiritual kingdom upon which the sun never sets. You may fly across the world in a ‘plane, and every place you touch down you will find Irish priests, Irish Brothers, and Irish nuns engaged in every work for the alleviation of the suffering of man, for the care of the children, the homeless, the foundling, the orphans, the lepers, the sick, the abandoned, all for the greater glory of God and for the honour of Mary their Mother.
That is our proudest boast, and that, my dear Irish mothers, is your contribution when you give your greatest gift, greater than your money, greater than your prayers, the gift of your sons and daughters to the missions. No wonder Our Lady of Lourdes is smiling down this morning upon us, her Irish children, her Irish pilgrims, come from that land that loves her to bear that love to her here at Lourdes and later at Fatima. God bless you all !

The Welcoming Madonna

Within the Rosary Chapel there is a fresco of Our Lady on the arch over the main altar. It depicts Our Lady with arms outstretched, her blue cloak in her hands as if about to enfold each of her children in a maternal embrace, her face radiating a welcome, and her eyes tender with love. Immediately she becomes to me the Madonna of Welcome. I took many pilgrims to look up at her, and to feel the warmth of that Mother’s smile. It is a picture which I hope to carry with me down the years. If an inspired artist can arouse such warmth in a pilgrim’s heart by just looking on that creation of his, what will be the effect when we look up into that face in the hereafter, and see in it a welcome that will fill our souls wit h happiness! What a rich thought to sustain us in our striving against that strong inclination to evil which we inherited from Adam’s sin! On the last morning at Lourdes I knelt for a time looking at the Madonna of Welcome, sad at the thought of leaving Lourdes and going away from that reassuring smile. She seemed to smile more sweetly as a group of us bade her goodbye, and we felt that the Madonna of Welcome can also be a comfort, and a strength when one must go.

The Definition of the Dogma

“I am the Immaculate Conception,” Our Lady herself declared at Lourdes in 1858, just four years after the definition of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, 1854. The words spoken by Mary at Lourdes were strange words indeed for the peasant child, Bernadette, who could hardly have known the dogma defined four years earlier. Surely Mary must have used those words: “I am the Immaculate Conception,” in gratitude for the definition of the dogma. She might have said: “I am the Virgin Mary; I am the Queen of Heaven; I am the Mother of God”; she might have used any of the titles in the unending litany of her graces. But, if she was to express the innermost truth, her real worth before God, she could only say: “I am the Immaculate Conception; I am His ideal of created holiness; I am His perfect one; I am the sinless one.”
Let us recapture a glimpse of the scene in St. Peter’s, Rome, on Friday, December 8, 1854. The Bishops of the world were assembled to discuss the ten volumes of reports sent to Rome from all the Catholic Bishops. For four days of five hours these reports were presented for discussion, with the result that a unanimous decision approved of the dogma. A special week of prayer prepared for the great day. The relics of Rome were ex-posed for the veneration of Bishops, priests, and people. A day of strict fast was observed on the Thursday. It rained all that week in Rome, but the morning of the 8th dawned crisp and clear. The procession formed in the Sistine Chapel. Two hundred mitred prelates marched. Penitentiaries of St. Peter’s, the Swiss Guard, the noble Guard, surrounded the Pope borne on his chair of state through the cheering crowds.

Pope Pius IX Weeps

When the Pope intoned the “Gloria in Excelsis,” a ray of winter sun shot through the lofty dome of St. Peter’s to encircle his head like a halo. Everyone remarked it, for this holy man, Pius IX, had a deep personal devotion to Mary Immaculate. This was the only shaft of sunlight in a week of incessant rain.
As Pope Pius IX walked to the platform, after the Gospel was read in Latin and Greek, to perform his most solemn act, the definition and promulgation of a new dogma, the whole vast assembly arose in hushed expectancy. In charged silence the crowd listened to the fine, clear voice of the Pope reading the Bull: Ineffabilis Deus-”The Ineffable God.” The clear voice began to falter, betraying his emotion, and when he came to the words declaram us (“we now declare”) the voice was silent, and in its place came the sobbing of that grand old man, now fully conscious of the signal honour granted to him to proclaim, in the presence of the Bishops of the world, urbi et orbi (to Rome and to the world), the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Many a tear dimmed the eyes of the assembled Bishops at the sight of that strong roan, Pius IX, moved to tears. Recovering himself, on he read, and at its finish the cannons from Fort St. Angelo boomed through St. Peter’s, and the bells of Rome began to peal. Everyone took a holiday to view the illuminated city, and next day the Bishops met the Holy Father, and from him received a gold medal commemorating the event, and a print of the Immaculate Conception. The medal was struck from gold given by the Irish miners on the Ballarat goldfields in Australia. The diocese of Perth, Western Australia, was one of the first to be dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, and its Cathedral was among the earliest to honour Our Lady under that title.
The eye-witness report of the scene in St. Peter’s on December 8, 1854, was taken from Archbishop Dixon of Armagh, who was present that day.

To the Sinless One

Like those born in the salt mines of Russia. who never see the light of day, people who live in the grimy atmosphere of sin are unable to appreciate sinlessness.
Lady Butler, better known as the painter of the “Roll-Call,” records an incident in the West of Ireland. She had been watching a poor woman driving home a small flock of sheep, and remarked how beautiful they were. And indeed, the sheep in that part recall the bright-fleeced animals of Homer. “Yes,” was the unexpected reply, “and they are without sin.”
In that age when men prayed and lived close to God, painters had a supernatural insight. The Madonnas of the Middle Ages are prayers spoken on canvas by men who believed. Twenty-five times one of them tried and tried to put on canvas his conception of the woman without stain, the Immaculate Miracle. His creation exists, the Immaculate Conception by Murillo, Seville’s boast, painted, as they vow, “with milk and roses.”

God Could Do It: He Did It

Sin is defilement, sin is hostility to God, and whatever might touch the Woman predestined to be the Mother of God-made-Man, it could not be sin. St. Augustine says that the honour of the Lord forbade it. The Lord saved her body from the curse of Eve, why not her soul from the sin of Adam? Well had the monk of Canterbury argued a century and a half before the dogma: “God could do it: He ought to do it: He did it.”
Mary Immaculate stands alone, separated from the purest and the holiest by a privileged redemption; “preserved” from sin, and not merely cleansed from it. She is our “solitary boast,” the only merely human being who has escaped the defilement that runs in our blood. And as an invalid child in a city slum finds all the beauty of life concentrated in one pure and fragrant lily on the window sill, so in a world where the soilure of sin meets us on every side, we turn with relief to the Woman all fair who alone remains to us from our uprooted paradise.
For Mary we have no words to match her peerless glory. Only the spotless angels of God can appraise the miracle of her sinlessness-if even they.
Gratitude for Mary Immaculate
All of us, unless blinded by sin, can feel a thrill of delight in the thought of her, the Immaculate. Surely we can never thank God enough for the Immaculate Conception, for all there is in her of light and grace and glory-for all that raises our hearts and fills us with the hope of better things.
And for our youth, what confidence springs from the thought of the sinless one who is their loving Mother! The practice of invoking her each morning and night with the three Hail Marys in honour of and gratitude for the Immaculate Conception, is a sure defence against the weakness of the flesh, the corruption of the world, and the wiles of the devil. Let us priests, parents, and teachers help the child to form this practice, adding after each Hail Mary, the ejaculation: “O Mary, by thy pure and Immaculate Conception, make my body pure and my soul holy.”
“For all high thoughts thou bringst to mind,
We love thee; love thee better yet
For all that taint on human kind
Thy brightness helps us to forget.”

Nihil Obstat:
W. M. COLLINS, D.D., PHD
Imprimatur:
Daniel Mannix,
Archiepiscopus Melbournensis, 11/6/53
********

Lourdes: "I Am The Immaculate Conception" Part 1. By Monsignor John T. McMahon, M.A., PH.D.

MY PERSONAL PILGRIMAGE

So much has been written about Lourdes that it is superfluous to add anything except my own personal reactions. Lourdes is nobler in conception, lovelier in situation, and more spiritual in its atmosphere than I had anticipated. Our Lady has drawn from the hearts of her children the world over a stream of generosity that has built her Basilica in majestic proportions.
In 1858 this was an area for swine-herds; and now two magnificent churches stand -one atop the other-clinging to the rocky shoulders of the Pyrenees, while at the base of this foundation of rock rests the flickering grotto. The lower church is the Church of the Rosary and in front of this is Rosary Square, where the crowds assemble at night, and in the afternoons the sick and the maimed are drawn up. Two winding stairways of stone branch from Rosary Square to the entrance of the Basilica, whose spire soars over the scene. Within the Basilica are the chapels of the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary and the magnificent high altar and spacious sanctuary. From the balcony you look down on Rosary Square, and beyond to the distant Calvary group towards which the torch-light procession goes each evening, along the tree shaded boulevard. From this vantage point you see the Gave River racing by, the well laid out gardens, the shrubs, the trees, and the green, green lawns. The sun is shining and there is a mountain crispness in the air. It is a beautiful setting. The country all round is mountainous, rewarding the energetic with wonderful panoramas. A mountain mist keeps the flowers in bloom, the shrubs healthy, and the lawns evergreen. There is a peace and restfulness in this lovely spot. .
Lourdes is more spiritual in its atmosphere than I had hoped for. One hears the criticism of commercialism in its booths, but my own experience was that the booths have none of the high-powered salesmanship of the modern mart. All the goods for sale at Lourdes have the prices on them. You wander in and out of the open shops, and no one tries to sell you anything.
Prayer is in the air of this incredible place. It walks the streets of Lourdes audible and unashamed. The moment you leave your hotel room you take the beads in your hand and tell them in Mary’s honour. Whether you march in procession or pray in chorus, or better still, kneel in the after-sundown dusk at the Grotto, you feel that Mary is helping you to pray. Faith is not easy to describe. Faith does not lend itself to words-even in a shrine like Lourdes, where Faith is the prime reason for the very existence of the place and is in the air of the Pyrenees you breathe.

A Change of Heart

No one goes to Lourdes without experiencing a change of heart. That is the daily miracle of Lourdes, the unseen and unrecorded one of the deepening of the spiritual life of hundreds of thousands each year. In this machine age of scientific wonders such as television machines, disease-killing drugs, and atomic energy, many tend to doubt the unseen changes which occur within the hearts of the pilgrims. The little girls who accompanied Bernadette that first day to gather kindling wood near the grotto would not believe because they did not see. “When the others came back with their sticks, Bernadette asked them if they had seen anything. They said no. They thought it was all nonsense and said she was a silly girl and had made it up.” Abbe J. Belleney wrote about the apparitions in the simplest form, a form that Bernadette herself, who had trouble reading and writing, could have understood:
‘”Suddenly she heard a rushing sound like a great wind. She looked up at the tall rock above her, and then fell down on her knees, for there in a hole in the rock stood the most lovely lady she had ever seen. A bright light shone all round her, and she was dressed in white with a long blue sash. A rosary hung over her arm, and golden roses were at her feet.”
The beautiful lady wished that crowds would come to Lourdes, and what a wonderfuI response the people of all nations have given to that wish! Once there, she takes each one by the hand, and mother-like, leads them to the feet of her Divine Son. In short, we go to Jesus through Mary, and it is her divine mission to help us with the reassuring touch of her hand in ours. All through the days I spent at Lourdes I felt that purpose working within me. Saying my Mass at the Grotto, assisting at the blessing of the sick, marching in the torchlight processions, making the Way of the Cross, and during visits to the Blessed Sacrament I felt Mary by my side helping me to pray; and that was the experience of so many of my companions.

The Crutches of the Cured

The Grotto is constantly tugging at one’s elbow to return again and again every day you spend at Lourdes. The weatherbeaten crutches and evil trusses hang in the rain and sun over the entrance to the cave where the statue stands, where the candles burn, and the people from the ends of the earth, many on stretchers, pass. These symbols are left by the cured. They represent only a small percentage of the pilgrims, but they remain the very harbingers of hope.
It is difficult for a mechanised people to comprehend how the pitiable sick can summon up the look in their faces, the look that says: “Now, at last, I will be made whole.” Ever since February 11, 1858, when the Mother of God lifted the thin veil which hides her constant nearness to all mankind and revealed herself to Bernadette Soubirous, the poor, uneducated girl of fourteen, at the grotto of Massabieille, near the Gave River, the little carts with their burden of sick have been wheeled from the pools to the Grotto.
Beneath the rock of Massabieille the Grotto glitters in the light of its thousand candles. Beyond the iron grille is the statue of the Virgin, standing in the hollowed rock where Bernadette once saw the glowing vision of the lady in white, the Immaculate Conception. In front of the iron grille are the stretchers, and on them are laid the patient sick. From 2.30 each afternoon they come from the baths to the Grotto and back to the Rosary Square for the solemn blessing of the sick.

The Song of Bernadette

The resignation of these sufferers preaches a sermon that goes direct to one’s heart. Speak to them and learn how cheerful they are, confident that Mary will do what is best for them, remembering her words to Bernadette that she may not restore health and happiness here, but promises a big reward hereafter. That is the gift of Lourdes to the sick pilgrims. They return home happier and better, even though not necessarily cured. In their hearts is the Song of Bernadette, the song of resignation, a song that each of us must learn to sing; and the miracle that never fails at Lourdes is that all the sick who come, return to their homes singing that song.

The Prayer of Pain

The sick who come to Lourdes learn best the secrets given to Bernadette. Those secrets were demands made on her by Our Lady. From the apparitions to her death Bernadette practised those secrets, her prayer was the prayer of pain. We do not use the prayer of pain, sorrow, worry and humiliation enough. Why waste such precious pleading? In the Garden, being in agony, He prayed the longer. And His greatest prayer was made as He hung upon the Cross on Calvary.
The prayer of pain is a devotion, a spending of oneself, a giving of self, a spiritual bargaining. The smugness of just being good is broken when one sets out for a cause outside oneself. Our faith grows within the more it is shared outside. Hoard it and it decreases. A prayer of pain offered for sinners, said in reparation for sin, goes direct to the heart of Christ, Who led the way for us when He prayed from the Cross: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

The Blessing of the Sick

Earth holds no more poignant hour than the blessing of the sick every afternoon at Lourdes. The stretchers with their precious sick are wheeled away from the Grotto on to Rosary Square, where they are arranged row on row. The procession of the Blessed Sacrament leaves the Grotto. I walked beside the Bishop of Lourdes, who carried the Monstrance, for it was Rosary Sunday. We came slowly to the accompaniment of hymns and the Rosary to the Square now crowded with the cases from the hospital wards. I looked at their pale, drawn faces, and lips busy with prayers, and all of them showed a great serenity. One of the marshals came bustling up to even up the line of stretchers. Then a young French priest took his place at the microphone for the time had come for the solemn litany. The Square was filled, a sea of white faces and hatless heads reached to the River Gave. The priest began his dramatic invocations by lifting his arms and holding them out like a cross.
“Holy Virgin, heal our sick,” he cried in a voice full of emotion.
“Holy Virgin, heal our sick,” the crowd responded with a cry like the rolling of waves.
“Holy Virgin,” intoned the priest, “hear our prayers.”
The voice of the crowd thundered back in echo.
“Jesus, Master, that I may see.” “Jesus, Master, that I may speak.” “Jesus, Master, that I may hear.” “Jesus, Master, that I may walk.”
The voice of the crowd caught the dramatic quality in the priest’s ejaculations and roared them back. Here and there people held out their arms. Some of the sick half raised themselves on their stretchers. The atmosphere was tense with expectancy.
The Bishop slowly raised the Sacred Host to bless each one of the stretcher cases. I could see the eyes of the afflicted look up at the Monstrance as of old the sick looked up into His Face. What faith, what confidence, what hope shines in those pale, wan faces! A mother took her epileptic boy in her arms: his tongue was hanging out, his limbs were twitching, his expression was horrifying, but in the mother’s eyes shone a love for this deformed son of her womb, and as the tears streamed down her cheeks, her lips muttered her words that the child of her heart might be cured. She held the wriggling boy until he almost touched the Monstrance, as if mindful of that suffering woman of old who assured herself that she would be cured were she only to touch the hem of His garment. The emotion of the moment swept over the people, and tears flowed freely. I was strong and healthy that day, but the mood caught at my throat and sent a tremor along my spine. Suddenly I wanted to cry. If a strong, healthy man could be carried away, what must be the effect on sick and suffering people in all their weakness?

Jesus of Nazareth Passes By

Thus for a few hours Jesus of Nazareth passed through the lines of little carts. We all felt His presence as if a breath from heaven, intangible, powerful, irresistible swept over us. We accepted the reality of the unseen, and our hope in Him grew. As I walked beside the Bishop of Lourdes bearing Our Blessed Lord to the sick, the strength of Job’s faith was mine for those precious moments, and Job’s words: “I believe that my Redeemer liveth,” were echoing in my soul. Many priests lying in their stretchers were so overcome by His Presence by their beds of pain that they just clasped their hands, lowered their eye-lids, and let their tears speak to Him. If anywhere faith can be sublimated to vision it must happen in Rosary Square, Lourdes, during the blessing of the sick.
The atmosphere of tense expectancy owes much to the dramatic quality of the French announcers during the litany of the sick. One moment electrified me. The priest with arms uplifted, said to us:
“My brethren, let us lift our arms in prayer.”
A forest of arms was raised in the most moving expression of prayer that I have ever seen.
I thanked His Lordship for the privilege of holding the cope during those memorable hours, but I did not want to leave the sick who had done so much for me, moving me deeper than any sermon has ever done. I followed the carts to the hospital served by Sisters and voluntary workers during the summer months. On arrival an English titled lady welcomed me and conducted me through the wards. There were pitiable sights there to remind me to count my blessings, and to thank God for the gift of normal health as one of my chief blessings. But should His testing and purifying hand fall on me in sickness I shall try to recall the resignation and submission to His Holy Will so evident on the serene and happy faces of the sick at Lourdes.

The Cold Baths

From the hospital I went to the pools. I left the sunny warm air and went into the bathroom. A cold and forbidding sunken bath, leaden in colour, was full of water that did not look clean. A statue of Our Lady on a niche over the bath assured me. I stripped and stood hesitating on the wet flagstones, and stepped down into icy water. I did the three immersions with the prescribed invocations and came up the steps to where my clothes hung. Still dripping, I put on my clothes with fears of a nasty chill. For a moment my clothes felt damp and uncomfortable, but by the time I had my shoes laced I was as warm as toast. I asked the priests who were with me how they felt and it was the same with them. The very sick are lowered into the baths. Patients with all kinds of skin diseases use the same water. There is not a towel in the whole establishment, so on go your clothes over your wet body, and Our Lady suspends the usual reaction from such imprudence, for no one contracts a cold.

The Torch-Light Procession

At eight-thirty in a windless evening we assembled for the torch-light procession. The long-stemmed torches with their artistic shades are bought at the booths and, falling in, you march behind your banners. Down the wide boulevard the procession moves singing the Lourdes “Ave, Ave.” with jubilation. The saying of the Rosary comes easy, distractions are few, and devotion is welling up in the hearts of all. The procession turns at the Calvary group and returns by the other boulevard to Rosary Square. Here the Lourdes officials direct the pilgrims to figure march around the Square. On another evening I stood on the balcony outside the Basilica and viewed this magnificent spectacle. It was like a carnival parade of glow-worms with their lamps ablate, for you can only see the torches moving, the holders are hidden in the darkness. Our torchlight procession on Rosary Sunday was a special one, for when our pilgrims had all entered the Square, on went the light which picked out the lines of the Basilica, and mounted the tall, slender spire to illuminate the statue of Our Lady in a warm glow of light. Our hearts were full, and when the Creed was intoned in Latin it was indeed an act of faith, a glorious finish to an evening spent with Our Lady. Usually the torchlight procession brings the day to a finish, but not for us. We gathered in the upper Basilica at 11 p.m. for a Holy Hour, then Solemn High Mass at midnight. During the High Mass we priests who were not on ceremonies said Mass in one of the chapels of the Mysteries of the Rosary. A fussy sacristan ordered us about, and gave us a chalice with only one particle for whoever served the Mass; no one else may receive Holy Communion at the private Masses.

Praying the Mass at the Grotto

Mass at midnight is always a devotional experience. I enjoyed saying that Mass in the Chapel of the Annunciation. But the next morning when I was privileged to say Mass on the simple altar of the Grotto I was deeply impressed.
I often picture the scene at Ephesus when St. John the Evangelist, its first Bishop, said Mass in the presence of Mary. Both of them had stood beneath the Cross on Calvary, and from the Cross came the all-revealing light which showed them, what we can only see in a dim light, the merit of this wonderful gift of the Holy Mass. No Mass that has ever been said by a human priest could have been as acceptable as that offered by St. John and Our Blessed Mother at Ephesus.
The thick, votive candles spluttering in the morning breeze. the noise of dripping candle-grease, the echo of my voice coming back from the natural sounding board of the rocky cave, and the statue of Our Lady looking down from her niche, all added to the background of this wonderful experience. I felt that Our Lady was present at my Mass that morning, praying it for me, and before I began the opening psalm I invited St. John the Evangelist to help me to say it well. There were no distractions that blessed morning, and at her name I lifted my heart in exultation and gratitude as I bowed my head in reverence.
So too at the list of the Saints in the Canon I paused at the mention of St. John the Evangelist to greet him and thank him for his presence by my side at the altar. During my thanksgiving I asked Our Lady of Lourdes, as my special request, that I might become less unworthy to invite her each morning to pray the Mass with me throughout the years that remain of my priesthood. That was also the favour and blessing I asked for all my friends that morning at the Memento for the Living. With my hands joined and head bowed I recalled by name the many I wished to mention then, and for them, and for the others whose names I omitted, I prayed for a deeper love of the Holy Mass, and that Mary would accompany them to Mass, kneel beside them, and keep them busy during this most precious half-hour on earth.
At my farewell visit to the Grotto as I kissed the rock at Our Lady’s feet, and moved slowly behind the little altar, my prayer was a petition for faith, and more faith in the mystery of the Mass. Following that simple, pious custom of the peasants of Massabieille in kissing the rock hallowed by the feet of Our Lady, I asked her to grant me as a souvenir of Lourdes that I should try to recapture the intention and rekindle the zeal which I experienced in the Mass I said at her Grotto, and that she should grant a like blessing to my friends and to my parishioners.