Rev. Lawrence G. Lovasik, S.V.D.

OUR LADY'S FEASTDAYS

Rev. Lawrence G. Lovasik, S.V.D.

Divine Word Missionary
Contents

The Immaculate Conception

Feast, December 8
(Novena, Nov. 29-Dec. 7)

1. Mary, Mother of God, I believe what Holy Mother Church teaches about your Immaculate Conception: that from the first moment of your conception you possessed justice and holiness—that is sanctifying grace, even the fullness of grace, with the infused virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit, and with integrity of nature; yet you remained subject to death and other pains and miseries of life that your Son Himself willed to undergo.

For the first time after four thousand years God in His Wisdom and power and love, created again a human being in that state in which He had created our first parents. Immaculate Virgin, you are that human being. Because of sanctifying grace infused into your soul, you were from the first moment of your existence most intimately united with God and endowed with the most precious gifts of heaven. You possessed a perfect faith, a firm hope, a burning charity, a deep humility, a purity greater than that of the angels. Your soul is the creation and the masterpiece of almighty workmanship. The Archangel Gabriel expressed this very clearly: "Hail, full of grace"—there was no room left for sin; "the Lord is with thee"—where God dwells, Satan can have no rights; "blessed art thou among women"—you were elevated above all other women in the world.

Mary, My Mother, you were never without grace. From the first moment of your existence the Holy Spirit made you His temple and blessed you with the fullness of His grace. Your Immaculate Conception, purchased by the Precious Blood of the Son of God Himself and freely bestowed upon you as the highest gift of God, is the most wonderful work of sanctification that the world has ever seen.

2. Mary, Mother of God, no stain of original sin ever defiled your pure soul. This privilege separated you from all the rest of the children of Adam. As the Mother of the Incarnate Son you were so preserved from inheriting original sin that never for a moment was as much as a shadow cast by sin upon your spotless soul. You were the only one who was exempt from the universal curse that had fallen on the whole human race. You were never under the power of the serpent, whose head you crushed in giving a Redeemer to the world. Your Immaculate Conception is a triumph over Satan the author of evil, who under your heel, suffered his first complete defeat. It is but a symbol of the endless victories which you are to win over him to the last day. Hence the Church sings of you: "You are all fair, O Mary, and the original stain is not in you."

But you needed the redeeming Savior to obtain this exemption, and deliverance from the universal debt of being subject to original sin. Being the new Eve who was to be the Mother of the new Adam you were, by the eternal decree of God and by the merits of Christ, withdrawn from the general law of original sin. Your redemption was the very masterpiece of Christ's redeeming wisdom. He paid the debt that original sin might not be incurred.

Mary, My Mother, what joy for you never to have been, even for a single instant, in the state of enmity toward God! You know that you are the well-beloved Daughter of the Father, you embrace the Son; you are united to the Holy Spirit with a simplicity, a confidence, and a delicacy of love which belong to you alone, for in you alone there cannot be the remembrance of a moment in which you were opposed to God. I share in this joy. I am happy at the thought that you, a human creature, have escaped completely from the clutches of Satan, that born of a race universally tainted, you are more pure and more brilliant than the most sublime of the angels; and that you are my Mother.

3. Mary, Mother of God, your greatness began at the first instant of your existence with the privilege of your Immaculate Conception. After Almighty God and the Sacred Humanity of Jesus, there is no being so great as you. It is true, you are a creature, and, therefore, far beneath the Supreme Being. But you are a creature so holy and so perfect that you are superior to all other creatures. You are above not only patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, and all the saints but even all angels. You stand alone on a throne of greatness and perfection far above the rest of creatures.

It was fitting that you, a Virgin Mother, should conceive the Man Who was also the Son of God. It was fitting that you should be adorned with the greatest purity ever possible to a creature. You are the Virgin to whom God the Father decreed to give His only Son—the Divine Word, equal with Himself in all things—that entering the natural order He might become your Son as well as His. You are the immaculate Virgin whom the Son Himself chose to make His Mother. You are the immaculate Virgin whom the Holy Spirit willed to make His bride and in whom He would work the tremendous miracle of the Incarnation. The privilege of the Immaculate Conception was suitable to your dignity. It was possible for God to confer it, and He did confer it!

Mary, My Mother, help me to imitate your sinlessness by keeping my soul free from every willful sin by the faithful observance of God's commandments. Help me to imitate your fullness of grace by receiving Holy Communion frequently, where I shall obtain the sanctifying grace that will make my soul holy and pleasing to God, more like your own, and where I shall obtain the actual graces I need to practise virtue and to walk in your footsteps. Through prayer may grace fill my soul with the life of God and transform me into a living image of Jesus, just as you were.

Our Lady Of Guadalupe

December 12
(Triduum, December 9-11)

1. Mary, Mother of God, in honoring you as Our Lady of Guadalupe, we honor you as the Immaculate Conception. The picture you imprinted on the cloak of the Indian at Guadalupe was the image of the Immaculate Conception. You appeared as the Woman of the Apocalypse, clothed with the sun, standing on the moon.

I believe the doctrine of the Church concerning your Immaculate Conception, which teaches that at the first moment of your conception you were, by the singular grace and privilege of the omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the Human race, preserved from all stains of original sin. The foundation of this doctrine is to be found in Sacred Scripture where we are taught that God, the Creator of all things, after the sad fall of Adam, addressed the serpent in words which the Church applies to you, "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head" (Gen. 3.15). If at any time you had been without Divine grace even for the shortest moment, there would not have come between you and the serpent that everlasting enmity spoken of by God.

Since the angel saluted you "full of grace" and "blessed among women" (Luke 1,28), you were the abode of all Divine graces, adorned with the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, so that you were never subjected to the evil spirit.

This doctrine was received in the early Church and handed down by the Fathers who praised you with extraordinary titles and most important writings.

Mary, My Mother, may the example of your sinlessness urge us to that innocence and purity of life which flees from and abhors even the slightest stain of sin. Forming with your Divine Son one spiritual body, we experience the rage of Satan until the end of time. But we, too, by our union with Jesus, and by the power of His grace, will also be united with Him in His victory over the devil. As the seed of the serpent includes all those descendants of the first man and woman who by their sinful lives bear within them the traits of the devil, so, too, the seed of the Woman includes all who in the course of ages will take their stand with your Son, Jesus Christ, in His ceaseless conflict with the enemy of God.

2. Mary, Mother of God, your apparition at Guadalupe teaches me that devotion to you is a source of great graces. The Church has always taught that God has entrusted to your hands all heavenly treasures, and many of the saints assure me that you give to your clients as much of these treasures as you wish and when you wish to do so.

How consoling it is to know that you have these heavenly blessings at your disposal! I have but to ask for them for the salvation of my soul. There is nothing you want more than to give them to me, since you are even more anxious to save my soul than I am, for you know better than anyone else the price your Son has paid for it and the precious worth of each grace He so graciously offers to me through you.

Devotion to you brings with it sweetness and consolation for the soul. As a child runs to its mother in every need and finds comfort in her glance and kind word, I can turn to you for help when I need it, for you are truly my Mother, whose heart is overflowing with kindness and mercy.

Mary, My Mother, the Church puts these words of the Canticle on your lips: "I love those who love me." I want to love you with all my heart that I may in some way merit that you love me in return. I already know of your great love for me for the sake of your Son who entrusted the care of my soul to you. But I want to be loved by you even more; hence, give me an ever growing love for you. This love for you was the source of great joy in the hearts of the saints. May I have more of their love for you so that I may experience more of their joy in being devoted to you. Take my cold heart; put it into your own and inflame it with a fire of love like your own.

Mary, My Mother, your apparition at Guadalupe as the Immaculate Conception is your only recorded appearance in North America. Bless the people of the Americas, citizens of those lands to which uncounted thousands have come to seek refuge and livelihood. Preserve their faith, assailed at every hour by the forces opposed to Christ. Petition God that their hope may never fail amid the troubles and the cares of this life. We beg you for a burning charity for God to imitate the works of Christ. We ask you to procure for us, by your prayers the great grace of final perseverance so that those who are joined to honor you in the kingdom of your Son on earth may be together always in heaven.

3. Mary, Mother of God, since the United States was dedicated to your Immaculate Conception, be pleased to take our country under your special protection and grant that, guided by justice and nurtured by charity, it may serve God faithfully and be blessed with peace and prosperity.

Mary, My Mother, who crushed the head of the serpent, I pray for my country. Continue to work wonders on our shores for our spiritual and material prosperity and keep us in peace and charity. Intercede for us that we may win the victory over evil and that we may live and reign with Jesus, your Son. Our Lady of Guadalupe, whom we acclaim our Queen and Mother, lead our country to God.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, mystical rose, make intercession for holy Church, protect the Sovereign Pontiff, help all those who invoke thee in their necessities, and since thou art the ever Virgin Mary and Mother of the true God, obtain for us from thy most holy Son the grace of keeping our faith, sweet hope in the midst of the bitterness of life, burning charity and the precious gift of final perseverance. Amen. 500 days.

Note: This prayer was approved and enriched with an indulgence of five hundred days by Pope Pius X at all audience held on August 18, 1908, and was included in the official edition of approved indulgenced prayers (1950).

The Expectation Of The Blessed Virgin Mary

Feast, December 18
(Triduum, December 15-17 or until Christmas)

1. Mary, Mother of God, how sacred was the life of Jesus in your womb while you awaited His coming! It was a life of concealment, and yet Jesus is infinite, the light of the angels and of the whole world. It was a life of silence, and yet He is the Word of the Father, the expression of His glory, the teacher of the prophets. It was life of the utmost weakness and helplessness, and yet His is the strength of God Himself.

During this long period of concealment in your womb, you perfected His bodily faculties for our benefit. You formed His Body in order that it might be given us in death and in the Blessed Sacrament. You formed His eyes, to look upon us with mild and pitying glance and to weep over us. You formed His lips, to teach us. You formed His feet, to search after and seek us as a Good Shepherd, His hands to heal us and to be pierced for us; and His shoulders to carry the cross. You formed His Heart, to love us, and His Precious Blood, to shed for us and to be given to us for our drink. You formed His whole Self, to die for us as a sacrificial Lamb.

Yet Jesus was active in your womb adoring and praising God. He found joy in God, His Heavenly Father, and in the Holy Spirit, joy in all the wonderful perfections of God. He also found joy in His Divine Sonship and glorious human nature, joy in His intellect, with its immeasurable knowledge and the contemplation of God; joy in His will, with its freedom, sinlessness, holiness and unbounded power joy in His destiny as our Redeemer; joy in the future kingdom of His Church, which was to arise from His life and death. But with these joys were also mingled bitter sorrows. He saw sin and its terrible effects in God's kingdom and in souls; He saw the sufferings of His Church and His own and your sufferings.

Mary, My Mother, in your womb, the sanctuary of the living God, Jesus was occupied with the sanctification and government of the world. From Him there flowed heavenwards an unceasing stream of glory, the waves of His grace ever poured over the earth. He already occupied Himself with the salvation of all souls, and as the hidden Ruler of the world He judged all who departed this life.

But Jesus was constantly sanctifying you, His loving Mother, transforming you ever more and more into Himself by wondrous graces of knowledge of the mystery of the Incarnation, and by graces of love which united you to Him. You became more and more filled with His spirit; you grew into Him, as it were, and became in your soul ever more the Mother of God and Mother of Jesus. It was indeed a divine life that Jesus led in Your womb, a life most active, and yet one of unbroken calm.

2. Mary, Mother of God, how wonderful was your own interior life as you carried the Son of God in your womb and awaited His coming! It was a life of closest union with Jesus—a union of body as well as of soul. There is no more intimate bodily union than that of mother and child, for they are one life, one heart-beat sustaining the life of both. The Supreme God rested and worked in you.

Your life with Jesus was one of deepest recollection, which gathered all the powers of your soul around the God-Man. The divine light, received from Him, led you deeper into the mystery of the Redemption and its effects in the past and in the future.

Your life with Jesus was one of the purest, most fervent, most perfect emotions of love to God, whom you sheltered within yourself. How can I ever imagine the emotions of longing and most eager expectation of the Birth of the Divine Child! How great must have been that longing! You were longing to see the Face of God and to be happy in the vision. You were soon really to see the Face of God the created image of divine perfection, the sight of which rejoices heaven and earth, from which all beings derive life and joy; the Face whose features enraptured God from all eternity, the Face for which all ages had expectantly yearned. You were to see this Face unveiled, in all the beauty and grace of childhood as the face of your own child.

Indeed, all were awaiting your Son: the world, to gain rest and peace, the angels, to see God's plans fulfilled; the Heavenly Father Himself to behold His created Image: and all this longing was united in your heart. While you bore the Author of all things in your womb, and your heart was beating quickly with love, adoration and longing, still your face told nothing of this, and no one knew that such marvellous things were taking place in you.

Mary, My Mother, I rejoice with you in the joyful expectation of your little Son. Though it is impossible for me to form any idea of the thoughts that flooded your mind and heart, I beg you to give me at least a spark of that fervor of divine love that burned in your soul. Let me feel some of the sentiments of loving expectation that you felt while waiting for the birth of your Child, so that I may prepare myself for His coming and the graces of the mystery of His Nativity may bear fruit in my soul. To you I entrust the preparation of my soul for the coming of my Savior on Christmas Day.

3. Mary, Mother of God, make my interior life of union with Jesus more like your own. After Holy Communion Jesus is with me as God and Man, with His Body and Blood, soul and divinity. Jesus is in me, too, through sanctifying grace, I bear within me the supernatural image of the Divine Sonship. He works in my soul by His grace. He forms Himself in me by supernatural principles, which He implants in my mind; by supernatural intentions and meritorious actions. He follows up in my heart also the aim that brought Him into your womb—He wishes to be born in me, to grow, rule, and reveal Himself. Thus my soul in sanctifying grace is always, in a spiritual manner, like your womb—a sanctuary of the living God!

As you led an interior life and centered all your thoughts and life upon the Word Incarnate in your womb, so help me to lead an interior, supernatural life, always guided and directed by supernatural principles, having always supernatural intentions and performing supernatural actions.

Mary, My Mother, I beg you to aid me in being watchful over myself, guarding my exterior and interior senses, avoiding all outward haste and inward passion, trying to make a virtuous action of everything I do, and by talking to God frequently in prayer. May my life thus become a copy of your own life especially during this time of your expectation!

I earnestly want to be filled with the dispositions in which you expected the coming of the Savior and thus prepare myself for His coming into my soul by faith and divine charity, as well as for His coming at the hour of my death and judgment. In union with you may my heart yield itself up to childlike confidence in Jesus so that the graces of His Nativity may be brought to my soul in abundance, and He may be born anew within my heart.

The Espousals Of The Blessed Virgin Mary

Feast, January 23
(Triduum, January 20-22)

1. Mary, Mother of God, though marriage and motherhood were the cherished ideals of every Jewish maiden, you vowed your virginity to God, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Lord being your portion, you renounced all else—the honors, the pleasures, and the rewards of marriage—and joyously chose the life of a virgin. In consecrating your virginity to God, you had given up all hope of becoming the Mother of the Messias because you considered yourself unworthy of the highest honor of the divine maternity. No one after Christ was humbler than you were, yet no one after Christ gave God greater glory. This humility was richly rewarded. God would work a miracle so that you might remain a virgin, and yet become the Mother of God.

Teach me to imitate your humility by acknowledging my nothingness and seeking the glory of God in everything.

Mary, My Mother, to conceal the miraculous conception and birth of His Divine Son, the Eternal Father inspired Joseph to marry you before the annunciation by the archangel Gabriel. The husband whom God has destined for you was a man of faith of character, of purity, "a just man." Like you, he was of the tribe of Juda and the family of David.

Though Joseph planned to put you away privately when he recognized that you were with child, you still were unwilling to reveal your secret to him, lest you might seem to boast of your gifts. How great was your trust in God! You resigned yourself to the care of God, in the fullest confidence that He would guard your innocence and reputation. Thus an angel appeared to Joseph and said, "Do not be afraid, Joseph, son of David, to take to thee Mary thy wife, for that which is begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins" (Matt. 1, 20). Joseph could rest assured and marry you, his betrothed bride. He was obedient and immediately arranged with you the celebration of your chaste nuptials. On the appointed day, at nightfall, accompanied by friends, he went in procession to your parents' house, to conduct you to his own home. You were dressed in your finest clothes and surrounded by your friends as you joined the procession by the light of lamps and the sound of music. This introduction into the new home in which you were to live was your official marriage ceremony. Joseph, so humble, so pure, so loving respected your consecration to God, and he was willing to live with you a life of spotless virginity. You were indeed two of one heart and one soul.

2. Mary, Mother of God, God had a purpose in wanting you and Joseph to become man and wife. You were not to raise up children unto God—not ordinary offspring, but a Child, the Son of God! Overshadowed by the power of the Holy Spirit, you were to conceive and bear the Messias, and at the same time remain a Virgin in every respect. Through Joseph your descent from David would be known. If you had no husband, the unbelieving Jews would have stoned you as a sinner.

In your motherhood you would need protection and so would the Child in His infancy. Your union with Joseph was ordained in the designs of God for the education of Jesus. You could not of yourself provide the protection and training the Child needed. Joseph was chosen by God the Father to take His own place, in regard to His Divine Son, during the early years of that Son's life on earth. He was endowed by God with all a father's tenderness and love for Him who was confided to him as his Child.

Mary, My Mother, your Son Jesus came to enlighten the world with His teaching and example. He sanctified your marriage with St. Joseph so that it might be an example for all Christian marriages. Be pleased to intercede with Jesus, your Son, for Christian families. Protect, guard, and keep them in holy fear, in peace, and in harmony of Christian charity. By conforming themselves to the divine model of your Family, may they attain to eternal happiness.

3. Mary, Mother of God, I believe that the dignity, holiness and glory of Joseph rests on the fact that he was your spouse and that he was the foster father of Jesus Christ. Your dignity as Mother of God is so lofty that nothing created can rank above it. But as Joseph had been united to you by the ties of marriage, he approached nearer than anyone else to your eminent dignity. In giving you to Joseph as spouse, God appointed him to be not only your life's companion, but also a sharer of your dignity. Joseph was a virgin for your sake, that a Virgin Son might be born of a virginal marriage.

The Scriptures refer to you and Joseph as "the parents of Jesus." After the prophecy of Simeon, the Scriptures mention that "His father and mother" were wondering at those things which were spoken concerning Him. As your true and lawful spouse, Saint Joseph was meant by God to have the privilege of exercising as his right, in virtue of his virginal marriage, the parental office in regard to your Child.

Mary, My Mother, you and good St. Joseph were married to become the models of family life. May your holy marriage be an inspiration to Christian husbands and wives so that they may always live in sincere love and peace and be obedient to the commandments of God. Through your prayers may they and their children honor God by a virtuous life so as to be worthy of a heavenly reward. May the love and peace and happiness of your Holy Family reign in the Christian families of all times.

Purification Of The Blessed Virgin Mary

Feast, February 2
(Novena, Jan. 24-Feb. 1)

1. Mary, Mother of God, I admire Your obedience and humility in submitting to the law of purification by presenting yourself in the temple like every other Jewish Mother, forty days after the birth of Jesus. You were not bound by the Law, because you were a virgin as well as a mother. You hid your miraculous virginity under the mantle of humility. But the same spirit of humility which had induced Jesus to obey the law of circumcision, made you also submit to the law of purification. The God of holiness, having come upon the earth to take away the sins of the world, chose to appear among us as a sinner. It was, therefore, befitting that you, His Immaculate Mother, destined to cooperate with Him in the work of Redemption, should teach the world, by your submission to the law of purification, this great truth, that humility is the beginning of our salvation, as pride has been the root of our ruin.

Mary, My Mother, you were not obliged by the Law of Moses to present and ransom your firstborn Son. In order to free yourself from legal uncleanness and to give us an example of obedience to God's law, you submitted to the ceremony of the purification and made the offering demanded of the poor—two pigeons or turtledoves. In the fulfillment of the law you gave an example of the most perfect obedience and zeal for the edification of others; for since the real nature of your motherhood was not known to your Jewish neighbors, you might have been the cause of scandal to them if you had failed to comply with the law.

2. Mary, Mother of God, the offering of Jesus was presented by your virginal hands. Thus you associated yourself yet more directly and intimately with our salvation. You were the first to offer to the Eternal Father His Divine Son as the Victim for the world's Redemption. Here there was a sacrifice, and Jesus was the Victim. The victim had to belong to the person who offered it. But no child ever belonged to its mother as Jesus belonged to you. In this mystery Jesus is plainly a Victim, and not so plainly a Priest; He could not better communicate His spirit of priesthood than by allowing you, His Mother, to present His outward offering He could find no worthier altar on which to offer Himself than your immaculate hands. You really had the right to offer Jesus to His Heavenly Father in this mystery.

The Eternal Father once gave you the most precious treasure that heaven possessed—His own Divine Son. In the temple, you returned to Him His gift by consecrating your Child to His honor and glory. For your generosity the Eternal Father made you, through Christ, the dispenser of the riches of God. In presenting your only Son you present your all. For He was everything to you, and all else was nothing without Him.

Mary, My Mother, your love for Jesus made this sacrifice very great in the eyes of God. In Jesus there was wrapped up the double love of a mother for her only Child and of the holiest creature for her God. And for our sake, you were ready to devote this Child to a life of suffering, persecution, and scorn, even to a shameful death on the cross.

3. Mary, Mother of God, by your offering you sacrificed your own heart. The holy old man Simeon took your Son in his arms. It was in your arms that he found the Savior, to remind me that he who desires to find Jesus, will not find Him otherwise than through you. You heard Simeon's words as if they had been spoken to you by God Himself, "Behold, this child is destined for the fall and for the rise of many in Israel, and for a sign that shall be contradicted. And thy own soul a sword shall pierce " Since you were enlightened by the Scriptures, you realized that your Child would be contradicted and utterly rejected by the Jews, who had, for forty centuries, unceasingly sighed for Him as a Savior. You knew that thousands even of His faithful followers throughout the world would turn from Him and would make His coming the occasion of their eternal ruin. You, who were yourself the Queen of Prophets, saw that from that moment "the sword of sorrow" would enter your soul and remain there during the rest of your days. You saw clearly the agony you would feel at the crucifixion.

Having heard the prophecy of your Son's suffering, you almost rejoiced to hear that you would share His suffering. Who can describe the anguish of your generous soul when with your Divine Babe in your arms you were willing to sign His death warrant with your own hands? Jesus was a Son to you and a sword to you: a Son on your breast, a sword in your heart. Your Child, becoming the King of Martyrs, would make you their Queen. Your sorrow would be as deep as the sea.

But this prophecy did not disturb your peace of mind because your will was one with the will of God. What a difference between the woeful prediction of Simeon and the joyous tidings of the archangel Gabriel announcing the greatness of the Redeemer of mankind! You abandoned yourself to God's will with deep faith and confidence. You did not try to square both predictions. Your faith taught you that the predictions of both were inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Mary, My Mother, I wish to offer myself as a sacrifice to God in union with Jesus and through your hands. Help me to sacrifice myself generously for the love of God—to abstain from those many hurtful things that prevent the union of my soul with God. In order to live, not to myself, but to God, I must bear the cross in union with Jesus. You suffered with Jesus and experienced in your soul what He underwent in His body. Let me never separate my sufferings from the sufferings of Your divine Son. This loving union will sustain me no matter how heavy my cross. Indeed, I will suffer with joy if I realize that Christ is suffering with me and in me and that He sends me the cross only to trace His image in my soul by uniting me closely with Himself. I shall realize that God, in His infinite wisdom will make all things work together unto my good.

Apparition Of The Blessed Virgin Mary Immaculate (Our Lady of Lourdes)

Feast, February 11
(Novena, February 2-10)

1. Mary, Mother of God, God spoke of you as the Woman who would crush the serpent's head. Faith tells me that the fall of man was the effect of the malice and envy of the devil, who sought in this way to be revenged upon the Creator for having cast him out of paradise in punishment for his rebellion. But God turned the scheme of the evil one back upon its inventor. A man and a woman had both taken part in the degradation of our race; they must both have part in its restoration. Jesus is the new Adam and you are the new Eve.

God said to the serpent: "Because thou hast done this, I will place enmities between thee and the Woman, between thy seed and her Seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel" (Gen. 3.14).

Mary, My Mother, as the Immaculate Conception, you are the Woman who appeared as the mortal enemy of the serpent. Your Divine Son was destined to crush the serpent's head by releasing mankind from the slavery of Satan, thus putting an end to the empire of sin. When God pronounced doom against the evil one, He also announced His merciful plan of saving mankind from the effects of the guilt of our first parents. This was the earliest promise of a Redeemer to come, and you were to be His immaculate Mother.

2. Mary, Mother of God, you are the new Eve. The early writers of the Church already speak of you as a second Eve, who fulfilled in the restoration of mankind a role closely corresponding to that of Eve in the ruin of our race. You are a second and more blessed Eve. Eve was unbelieving and disobedient; you were believing and obedient. Eve listened to the voice of the serpent and brought death to the human race, you became a source of salvation to all mankind by receiving with humility the word of God brought to you by the angel Gabriel.

A woman, the tree, and death symbolize our defeat. Yet these three have become for us a principle of life. You are the woman, the new Eve; the wood of the Cross is the new tree of life, the death of Jesus, the new Adam, takes away the sting of the death of Adam. Eve was the mother of the dead, for all of us, her children, were doomed to enter this world under sentence of death, the slaves and children of Satan. But you are the Mother of the living, for by your fidelity to your Maker you deserved to give to mankind a Redeemer who by His death has destroyed the reign of death and has thrown open to us the gates of everlasting life. You are truly our immaculate Mother for it is to you, after Jesus, that we are indebted for the supernatural life of grace and the hope of eternal life.

Mary, My Mother, the beloved disciple, St. John, tells us that "a great sign appeared in heaven: "a Woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars" (Apoc. 12, 1). The Woman is a striking image of you, the Immaculate Conception. The attitude of the Church toward you, symbolized by the moon under your feet, is that of a suppliant who is forever entreating you to use your power in favor of your children. She is forever imploring you to intercede in their behalf with Him who has clothed you with His light and His glory, and has poured out upon you the fullness of His grace. As our immaculate Mediatrix before your Son you have appeared at Lourdes to encourage us to amend our lives and to make sacrifices and offer prayers for sinners. In the spirit of loving confidence we have recourse to you. We recommend to you our hopes and our fears. Our eyes are upraised to you in sorrow and in joy. Immaculate Mother, you are the hope of a sinful race.

3. Mary, Mother of God, I firmly believe in the doctrine of Holy Mother Church concerning your Immaculate Conception, namely, that you were, in the first instant of your conception, by the singular grace and privilege of God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.

It was fitting that the God of all purity should spring from the greatest purity. Alone of all the children of Adam, you were gifted with the fullness of sanctifying grace which made you the object of a very special love on the part of God. How wonderful were the workings of divine power to make you a fitting dwelling for the Redeemer of the world! With no tendency to evil, but with a deep yearning for the highest virtue, you glorified God more than all His other creatures. Never did you yield to the least imperfection, let alone sin. At the very instant of your conception your mind was filled with the light of God, and your will was entirely conformed to the divine will. Your extreme hatred of sin was the measure of your supreme love of virtue. Aided by God's wondrous graces you surrendered yourself entirely to God in the smallest details of your life. Forgetting yourself completely, you were most intimately united with God.

Mary, My Mother, help me to imitate your holiness to some degree. My imitation of both Jesus and you depends upon my response to the amount of grace that God sees fit to give me. Your holiness was not the result of the privilege of your Immaculate Conception and sanctifying grace alone, but it followed from your gift of yourself to God and your constant cooperation with His graces. Help me to be generous with God by turning to good account the graces that He ever bestows on me, and by rising promptly when I fall, with renewed confidence in His mercy. Aid me through your influence with your Divine Son, to be a true child of yours and to grow daily into your likeness. Help me to imitate your virtues that I may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

The Annunciation Of The Blessed Virgin Mary

Feast, March 25
(Novena, March 16-24)

1. Mary, Mother of God, how great was the honor given to you at the Annunciation! Within your humble home in the little town of Nazareth, the Holy Spirit willed to perform a miracle that was the masterpiece of infinite power—the Incarnation of the Son of God. God sent Gabriel, one of His glorious archangels, to deliver the most important message in the history of mankind, announcing the coming of the Savior of the world and the selection of you to be His Mother. Thus was fulfilled the prophesy that Christ would be born of the family of David.

With heavenly homage the angelic messenger greeted you "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women" (Luke 1, 28). Never before did angel greet man with the word "Hail, full of grace." In all humility you attributed this holiness to God alone, working wondrously within you. When the Triune God destined and elevated you, a mortal Virgin, to the dignity of Mother of the Redeemer, the Father had to endow you with a fullness of perfection suitable for such a dignity. The Son, the Eternal Wisdom of God, in choosing you for His Mother, bestowed on you a certain fullness of grace, so that as you gave Christ His human nature, Christ, in a certain sense, raised you as close to God as a mere creature can come. And the Holy Spirit, who descended upon you in the Incarnation with all His fullness, must have conferred upon you such treasures of sanctity as would prepare you to receive the Son of God in your most pure womb. You possessed, according to the words of the Archangel, such a fullness of grace that you were worthy to become the Mother of God.

"The Lord is with thee." He was with you in a manner more intimate, more perfect, and more divine than He ever was or will be with any other creature. He was with you not only by His essence, His presence, and His power, as He is with all His creatures. He was with you not only with His actual grace, touching your heart and enlightening your understanding. He was with you not only by His sanctifying grace, making you pleasing in His sight, as He is present with all the just. He was with you not only by a special protection guiding you in His ways and leading you securely to salvation. He was with you, and with you alone, in an unspeakable manner by bodily presence. In you, and of your substance, was this day formed His adorable Body. In you He reposed for nine months, with His whole divinity and humanity.

Mary, My Mother, the angel said to you, "Blessed art thou among women." Your blessedness was due to your unexcelled sanctity. You would be hailed by all generations as blessed above all other women because you are the Mother of God and at the same time a spotless Virgin. You are blessed because of the fullness of grace you received; blessed, because of the greatness of the mercy to be bestowed on you; blessed, because of the Majesty of the Person who was to take flesh of you; blessed, because of the glory which would become yours.

2. Mary, Mother of God, how pleasing to God was your humility! You were troubled not at the appearance of the angel, but at what he said. Your fear arose entirely from your humility, which was disturbed at the sound of praises so far exceeding your own lowly estimate of yourself. Had the angel said you were the most wicked sinner in the world, your wonder would not have been so great, as it was at the sound of his praises.

But Gabriel comforted you, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God." As Christ was pleased to be comforted by an angel, so was it necessary that you should be encouraged by one. Do not be afraid Mary, for you have found, not taken, grace, as Lucifer tried to take it. You have not lost grace, as Adam lost it, but you have found it because you have desired and sought it. You have found uncreated grace, that is, God Himself became your Son; and with that grace you have found and obtained every created good.

The more your humility was tried, the more lowly you became in your own estimation. Your humility was rewarded with the greatest privilege ever given to a creature. "Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy 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." By your humility you have found such great grace with God that you were chosen to co-operate with His Divine Son in restoring man to a dignity far superior to that which he had lost by sin. What greater wonder could the world behold, than a woman become the Mother of God, and a God clothed in human flesh? Mary, by your humility, you became the Mother of your Creator. The Creator, in His goodness, became the Son of His own creature.

The Holy Spirit would work in you the greatest work of His omnipotence, "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee." By His almighty power He would form the body of the Savior of the world, and the Divine Son would unite it to Himself forever. How God rewarded your humble and deep faith! "And, therefore, the Holy One to be born shall be called the Son of God." Though you did not know the meaning of the archangel's inspired words, you serenely submitted to the will of God. In doing so you uttered the most gracious act of humility that ever fell from human lips, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word." With a "fiat" God created light, heaven, earth, but with your "fiat" God became Man. O powerful answer which rejoiced Heaven and brought an immense sea of graces and blessings into the world! It was an answer which had scarcely fallen from your lips, before It drew the only-begotten Son of God from the bosom of His Eternal Father, to become Man in your most pure womb!

Mary, My Mother, the divine Motherhood meant for you deepest suffering. To become the Mother of God meant for you a knowledge of and a share in the Passion of Christ that would plunge you into the depths of a sea of lonely desolation. You became a victim and holocaust to the divine will, the Queen of Martyrs, the most perfect imitator of the Victim of Calvary. Since suffering is the measure and the very law of love, I cannot imagine the greatness of your love for us, your children. The moment of your exaltation, the highest to which God could raise a creature, finds you sunk in the abyss of your own nothingness. Fully acknowledging your unworthiness to be the Mother of Christ, you accepted the exalted privilege only in obedience to the divine will. You called yourself the servant of Him who for thirty years would be subject to you.

How wondrous you are in your humility. Like you let me realize my own nothingness. I cannot advance in the path of sanctity without humility, which is the heart and soul of virtue. If I have humility, God may flood my soul with grace here and exalt it eternally in heaven.

3. Mary, Mother of God, the instant that you gave your consent to the archangel, the Holy Spirit overshadowed you and wrought in your most chaste womb the Incarnation of the Son of God. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." How consistent with the infinite tenderness of God that His Christ, the Immortal Child, should be conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the body of a young virgin and that a virgin should bear a Child to redeem the world. In that moment the mystery of love and mercy, promised to mankind thousands of years earlier foretold by so many prophets, desired by so many saints, was accomplished upon earth. In that instant the Word of God became forever united to humanity; the human soul of Jesus Christ, produced from nothing, began to enjoy God and to know all things past, present, and to come. From your pure blood the Holy Spirit formed the pure Body of Jesus. At that moment God began to have an Adorer who was infinite, and the world a Mediator who was all-powerful. To the working of this great mystery you also were chosen to cooperate by your free consent.

You are truly the Seat of Wisdom because you were the living Tabernacle of the God of Infinite Wisdom. Not only were you full of grace, but you also bore the Author of grace. You were entirely under the influence of Christ's divinity. In return for the natural strength that you gave Him, He gave you His divine strength. What a divine impression Jesus left upon you, His Mother! You were united with Him as closely as a Mother is united with her child, and your thoughts and desires were those of your Divine Son. Your heart beat in unison with His Heart. I cannot rise to the heights of your holiness because I cannot grasp the intimacy of your union with Christ when you became His Mother.

Mary, My Mother, I rejoice with you that you are so privileged, so exalted as to become the worthy Mother of God. We all rejoice because all the graces and spiritual benefits we have received and shall receive, all our future glory comes from this exalted mystery of the Incarnation. God could not have created a more beautiful throne for Himself than you; His Mother! I thank God for the great glory He has bestowed upon you for which all generations shall call you blessed.

The Seven Sorrows Of The Blessed Virgin Mary

Feasts, Friday of Passion Week and September 15
(Novena, Wednesday after the Fourth Sunday of Lent; also September 6-14)

1. Mary, Mother of God, your sorrows are not merely the sorrows of an earthly mother grieving over the death of an only child. Rather, your sorrows were ordained by God from all eternity as part of the penalty to be paid for sin and were to mingle with the sufferings of your Son in that great sacrifice which was to redeem the world.

The Gospel speaks of you as standing beneath the cross. This posture is not the one usually describing a mourner who is affected with only human grief. You would have shown your grief as mothers do by sobs and tears. But though your soul was filled with grief, you bravely stood beneath the cross. You did not-abandon Jesus as the apostles did; you remained with Him until He expired. You did not go to a distance, but drew nearer to the cross—the hard bed on which Jesus had to die. You stood by its side never turning your eyes from Him. You beheld Him suspended by iron nails. You stood there silently fulfilling a part assigned you by Providence.

Mary, My Mother, you were to complete the offering of your Son, which you had begun on the day of His presentation in the temple. You presented Him in sacrifice to the Father as your God and the Son of Man, as your offering and the offering of humanity for the redemption of the world. You so loved the world as to give your only Son for our redemption. It was your duty to represent the whole of mankind and to offer those acts of adoration faith, hatred of sin, love and prayer, which were due from those who shared in this sacrifice.

At the same time you had to offer the most intense human suffering, in union with the Passion of your Son. You saw in the cross an altar, in your Son a Priest, and in His Blood the price of our Redemption. You suffered in your soul what Jesus suffered in His body, and in union with Him you offered yourself as a victim for our sins. There were two great altars on Calvary; one in the Body of Jesus, the other in your heart; for on that mount, at the same time that your Son sacrificed His body by death, you sacrificed your soul by compassion. What merits did not your perfect immolation gain! Thereby you sanctified all our afflictions and united them with those of Jesus. I can never fully understand the depth of those sorrows that filled your heart as you begot us to the spiritual life, while standing by the cross on Calvary. The words of the prophet are applied to you: "O all you that pass by the way, attend, and see if there be sorrow like unto my sorrow."

2. Mary, Mother of God, your life, like that of your Divine Son, was a daily crucifixion and martyrdom. You found the cross very heavy during the three years of His public life, for then He had to leave your side that He might be "about His Father's business,"—the sanctification and salvation of souls. Though deprived of the joy of His actual presence, you were more intimately united with Him than ever through your sacrificial love, since your will was one with His. He was preparing you for your final separation from Him at the foot of the cross.

Because you freely consented to become the Mother of God, you experienced mentally all the bitterness of your Son's Passion and death. At the very beginning of His public ministry, you observed the hatred and jealousy of His enemies and the false accusations which would bring about His death. Each event of the sorrowful drama of His sufferings was a sword that pierced your motherly heart.

The Apostles, who had abandoned their Master informed you of your Son's betrayal by Judas and of His brutal capture after His agony. The beloved disciple told you what he had seen in the houses of Annas and Caiphas: how Jesus had been accused as a blasphemer for stating that He was the Son of God. With your own eyes you saw Him brought first to Pilate, then to Herod and then again to Pilate. You were in the judgment-hall and heard it ring with lies. You saw Barabbas preferred to Jesus when the Roman governor showed the Man of Sorrows to the angry mob. What grief filled your heart as you gazed upon your Son with His flesh torn, His head encircled with long, sharp thorns, His whole body covered with blood—a mock-King with a reed in His hand and cast-off cloak over His bleeding shoulders.

You heard the mob, led by the chief priests clamoring for His crucifixion. You saw the heavy cross placed on His bent shoulders. Your heart sank each time He fell beneath its weight. You saw His virginal flesh torn open again when the soldiers pitilessly stripped Him of His garments. You beheld His arms and feet roughly extended on the hard wood of the cross. What must have been your anguish when you looked at the sacred body of Jesus as the long nails were being driven into His hands and feet! You saw the cross raised and heard the mob, not yet satisfied with their bloody work, continue to torment their dying Victim.

Though worn with sorrow, you at once took your place at the foot of the cross. There you stood bravely, your eyes fastened on your Divine Son. How generously you offered Jesus, your dearest treasure, as a Victim to the justice of His offended Father! How courageously you united the oblation of your own suffering and grief with the offering of Jesus, thus proving yourself worthy not only to share but also to be one with Him in the redemption of souls.

Parting with your dying Son was the height of your sorrow. But with the same humility with which you had conceived Him, you consented to the supreme loss of your God. Jesus had delivered Himself in His Passion to the will of His Father, and before His sacrifice for sinners could be perfect, He had to be forsaken by that Father. In the same way you, who freely delivered your son to a cruel death, parted with your Son. Only thus could you become one with Your God in the salvation of souls.

Mary, My Mother, more courageous than the martyrs, you stood at the foot of the cross. The suffering of Jesus in His dereliction was the most difficult test of your faith. In union with Him you also did the will of God perfectly as He exclaimed "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit."

When you heard Jesus utter these words and saw Him bow His head and die, you died a spiritual death. Gazing sorrowfully on His lifeless body, you watched the soldier drive the spear into His Heart. The words of Simeon were then fulfilled. "And thy own soul a sword shall pierce." Filled with grief, you saw how the disciples removed the nails from the Redeemer's hands and feet, extracted the thorns from His head, and took Him down from the cross. What a sight met your tear-dimmed eyes when you beheld the body of your Son, bruised and mangled and covered with open bloody wounds. Your soul filled with love and sorrow, you embraced your Son now pale in death, a victim for the sins of mankind.

3. Mary, Mother of God, you are our spiritual Mother. The crucifixion was not only the sacrifice for sin, it was also the new birth of mankind to the spiritual life, lost by the sin of Adam. It was the great vital act that completed the work of God in the world. You had a share in that work; it was part of your life-work. The Nativity and the Crucifixion were as one action. The sacrifice of the cross began at Bethlehem. The new birth of mankind was completed on Calvary. You were concerned in both, and on each occasion you were present as Mother of the human race.

Your dying Son declared this in His words to you from the cross, "Woman, behold thy Son." Those words include us all. You were declared to be the spiritual "Mother of all the living." On this occasion you bore your share of the penalty allotted to woman: "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children."

When Jesus said to John, "Behold thy Mother," He wanted John to respect and to love you as his Mother. John took my place on Calvary and you became, in his person, my Mother. Jesus could give me—after the gift of Himself—nothing more precious than you. With your heart breaking with sorrow, you had to die a spiritual death in order to become my spiritual Mother. In becoming my Mother, you became the Queen of Martyrs!

Mary, My Mother, what a truly marvelous privilege is mine! Since you are my Mother, I share in the love you have for your Divine Son. Jesus gave me your own dear self, His dearest possession, whom He loved so much that He, in a sense, exhausted His power to exalt you above all other creatures. Jesus exhausted His love for man also. It was not enough for the Infinite Lover of souls to free us from the slavery of hell by His Passion and death and to bestow upon us His body and blood, soul and divinity. He had to crown the gift of His love with the grand gift of you, His Mother.

I can best thank Jesus for His dying bequest by striving daily to become like John in his love and imitation of you. It means imitating your humility, your purity, your detachment from the world, and your unselfish resignation to the will of God in every event of life. It also means unlimited confidence in your motherly intercession if I should have the misfortune of straying from Jesus by sin.

How precious is your love, my Mother! I give you my love by consecrating myself entirely to you, in joy and in sorrow, by complete abandonment to the divine will. May I remember always your sorrows on Calvary, through which you begot us to God and became the co-redemptrix of our race. May this remembrance fill me with love and gratitude to you, and be the reason for my trust in your powerful protection and in your prayers in Heaven, where you plead with your Divine Son for the salvation of us all.

Do not forsake me sweet Mother of Sorrows, because you are my spiritual Mother. If I confide my salvation to your loving care and faithfully imitate your virtues, I know you will keep me in your immaculate Heart both now and at the hour of my death.

Our Lady Of Good Counsel

Feast, April 26
(Triduum, April 23-25)

1. Mary, Mother of God, you are Our Lady of Good Counsel because of the divine wisdom and prudence which you received from the Holy Spirit. This wisdom and prudence showed itself at a very early age, when you willed to devote yourself entirely to God and were presented by your saintly parents, at your own request, for the temple service. You remained there working for God, meditating on His holy Law, praying and praising His divine Goodness.

The virtue of holy prudence guides man in his choice of purposes and in the best means to attain them. You showed singular prudence during your life. You treasured up all the words spoken by the holy angels concerning your divine Son, as well as those pronounced by the prophetess Anna and by holy Simeon when you presented your Son in the temple, and you prudently pondered them in your heart. During your Son's public ministry you seldom appeared, because this was the prudent thing to do on account of your close relationship to the Redeemer.

Mary, My Mother, How perfectly you have followed the inspirations of the Holy Spirit and acted on divine wisdom! No one ever carried out the teaching of your Son with greater exactness than you; hence His words refer to you perfectly: "Everyone therefore who hears these my words and acts upon them, shall be likened to a wise man who built his house on rock" (Matt. 7, 24). Wherefore the Church applies to you the words Jesus spoke of that other Mary who sat at His sacred feet, drinking in the words of divine wisdom flowing from His blessed lips: "Mary has chosen the best part, and it will not be taken away from her" (Luke 10, 42). Teach me to imitate your prudence and listen to your counsel in all walks of life. Tell me how to embrace whatever is best that I may attain the great purpose of my life—heaven and the possession of God—and how to reject whatever is opposed to it or likely to make this attainment difficult. Let me never be influenced by temporal considerations—wealth, honors and pleasures—that I may always follow the counsel of Jesus: "Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be given you besides" (Luke 12, 31).

2. Mary, you are Our Lady of Good Counsel because you are the Seat of Wisdom. You are the Mother of the Uncreated Wisdom, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. You shared more in this wisdom than did any other creature, because you approached nearer to the Source from which it came—Jesus, the Eternal Wisdom. For thirty-three years you enjoyed the company of the only-begotten Son of God in the intimate relation of Mother and Son, and under your care, according to the Evangelist, He "advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace, before God and man" (Luke 2, 52).

In all your deeds you showed the fruits of the Divine Wisdom which had made you the dwelling-place of God. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," says the psalmist (110, 10). Great must have been the childlike reverence and respect with which you watched over your every action and which preserved you from ever displeasing the Divine Wisdom.

Mary, My Mother, I am the work of the wisdom of God together with all other creatures. Everything inside and outside of me should reflect His divine perfections. Like you, let me learn divine wisdom and see God in all things, so that I may rise from the creature to the great Creator. Help me to esteem the light of my reason as a sharing in the divine wisdom, especially when I try to follow the teaching of the Gospel. Let me never esteem worldly wisdom so highly as to pay but little attention to the principles of that wisdom which is from heaven and which alone can make me truly wise and happy. Help me to bear in mind that the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God, and that the secrets of divine wisdom are imparted only to the humble of heart, while they are hidden from the worldly-wise.

Our Lady of Good Counsel, I beg you to teach me true heavenly wisdom which was the source of every good deed you performed. Keep me humble that I may be able to receive your counsel. How often am I confused in the problems of life. How often I do not know where to turn. Advise me what to do. Give me your good counsel, so that following it humbly I may ever please God, find true happiness on this earth and eternal life in the world to come.

3. Mary, Mother of God, Our Lady of Good Counsel, I appeal to you for advice and guidance. Teach me to desire ardently all that is pleasing to God, to seek after it prudently, to accept it truthfully and to do it perfectly, for the praise and glory of God. I beg you to pray for me that by the light of the Holy Spirit and your direction, I may see my duty, and by God's grace and your help I may fulfill it.

Pray to Jesus, the Divine Word and Eternal Wisdom, who is "the life that is the light of men" (John 1, 4), that through you He may teach me His divine wisdom. He ordered most perfectly His whole creation, for He is the true fountain and highest source of light and wisdom. Ask Him to favor me with a ray of His brightness to enlighten the darkness of sin and ignorance in which I was born. May He who makes little ones to speak divine wisdom, direct my tongue and pour out upon my soul the grace I need ever to follow His and your example in my state of life.

Mary, My Mother, through your prayers may I be blessed with a keen understanding of the ways of God. I desire to place under your protection all my efforts in my striving for holiness and all the works of my daily life. I declare that I undertake them only that I may better promote the honor of God and devotion to you. Enlighten the beginning of my efforts, direct my progress, bring my completed work to perfection. Grant that following your good counsel, I may avoid sin, practise virtue, save my soul and attain eternal life.

Our Lady, Queen Of The Apostles

Feast, Saturday after the Feast of the Ascension
(Triduum, Wednesday before the Feast of the Ascension)

1. Mary, Mother of God, at Pentecost you were with the Apostles, preparing for the Holy Spirit the promised Gift of your Son. Prayer was the soul of your preparation, and the Apostles were inspired by your example. When the Holy Spirit descended, you received the richest outpouring of His graces. Your holiness was due to this Spirit of Love, to Whose guidance you abandoned yourself. All that He could give, He bestowed upon you, His Immaculate Bride. On the day of Pentecost the Apostles' worldly views about the Kingdom of God on earth were banished by the Spirit of God, and holiness replaced their imperfections, but no-taint of the slightest sin had to be removed from your virginal soul. He overshadowed you at the Annunciation and on Pentecost He made your heart a furnace of divine love.

Not only did the Holy Spirit pour into your soul a fullness of grace, but He entrusted to you, the Mother of the human family, the distribution of all grace. What was true of the effusion of the Holy Spirit on that day, is equally true of every outpouring of grace: God gives nothing to earth without causing the gift to pass through your hands.

Mary, My Mother, you always lived under the divine influence of the Holy Spirit and in the closest possible union with Him. Teach me to understand something of your love for the Holy Spirit and His love for you in keeping your soul beautiful and holy. Teach me to love Him with some of the love that glowed in your own heart so that my heart may always be His pleasing temple. Protect me from losing the Holy Spirit by sin. Make me ever attentive to His inspirations that I may grow in holiness and may merit to see this Divine Guest of my soul in the glory of His heavenly kingdom.

2. Mary, Mother of God, you are the Queen of the Apostles because you were the source of their inspiration and zeal. By your love of God and of His adopted sons, you aided the Apostles in the spread of Christ's Kingdom on earth. You could not accompany the Apostles while they fulfilled the duties of their ministry, but in silence and solitude, by the power of your prayers and the fervor of your charity, you were the master-missionary of them all.

The part that you have played in the spread of the Church and in its struggles and triumphs, clearly shows the Divine Plan in your regard. You have given to the world the Savior whom the Apostles have proclaimed. From you all missionaries have received the salvation which they bring to the nations. God has made you Queen and Protectress of the Church. You have the charge of keeping faith intact and love unimpaired in the Church founded by our Lord, and of spreading through the nations and over continents the knowledge of the Kingdom of God. Thanks to you, the grace and the sanctifying gifts of the Holy Spirit are scattered abroad over the Church and its members.

3. Mary, Queen of the Apostles, pray for the triumph of God's Kingdom upon earth. Through your powerful intercession promote the propagation of the faith. Give strength and courage to those who work for the salvation of souls as apostles of our own time so that following the example of the divine Missionary, Jesus Christ, they may labor zealously for the spread of God's Kingdom. Give them zeal that by prayer and sacrifice they may cooperate in the great work of the Redemption.

May your glorious example be imitated by countless youths and maidens who will give themselves to the Lord to carry on His work throughout the world. Increase the number of vocations to the priesthood and the religious life and awaken in many young hearts a zeal for the salvation of pagans and sinners.

Pray for more lay apostles, who in every walk of life will defend the rights of God, proclaim His Truth and preach His holy Will by word and example. Fill their hearts with the virtues of joyous zeal for God and for souls and a warm love for divine learning. Give me the same virtues in my state of life—a will inflamed with the desire that God's Will be done and a mind steeped in the knowledge of what that Will is. Give me enthusiasm and joy in the knowledge, the love and the service of the Lord.

Implore the grace of conversion for many pagans that they may come to the knowledge of the true faith and one day be united with the saints in heaven, there to love you and praise your mercy for all eternity. Bless our prayers and labors for the conversion of the world and support them by your powerful intercession with your Son, Jesus, that His Kingdom of Truth and Life, Holiness and Grace Justice. Love and Peace, may be spread among men.

Our Lady Of The Most Blessed Sacrament

Feast, May 13
(Novena, May 4-12)

1. Mary, Mother of God, you are called Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament because you are associated in a special way with the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

From all eternity God chose you to be His Mother, and in time He adorned you with every spiritual charm. He preserved you from original sin and the sway of the devil; He filled you with grace. He made you immaculate in view of the fact that Jesus Christ, the God-man, was to take His Flesh and Blood from you.

Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, I see you in Bethlehem lovingly pressing to your heart your Child, your God, the future Eucharistic Christ. I see you offering Him to the heavenly Father in the temple for our salvation. That very same Christ is mine in the Holy Eucharist when I look upon Him as a Victim on our altars, when I kneel before Him as my Friend in the Tabernacle; when I receive Him into my soul as my Guest in Holy Communion. He is all mine—and all because you gave your consent to become His Mother.

Though it was out of sheer goodness that God decreed to give us His very Son in the Blessed Sacrament, I believe that your prayers had much to do with the carrying out of that plan; for you, too, must have prayed, "Give us this day our daily bread." And when Jesus instituted this Holy Sacrament, He surely thought especially of you.

But I see the relation between you and the Blessed Sacrament above all in your life after Good Friday when you began your new motherhood at the feet of Jesus in the Eucharist. If to live of the Eucharist and by the Eucharist was the very special spirit of the early Church—"And they continued steadfastly in the communion of the breaking of the bread" (Acts 2, 42)—it must have been the summary of your last years on earth. I can easily picture Saint John, the Apostle of love, saying Mass each day in his own home and daily giving you the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist. There before the tabernacle you relived in memory all the happy and sorrowful events of your life with Jesus. In your heart and life the Eucharist took the place of His former presence in the flesh. Your ardent faith and intense love pierced that thin veil which separated you from your loving Son. Your heart and His burned with one flame of love to the glory of the Father there at the altar. How happy Jesus must have been to receive the homage that you paid Him! What joy He must have felt at the thought that His Sacramental Presence brought you such consolation!

Mary, My Mother, I have every reason to honor you under the title of Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament, because you have given me the Eucharistic Christ. It is your Son who abides with me in the tabernacle as the best Friend I have in this world, who offers Himself to the Father for me as the Victim of Calvary at Holy Mass, who gives Himself to me as Food in Holy Communion.

2. Mary, Mother of God, Jesus in the Holy Eucharist is your Gift to us. Jesus, not satisfied with having given Himself to all mankind in the Incarnation, wished to become united with each of us in a most intimate manner by means of the Holy Eucharist, for by an unceasing act of love He gives Himself to us in each Consecration and in each Communion. Your Heart, Blessed Mother, is always conformable to Our Lord's will. Having loved your sinful children so much as to sacrifice for them your only Son in His Passion, you loved them to the end by giving them the Holy Eucharist. This gift of Your Heart entitles you to be called the Mother of the Holy Eucharist. Everyday you renew your Gift generously, because to each Sacrifice of your Son, you give your consent, each Consecration is your gift to us. Each Communion is a mystery of your love for us and a grace which you obtain and bestow on us.

Mary, My Mother, your whole life was like a Mass. The presentation of the Child Jesus in the temple was like the Offertory, for you offered to the Heavenly Father this "material" for the sacrifice—the body and blood of your little Son. You offered to the Father in Heaven the Body and Blood of the Lamb you bore and sacrificed Him with the knife of your will on the altar of your heart. You were willing to offer Him at this tender age, for the salvation of the world.

The Consecration took place on Calvary where you shared in the offering of the bloody sacrifice of the New Testament. You stood close to Jesus, your head raised to drink the bitter chalice offered your arms stretched out and reaching upward, like a priest at the altar. You offered Him on the altar of the Cross—the future Eucharistic Christ—in perfect adoration to the insulted majesty of God, in thanksgiving for all the blessings showered on mankind; in reparation for our sins and in petition for sinners. This Body, given to us at Christmas and immolated on Good Friday, was flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone. It died that we might never die, that It might nourish us unto eternal life.

The Communion was your life of union with Jesus in the Eucharist after His Ascension. The offering of your Son was continued in each Holy Mass ever to be offered, in each Holy Communion ever to be received, in each act of adoration and prayer before the Sacred Host.

You were the first Chalice of the Blood of Jesus for Our Lord dwelt in you during the nine months of expectation as in a kind of ciborium. How much more precious you were than any chalice of richest gold. At the Crib, you were the first ostensorium of your Son, showing Him to the shepherds, to the Magi and to the world. After the Ascension you found the past under another form; the consecrated Bread the Apostle John placed on your lips was Jesus, who was formed from your own flesh and with whom your body was again united.

3. Mary, Mother of God, I choose you as my model of Eucharistic devotion. I wish to attend Holy Mass, receive Holy Communion, and visit Jesus in the tabernacle in union with you, in the spirit in which you yourself did so. Just as in my tenderest years I learned to love God at my mother's knee, so now I desire to learn to love my Eucharistic God, as it were, at your knee, for I firmly believe that you are the shortest and surest way to the Heart of the Eucharistic Christ.

Your offering of the bloody sacrifice of Calvary is the perfect model for my offering Holy Mass. You suffered with your Divine Son. Never did a mother love her son as you loved Jesus; and so never did a mother share in her son's agony so deeply as you shared the Passion. Jesus died because He willed to die. You must have willed your Son's death, because, hard as it was to make this sacrifice, it would have been quite impossible for your will to be the least separated from His. He died out of love for us; this was His final proof of love. Aside from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, no human heart ever loved mankind so deeply as your heart, and, therefore, you wanted to unite your will to His, offering to Almighty God this Holy Sacrifice out of pure charity for the human race.

Help me to share actively in Holy Mass by sharing in your spirit. Teach me to imitate you by accepting willingly all the suffering which my service of God involves, my struggles against temptation, my difficult acts of virtue, my little penances—in union with the Victim Jesus on the altar out of love for God and mankind. You are truly my model in offering Holy Mass. Each time Jesus becomes present in the hands of the priest, the Life given to us by the words of consecration comes originally from. you. Surely it is through your special influence as Mediatrix of Graces that this Life is shared with me. Therefore, I offer Jesus to the Father through your hands, and in Holy Communion I ask for graces through you.

How earnestly you invite me to come and partake of this Bread of Life. It is through you that I am able to eat the Bread of Heaven even every day. It is through your prayers that God inspires me to receive It and grants me the grace to receive It worthily. As Eve induced Adam to eat of the forbidden fruit which brought death upon us, so you prompt us to eat the Bread which gives us life. Help me to receive Holy Communion frequently, at least each week, if not daily.

Mary, My Mother, from your early years you adored the one true God in the Temple at Jerusalem. You adored your God incarnate within your chaste womb from the time of the Incarnation to His birth. In Bethlehem you first adored Him in His visible presence as He lay in all His helplessness before your joyful eyes. From that time forward until His Ascension into Heaven, you were the constant adorer of the Word-made-Flesh in all the mysteries of His earthly life. The early Christians, all lovers of the Eucharist, who visited you frequently during your hidden life of adoration, must have taken away with them the spirit of your Eucharistic devotion. As you knelt before the Sacred Species, you truly influenced the First Christians to be ardent lovers of your loving Son in the Blessed Sacrament. Teach me to prove my love for Jesus by visiting Him frequently in His tabernacle home, where He lives as the best Friend I have upon earth, ready to console and strengthen me in my trials, for His Sacred Heart invites me, "Come to Me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you lest."

Mary, I beg you to lead me to my Sacramental Jesus! Make me a fervent apostle of the Eucharist. Make me Eucharist-minded to the extent that my very life may be the Eucharist—in union with you, Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament.

Mary, Help Of Christians

Feast, May 24
(Triduum, May 21-23)

1. Mary, Mother of God, you are the Mother of mankind and therefore the Help of Christians, the all-powerful suppliant. You abound in divine life for yourself; for us you abound in grace. Your part in distributing God's grace is a result of the part you played in obtaining it. Although it is true that Jesus in glory, by means of His divine wounds, is our intercessor before the Father and all God's gifts come to us through His merits, you are the all-powerful suppliant, through whom every prayer reaches up to Him and every grace comes down. From the moment you said, "Be it done to me according to thy word," the Father in heaven made Jesus and you, as it were, a redemptive pair; you, of course, have always been dependent on Him. In all of the mysteries of Jesus, in every part of His life, the Father always thought of you two together; together you labored to save men.

You were charged with dispensing the supernatural life to men because this was fitting. But you help Christians also by your prayers. You express your wishes to God, those wishes which have to do with our needs—needs of body and needs of soul. Because of your dignity, you reach to the borders of the divine. He who gives grace, takes your prayers for commands.

How earnestly you wish God's grace for us! How earnestly, too, you want to help us in all our needs! When the Persons of the Blessed Trinity gaze on you, the Immaculate One, most pure, most beautiful, supremely pleasing to eternal love, what can they refuse you? They see Jesus Christ in you, the treasure-house of all their blessings. Everything which Jesus may claim in justice is yours by friendship's title. Through your prayers and dignity the power and the fruits of the Passion of Jesus are applied to men No intercession, neither yours nor that of any saint, is of value except through Him, through His blessed wounds. But, if it is true that in the task of redemption you cooperated with Him in everything, in His joys and sorrows, in His winning our salvation then it is also true that you do the same in the dispensing of all the graces, material and spiritual, necessary for our salvation.

Mary, My Mother, I could go directly to God and ask Him for His grace without your help and that of the Saints, but God has not willed it so. Having once given us Jesus Christ by you, God does not change His way of helping us. Through you we have received Jesus Christ, the Universal Source of Grace, so through your intercession, we still continue to receive the various actual graces suited to our state of life. Jesus continues ceaselessly to pray for us, offering for us to His heavenly Father His infinite merits and atonement, and causing the floods of grace to descend upon us to save us. Since you had your place beside Jesus when there was question of ransoming us and meriting for us all the graces necessary for our salvation, you must in like manner have your place beside Him now, when there is question of securing for us by your prayers in heaven the graces prepared for us in view of the merits of Christ.

2. Mary, Mother of God, when I consider your compassion for mankind and your influence with God, I am urged to give my whole-hearted and unlimited confidence to you, Help of Christians. Your motherly interest in my needs and the salvation of my soul encourage me to make a prompt appeal to you in all my needs and dangers.

When I address the Almighty, I am frequently fearful because of my sinfulness in the presence of His infinite majesty and holiness. Jesus is my Savior and I have confidence in His infinite merits. Even in the Son of God I sometimes fear the Divine Majesty because although He became Man, He did not cease to be God. But because of my sinfulness, I also have need of an intercessor with Him. I need an advocate with God, and therefore I turn to you, the Mother of God. You are a human creature, but free from even the slightest sin or guilt, and absolutely pure by reason of the singular excellence of your nature. The Son will listen to you, His Mother, and the Father will listen to His Son.

Mary, My Mother, the word which best summarizes your whole career is "Mother." Mother you are and that doubly in the terms of our Catholic belief: human Mother of Jesus, supernatural Mother of every Christian. You brought forth Jesus, your First-born, without pain; but in giving birth to your second-born, what agony did you not have to endure? May I weigh well at what price you became the Mother of the human race, so that I may remember how much you love me and how eager you are to help me and all Christians. For from the moment when Jesus told you to see Him, in John, you saw Jesus in all Christians. You took your only Son to heart in all men born. Then for His sake, be our Help! You are, indeed, the ladder by which Christians may ascend to heaven; you are their greatest hope, and the whole ground of their hope. Surely the Son cannot refuse her who gave Him birth, the one who never denied Him anything. This thought wonderfully strengthens my confidence in you, Help of Christians.

3. Mary, Mother of God, you are the Help of Christians because you are the Mother of the Mystical Body of Christ. As you were the Mother of Jesus in the Incarnation, when He assumed a physical Body, so also you are the Mother of Jesus in His Mystical Body, and of all those who, as members of that Body, are the brothers and sisters of Christ by Divine adoption. Jesus, your First-born, was brought forth in joy at Bethlehem, but His brethren, your spiritual children, were brought forth in anguish of spirit at the foot of the cross.

As you cradled the new-born Savior and nourished and cared for Him, so at Pentecost you cradled the new-born Church, watched over its frail, delicate body and fostered and nourished it with motherly care.

As you were called to cooperate with your Divine Son on Calvary in acquiring the treasure of His infinite merits, so now in Heaven you cooperate with Him in dispensing those merits to His Mystical Body. I believe that all graces and heavenly favors flow to the Mystical Body of Christ as from the Head, but you are the channel, through which, by God's will, all graces come to humanity.

Since you are the Mother of men, God gave you a special knowledge of the needs of every Christian that you might help us to save our souls. You would not be completely happy in heaven if you did not know the interests of those souls redeemed at the cost of so much pain to Jesus and you. I cannot for a moment suspect, all good and all powerful as you are, that you are unwilling to implore for me the graces which I need so much and above all. Moreover, I am confident that you will obtain for me.

Mary, My Mother, all the saints have prayed to you for help: the prophets, the evangelists, the apostles, the martyrs, the confessors, the heroic virgins and chaste widows. All those whose Queen you are have learnt of Jesus that they must call you Mother and ask your help. Following their example and striving to attain to their faith, joining in their admiration, in their intense pleading, I, a poor sinner, who am so in need of help and pity, in need of your mercy, cry out to you: Mary, Help of Christians, pray for us . . . pray for me! Pray for us, you who are so powerful, be all-powerful in our behalf! You know all our needs—needs of body and needs of soul—infinitely better than a mother. Pray for us Christians who sigh to you in this vale of tears so that we may be comforted, enlightened, strengthened, guided, and finally saved!

Mary, Mediatrix Of All Graces

Feast, May 31
(Novena, May 22-30)

1. Mary, Mother of God, you are our Mediatrix. I believe, according to the inspired teaching of St. Paul, that there is but one Mediator between God and man—your Son Jesus. His role in our salvation is absolutely necessary. He saved us by offering to the justice of God perfect atonement for our sins. He alone has paid the full price of our ransom, and to this price no one else has contributed.

And yet, in the whole work of the redemption, your Son wanted to associate you with Himself. Though you did not pay even the smallest part of our debt, you cooperated in His work by the entire union of your will with His. Although He might have wrought our salvation alone, without inviting you to share in His work, He did not choose to do so. He willed that (1) you should be present at each stage of His mortal career—renewing, continuing, completing what you had done at the Incarnation. He also willed that (2) everywhere the offering of Himself should be presented to the Father through your hands. This is what took place at His entrance into the world; and again when He took upon Himself the office of Savior in the mystery of the Circumcision, and received from you the Holy Name of Jesus. Once more He renewed His offering at the Presentation in the Temple. And finally when the sacrifice was completed by His death upon the cross you had your place beside Him. Your will was one with His, faithful to your promise made at the Incarnation.

Mary, My Mother, your mediation is in reality one with that of Jesus, who had seen fit to give Himself to us only through you. He made His taking of the role of Mediator dependent on your consent, and it was your motherly care, shown toward Him through life, which made Him ready for the sacrifice that reconciled the world to God. Truly then, you are entitled to be called our Mediatrix.

2. Mary, Mother of God, you are the Mediatrix of All Graces. By this title I understand: (1) upon your mediation and intercession depends the distribution of the riches of the treasury which Jesus acquired for the salvation of men; (2) consequently, no grace comes to all of us as a body or to any of us in particular which you have not asked for in our behalf; (3) according to the order of things established by God, you have become, under Jesus Christ, after Jesus Christ, and through Jesus Christ—from whom you can never be separated—the source and principle for us of all supernatural life.

Your Son won a treasure of grace for us by the life and death He offered up to the heavenly Father. I cannot secure my salvation without these graces, for it is the grace of God which gives me light and strength to do good deeds. Through the sacraments, prayer and good deeds, I can make my own the merit of the atonement of Jesus. You took part in this offering of the life and death of Jesus. (1) You prepared in your virginal womb a fit temple for the union of the Son of God—the Divine Word—with our human nature. (2) You took part in this offering also by the consent which you gave to the whole plan of the Redemption, and by your union of will with that of your divine Son even to the point of His sacrifice on the cross. If you had part in the work of the Redemption, then you also had part in all those graces which were prepared for us in view of the merits of Jesus for our salutation. You truly deserve to be called the Mediatrix of Grace.

Mary, My Mother, God has willed that you should distribute His graces because you far surpass all other creatures in holiness: you are the masterpiece of His creation, who more than all the others honored and loved Him during your life; because you are the one whom He has chosen to be the Mother of His Son, and because you have been, according to the Divine Plan, associated with Jesus in the work of Redemption.

Jesus is the only Mediator of justice, and by His merits He obtains for us all graces and salvation; but you are the Mediatrix of grace. You have merited by a merit of fitness all that Jesus has merited by a merit of justice. You receive all graces through Jesus Christ, because you pray and ask for them in the Name of Jesus Christ. Whatever graces we receive, come to us through your intercession.

3. Mary, Mother of God, as Mediatrix of All Graces you have entered into the highest state of power and glory in heaven in order that you may help us on our difficult journey to the heavenly City of God. All good things come to us through your hands. At every moment you interest yourself in our behalf in heaven, and obtain for us by your prayers all the graces we need to reach salvation. You are the channel by which all the favors of Jesus descend upon us, even as it was through you and in union with you that during His mortal life He won for us whatever title we have to His gifts and graces.

Jesus is the Head of the Church, and you are its neck. I believe that all graces, all heavenly blessings descend from Jesus—as from the Head—by means of you—as the neck—to the body of the Church. You were united with Jesus when He bestowed special favors. Jesus caused the wonderful effects of grace in the soul of John the Baptist, but at the sound of your voice his sanctification was effected, and both he and his mother Elizabeth were filled with the Holy Spirit. You were the instrument used by your Son. At your prayer Jesus changed the water into wine in Cana.

And so it is even now in heaven. While no gift is bestowed on us by God except in virtue of the Passion and death of your divine Son, the Precious Blood and the sacred wounds of Jesus are presented to God by you. Apart from your cooperation no grace descends to earth.

Mary, My Mother, since it is the will of God that we should obtain all through you, teach me to turn to you in all my needs. You are all-powerful because your divine Son instantly fulfills all your desires in order to honor you. At the marriage feast of Cana He worked His first miracle because you asked Him for this favor. Show the same compassion toward me, for I am in need of grace to fight temptation, to avoid sin and to lead a holy life. For the sake of Jesus be mindful of me as you stand near Him who granted you the fullness of grace. Bestow on me gifts from the riches of that fullness. You are the channel of all good things after the Trinity, Mediatrix of the world after the Mediator. Through you I hope to reach the heavenly Kingdom. I come to you with confidence, knowing that through you all glory, honor and holiness given to the human race from the first Adam to the last ages has been granted, is being granted and will be granted to apostles, prophets, martyrs and all the just. You "found grace with God" to restore salvation to all men. Save me, a poor sinner who confidently invokes your intercession, through the graces merited for me on the cross by the precious Blood of your Son.

The Queenship Of Mary

Feast, May 31
(Novena, May 22-30)

1. Mary, Mother of God, I believe that as Mediatrix with Jesus you share also in His sovereign dominion over the universe. You are Queen because you are the Mother of the Word Incarnate. Christ is universal King because He rules all creatures by His personal union with the divinity. You brought Him into the world that He might be King, according to the words of the archangel: "And of His kingdom there shall be no end." By consenting to His birth, you made Him King.

Mary, My Mother, you are Queen also because your are Co-Redemptrix. Jesus reigns over us not only by natural right, but also by the right of redemption. As cooperator with your Son in that work of redemption, you also acquired the right to reign with Him. God chose you to be His Mother and by that very choice has associated you with Himself in the work of the salvation of men. Since you had your place beside Jesus when there was question of ransoming us and meriting for us all the graces necessary for our salvation, you must in like manner have your place beside Him now, when there is question of securing for us by your prayers in heaven the graces prepared for us in view of the merits of Christ. This is my hope that you will be a Mother to me and obtain for me the grace I need to save my soul.

2. Mary, Mother of God, yours is a queenship of goodness. You add a degree of motherly sweetness to the joy of the angels and saints and to the blessed of the Church triumphant. To the Church suffering you bring consolation, relief, deliverance, to the Church militant you offer aid, confidence, victory.

Yours is a queenship of dominion. You exercise your queenly dominion over the minds, the hearts, the wills and even over the bodies of your subjects. You rule over their minds, by making them understand better the teaching of Christ, over their hearts, by turning them to Jesus through the charm of your motherly affection, over their wills, by gently inclining them to observe all the commandments of your Son; over their bodies, by teaching men to subject their members to the law of God through the practice of temperance and chastity. The more fully you are Queen in a soul, the more does Jesus reign there as King. Reign over my mind and heart and will and body, so that I may belong completely to Jesus through you.

Mary, My Mother, yours is a queenship of conquest. How many souls have still to be brought under the rule of Christ the King! Fulfill your apostolic mission of winning the world for Christ. As formerly the shepherds and the magi found Jesus close to you, so now may all sinners, unbelievers and pagans find Jesus through you, His Mother. Hasten the reign of Christ by ruling over all of us, your children.

3. Mary, Mother of God, the apostolic mission confided to you as Queen by your Son is to help Him to the end of time in the sanctification and the salvation of all the souls that come into the world. This apostolic mission is a consequence of your office as Mother, as Co-Redemptrix and as Dispenser of all graces.

As Mother, it is your mission to preserve your children from sin and to make them live the supernatural life. You are the first apostle of your children not only because you are the most perfect of mothers, but especially because you are our spiritual Mother. Your apostolic work—to snatch souls from Satan and from sin to make them live the supernatural life—is the very reason for your motherhood.

As Co-Redemptrix, you must finish your work by applying the grace of redemption to each individual soul, for only then the redemption is achieved. This is the very heart of your apostolate. No apostolic act bears fruit without grace. But all graces come through you. Through your prayers all graces have come to the apostle and to the souls converted or sanctified. By granting them these graces you have performed a work of the apostolate. Your apostolate is universal because you are the spiritual Mother of all men and the universal Co-Redemptrix. All other apostles and workers for the salvation of souls depend upon you for blessing upon their missionary work. Bless the work of those who spend themselves to bring souls to your loving Son. Through your powerful intercession obtain for them the graces they need. Sanctify them first, so that they may then more effectively sanctify others.

Mary, My Mother, as Dispenser of all graces, you make the world share in the infinite merits of the redemption. You are the Mediatrix of our peace with God and the Giver of heavenly graces. You have entered into the highest state of power and glory in Heaven in order that you may help us in our journey through so many dangers to the kingdom of Heaven. I believe with the Church that from the great treasury of graces that Jesus has merited for us, nothing comes to us, by the will of God. except through you. Hence, it is through you that we must go to Christ, almost in the same way as through Christ we approach our Heavenly Father. You are our Mediatrix with our Mediator.

We do not attribute to you the power of producing supernatural grace, even though you are the Mother of God, for this power belongs to God alone. But, because you surpass all other creatures in holiness and in the closeness of your union with Jesus and. because you have been, according to the Divine Plan, associated with Jesus in the work of Redemption, you have merited by a merit of fitness all that Christ has merited by a merit of justice, and God has made you the Giver of His Graces.

You are Queen of the universe, not by force, but by the power of love. You embrace the universe in the realm of your love and enrich it through your unfailing intercession. You are "Suppliant Omnipotence" because your prayer obtains all graces from the infinite treasures of God.

From your heart we hope to obtain the love of God that He expects from His creatures, and also the pardon that guilty but repentant creatures ask from their merciful Creator. All souls belong to you and your Son. He is King and you are Queen of all hearts. Rule over us by the queenly power of your love that the Kingdom of your Son—the Kingdom of Truth and Life, Holiness and Grace, Justice, Love and Peace—may come upon earth.

Mary, Virgin Mother Of Grace

Feast, June 9
(Triduum, June 6-8)

1. Mary, Mother of God, since you are the Mother of Jesus Christ, you are the Mother of Grace as well. God prepared you for this exalted dignity by an extraordinary abundance of His graces, when He chose you to be the instrument of His mercy by making you the Mother of His divine Son. This is why you were greeted by the angel in the words, "Hail, full of grace." According to earthly standards, nothing could be added to your fullness of grace. According to God's eternal standards, the sanctity proclaimed by Gabriel when he called you "full of grace," was but the beginning of your wonderful growth in holiness. When Jesus was conceived in your womb by the infinite power of the Holy Spirit, you possessed the Author of grace, and He so adorned your soul with the richness of His heavenly gifts that you won the admiration of men and angels. After the birth of your Divine Son, this grace grew in splendor within you as it daily united you more closely with your God. Even your earthly sufferings were to deepen your sanctity. How many and how great then, were the graces you received in order to reach the eminent virtue that was yours when, on Calvary, you became the Queen of Martyrs.

Mary, My Mother, as I cannot grasp the depth of your sanctity, I cannot understand the measure of your grace. The gift that God conferred upon you when He chose you to be the Mother of His Divine Son, and the grace that was in proportion to that gift, are beyond the understanding of men and even angels. All that God could give, He bestowed on you. The Holy Spirit overshadowed you at the Annunciation, and on Pentecost He made your heart a furnace of Divine love.

2. Mary, Mother of God, you are Mother of Grace, because you are begotten of you to the life of grace, and are indebted to you after Jesus, for our supernatural life. God, having once given us Jesus Christ by you, Holy Virgin, does not change His way of blessing us with His gifts. As we have received through you the Universal Source of Grace Jesus your Son, so we still continue to receive, by your intercession, the various actual graces suited to our state and calling in Christ. Your motherly love contributed so much to our salvation in the Incarnation of the Son of God, who is the Universal Source of Grace, that you will eternally contribute as much to all the works of grace, which come to us because of the Incarnation.

God is the source of every good and the absolute Master of all graces. You are only a pure creature, who receives whatever you obtain as a pure favor from God. But it is most reasonable and proper to say that God, who honored and loved You more than all others during your life, and whom He had chosen to be the Mother of His Son and our Redeemer, wills that all graces that are granted to those whom He has redeemed should pass through your hands and be distributed by you in order to exalt you. Jesus is the only Mediator of justice, and by His merits He obtains for us all graces and salvation but you are the Mediatrix of grace. Though receiving all you obtain through Jesus Christ, because you pray and ask for it in the Name of Jesus, yet whatever graces we receive, come to us through your intercession.

Mary, My Mother, I firmly believe that the saints and blessed in Heaven can aid us by interceding for us with God. The holier a person is and the greater the intimacy of his union with God, the greater also is the power of his prayers. But your holiness is so great, that the power of your intercession is greater than that of all the other saints. The prayers of the saints avail only in a limited way. The power of your intercession has no such limits, for the saints teach me that our Savior can refuse nothing to His Mother. You are indeed all-powerful in Heaven, but your omnipotence is not one of authority and command, but of intercession. We can certainly call you "Suppliant Omnipotence."

3. Mary, Mother of God, I believe that divine grace is absolutely necessary for the performing of any act that is meritorious for eternal life. I am grateful to your divine Son for this priceless gift of God, for by His Passion and death He not only reinstated us in the friendship of His heavenly Father, but also purchased for us all the graces we stand in need of to attain eternal life.

I also believe that grace is a free gift of God, and I have no claim to it except as a member of His holy Church, which is the mystical body of Christ. Whoever abides in this Church will bring forth much salutary fruit; whereas they who willingly separate themselves from it must wither away spiritually. How strongly Jesus reminded me of this: "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it remain on the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches" (John 15, 4).

Help me to be deeply grateful for God's generosity toward me. I have been especially blessed as a Catholic, for God has given me graces which He has not given to everyone else. The Catholic Church the Gospels, the sacraments, the Mother of Divine Grace as my advocate—these are among the special blessings with which I am favored. I know that much will be required from those to whom much is given. Help me to make good use of the graces given me by God. May my faith influence my conduct. May the instructions I receive increase the love of God in me and strengthen my determination to serve Him with greater zeal. May I derive all the beneficial results the holy sacraments are to produce in my soul.

Mary, My Mother, I realize that I have not always corresponded faithfully with these graces. I will not be discouraged, but rather go with confidence to you, the throne of grace. Even though my past sinfulness may have made me unworthy to appear before God, I trust that you will appeal to God in my behalf as the Mother of Divine Grace. Through your prayers you will obtain forgiveness for my past negligence. You will obtain for me grace to be faithful to God during the rest of my life.

Above all, I beg of you to secure for me in the our of death the grace of final perseverance: that triumphant grace which crowns the measure of God's rifts here below and which is followed by the possession of God in heaven.

Our Lady Of Perpetual Help

Feast, June 27
(Novena, June 18-26)

1. Mary, Mother of God, you are the Mother of Perpetual Help because of the graces you have at your disposal. God has willed that by your intercession we should obtain the graces Jesus has merited for us. Your intimate union with your Divine Son is the reason for your power with Him. All-powerful though He is, God could not bestow upon a creature a degree of honor higher than that conferred on you as the Mother of His Son. He could not make you divine by nature, but He has made you inseparable from Jesus in the salvation of souls through the grace which He has so abundantly poured out upon you because of the Divine Motherhood. The angel said to you, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women" (Luke 1 28). Your fullness of grace brought you to a most intimate union with the Author of grace. It was fitting that you receive into your holy womb the One who contained all graces. Thus you became in some way the source of that grace which Jesus would pour forth over all mankind.

Mary, My Mother, give me a rich share in the graces merited for me by your Son. Let not my sinfulness and human weakness stand in the way of my receiving the graces I need for the sanctification and salvation of my soul. Through your prayers be always my powerful helper.

2. Mary, Mother of God, you are my Mother of Perpetual Help because of your love for me. No creature loved Jesus more than you, and consequently, no one loves the souls redeemed by His Blood more than you. Jesus purchased me at the cost of His own life, and you offered that life to God for me.

You love Jesus because you are His Mother, and you love me because you are my Mother. By offering your Divine Son on Calvary you brought me forth to a life of grace and thus became my spiritual Mother. When Jesus said, "Woman, behold thy son...Behold thy Mother," He gave you to me to be my Mother for all Christians form one body with Christ, and Saint John represented them all beneath the cross. After your Divine Son, you are God's most precious gift to man. Therefore, no one could ever love me more, after Christ, than you do.

Mary, My Mother, help me to realize that the closer my union with you, the more intimate is my union with your Son. I cannot have Jesus for my Brother if I do not have you for my Mother. Help me to love Jesus with all my heart and to show my love for Him by loving you whom He has loved so dearly. I know that He wants you ever to be my Mother of Perpetual Help so that the graces He has merited for me may effect the salvation of my soul.

3. Mary, Mother of God, in your own lifetime you showed that you are truly our Mother of Perpetual Help. At the marriage feast of Cana you asked your Son to perform a miracle for the distressed bride and groom. At your request He worked the first miracle of His public life. He was pleased to help others for your sake. Your directions to the waiters: "Do whatever He tells you" (John 2, 5), show that you regarded your Son's answer as a striking sign of His special love for you.

Furthermore, Jesus made the revelation of His divinity and the strengthening of the faith of His disciples the effect of your intercession. When He changed the water to wine, He did your bidding as God, since as man He could not perform miracles. Thus He clearly revealed that in His kingdom you were to be the dispenser of His riches.

What a striking lesson you give me by this unlimited confidence in the power and goodness-of your Divine Son! Enlightened by God, you knew that He would grant your request. I should learn from your conduct never to oppose the divine will, even though conformity to it may mean a severe test of my faith. Your example teaches me that Jesus will work miracles for persevering prayer that springs from confidence and humility.

Mary, My Mother, give me an absolute trust in your help. How truly can the words of Holy Scripture be applied to you: "In me is all grace of the way and of the truth: in me is all hope of life and of virtue" (Ecclus 24, 25). How consoling to know that I have Christ, my elder Brother, "always living to make intercession for me," and you, my Mother, ever pleading for me before the throne of God. I can pray to you with full confidence because you are loved by the Father as the Mother of His Son, loved by the Son as His own Mother, loved by the Holy Spirit as His Immaculate Bride.

Since Jesus has given you charge of the dispensing of His graces, I know that you are most eager to use this power to help me. You want to give me help every time I need it. I beg you to take care of me for I am a poor sinful child. Mother of Perpetual Help, pray for me!

Visitation Of The Blessed Virgin Mary

Feast, July 2
(Novena, June 23-July 1)

1. Mary, Mother of God, your charity is strikingly shown forth in the Visitation. When you learned from the angel that your cousin Elizabeth was with child and needed your help, you set out to care for her. Neither your long absence from home, nor the inconvenience of a difficult and dangerous journey to the mountain country kept you from making this mission of love. You thought only of the good you could do in Elizabeth's home. Your sincere love made you hasten to be of service. As you entered the house of Zachary and greeted your aged cousin, you offered kind words of comfort and congratulation. You lovingly served her till you saw her happily delivered of the child of promise with which God had blessed her.

How humble you were! Though you were the Mother of the Most High, you wanted to become the nurse of Elizabeth and the infant John. Though declared blessed among women, yet you considered yourself the servant of two of God's beloved children.

Help me to strive to imitate your wonderful charity by aiding those who are in need, by sympathizing with those who are afflicted, by opening my heart and applying my hands to relieve every form of distress. Give me charity like yours, which recognized in every human being a brother or sister in Jesus Christ, to be treated with respect and tenderness and to be aided according to the measure of my power. 'Teach me that the test of my following of your Divine Son is practical charity. Help me, above all, so that by my good example I may enrich and ennoble every human being whose life I touch.

Mary, My Mother, may the thought of your tenderness and charity increase my confidence in you and make me look up to you in all the dangers that surround me in life. I am sure that you, who are all-powerful as my advocate, will not desert me but will bring to my poor afflicted soul grace and sanctification.

2. Mary, Mother of God, the results of your visit to Elizabeth were wonderful. Scarcely had you greeted your aged cousin, when mother and son felt at once the sanctifying effects of your loving presence. The child in the womb of Elizabeth was sanctified and exulted for joy at the presence of Jesus. At the sound of your voice Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and began to prophesy: "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb." She humbly exclaimed, "How have I deserved this happiness that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?" God freed His future messenger from original sin and enriched him with grace. Elizabeth proclaimed that you were the Mother of Christ and declared you blessed among women because you were the most holy dwelling of the Eternal God.

The effects of the presence of Jesus and you are still the same. Grace comes to us from Jesus and reaches us through you. Saint Elizabeth received the Holy Spirit through your intervention, in order to teach us that we must make use of you as our Mediatrix with your Divine Son, if we wish to obtain the Holy Spirit. It is true that we could go directly to God and ask Him for His grace without your help, but God has not willed it so.

Mary, My Mother, in the mystery of the Visitation, you began your high office of bringing Jesus into the souls of men. With joy you must have foreseen the millions of souls who by your presence in their lives would cast off the bonds of sin. Through the mystery of your Visitation enlighten my mind with divine truth, warm my heart with heavenly love; strengthen me to win the victory over my evil inclinations and the power of evil.

3. Mary, Mother of God, how beautifully you expressed your gratitude and humility! Unmindful of your dignity and greatness, you thought only of returning thanks to God, to whom you attributed all your greatness and privileges. God had exalted you above all creatures. You thought only of praising Him as your greatest Benefactor when you exclaimed, "My soul praises the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior...For He who is mighty has done great things for me." In your humility, you looked upon yourself as His lowly handmaid. Though you prophesied that all generations would call you blessed, you attributed all holiness to God. The glory of the great things that had been done in you, you attributed to God's mercy and power and love. God had raised you to the highest dignity in His power in choosing you to be the Mother of His Son. The whole human race rejoices in you as Queen and Mother.

Mary, My Mother, teach me ever to seek the glory of God and to render to Him what is His divine rights. God looks for gratitude and humility which draw down upon us His favor and His gifts. God wants His gifts recognized. Whereas pride and ingratitude repel grace from our souls, gratitude and humility, like golden keys, unlock the treasury of heaven. Help me to return unceasing thanks to God for His many favors, and keep me humble in possessing and using them. May I be found worthy of your frequent visits with Jesus to my heart in this life and of the invitation to come and live with You both for all eternity in heaven.

Our Lady Of Mount Carmel

Feast, July 16
(Novena, July 7-15)

1. Mary, Mother of God, you are our true Mother because you have given us supernatural life. The supernatural life is the life of Jesus in us through grace. You have given us Christ that He may make us live of His life.

At Nazareth, you knew that by saying Yes or No to Gabriel, you would be giving us life or leaving us in spiritual death. You said Yes so that we might live. By consenting to give natural life to Jesus, you consented to give us supernatural life. In becoming His Mother, you became ours. From that hour, we were members of the Mystical Body of Christ. I thank you for consenting to become my spiritual Mother by giving me Jesus. Through your prayers, may Jesus make me live of His life through sanctifying and actual grace. May these graces become most fruitful in my soul till I become like you, another Christ.

On Calvary our redemption was accomplished, by His death, Jesus merited for us the grace to live His life. Jesus did this in union with you. You conceived Him as victim, you prepared Him for this sacrifice beneath the cross you offered Him to the Father for our salvation. Though you felt joy in the birth of your first-born Son, you brought us forth in sorrow at the death of that same Son. Jesus proclaimed your motherhood from the cross by entrusting you to John and John to you when He said, "Woman behold thy son...Son, behold thy Mother."

Mary, My Mother, at my baptism you gave me life at the moment when sanctifying grace was infused into my soul at the baptismal font. You obtained that grace for me. I became a child of God. You brought me forth to the divine life.

2. Mary, Mother of God, you are more truly our Mother than any other mother by the way in which you have given us life. To bring us forth, you gave much more than our earthly mothers gave. You bore unspeakable sufferings and offered the life of Him who was dearer to you than your own life.

You love me with a love that is greater than the love of my own mother; you love me with the very love with which you love Jesus, since all your children form but one body with Him.

Mary, My Mother, you are mother in a higher degree because of the kind of life which you have imparted to me. You have given me life without end, a life of happiness for all eternity, not a created life, but a share in uncreated life, in the very life of God. I thank you for all you mean to me as my spiritual Mother. During my whole life you continue to take care of me until Christ be formed in me. If unfortunately I should lose this life by sin, you can bring me back to supernatural life. May I always be most grateful by striving to grow in this divine life. Only then can I really love you as you desire—when Jesus is formed in me so that I can love you as Jesus does.

3. Mary, Blessed Virgin, full of grace, Queen of all Saints, how consoling it is for me to venerate you under the title of Our Lady of Mount Carmel! It takes me back to the days of the prophet Elias when you were prefigured on Mount Carmel under the form of the little cloud from which, as it grew larger, there fell a kindly rain, a symbol of the sanctifying graces that come to us from you. Even from the days of the Apostles you were honored under this mystical title. Today I am filled with joy at the thought that we are united with those first clients of yours, and in union with them we greet you, saying: O beauty of Carmel, glory of Libanus, purest of lilies, mystical rose in the flowering garden of the Church.

Virgin of virgins, remember me in my needs, and show yourself my Mother. Shed upon me more and more the living light of that faith which made you blessed. Inflame me with that heavenly love with which you loved your dear Son, Jesus Christ . . . I am filled with miseries both spiritual and temporal. I am afflicted with many sorrows in body and soul, and I take refuge, like a child, in the embrace of your motherly protection.

Mother of God, you have very great power. Obtain for me from Jesus the heavenly gifts of humility, chastity and meekness, which were the fairest adornments of your immaculate soul. Make me strong in the midst of the temptations and bitterness which so often trouble my soul. And when the days of my earthly pilgrimage are over, according to God's holy will, grant that my soul may obtain the glory of heaven, through the merits of Christ and through your intercession. Amen.

Humility Of The Blessed Virgin Mary

Feast, July 17
(Triduum, July 14-16)

1. Mary, Mother of God, humility is the virtue you especially practised from childhood. The saints tell me that it is the foundation and guard of all virtues, since without humility a soul can possess no other virtue. Your loving Son came to teach this virtue to mankind by His example, and He desired that we should especially strive to imitate Him, for He said, "Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your souls" (Matt. 11, 29). As you were the first and most perfect disciple of Jesus in all the virtues, you were the first and most perfect disciple also in humility. First of all, because of your humility you merited to be exalted above all creatures.

The first characteristic of humility of heart is a humble opinion of oneself. You always had so lowly an opinion of yourself that, although you realized how many more graces and favors were bestowed upon you than upon others, you still preferred all others before yourself. Of course, you never thought of yourself as a sinner for humility is truth, and you knew that you had never offended God.

Mary, My Mother, you did acknowledge having received greater graces from God than had any other creature, for a humble heart always acknowledges the special favors of God that it may humble itself the more. But by the greater light you possessed for recognizing the infinite greatness and goodness of God, you recognized also your own littleness, and, therefore, you humbled yourself more than all others: you ever had before your eyes the majesty of God against your nothingness as His creature. The more you beheld yourself enriched, the more humble did you become, remembering that all came to you from the infinite generosity of your Maker. No creature in the world has been more exalted than you, because no creature in the world has ever humbled himself more.

2. Mary, Mother of God, your humility was expressed especially in the Annunciation. You were fully enlightened as to the greatness of the dignity of a Mother of God. Though you had already been assured by the angel that you were this happy Mother chosen by the Lord, you did not stop to rejoice in your exaltation. Seeing your own nothingness as compared with the infinite majesty of God, who chose you for His Mother, you acknowledged how unworthy you were of so great honor, but you did not oppose His will in the least thing. Filled with deep humility, and yet on fire with desire to unite yourself still more closely to God, you abandoned yourself entirely to the Divine will and answered, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word" (Luke 1, 38).

Mary, My Mother, you showed your humility by striving to conceal from others the gifts you received from God. You concealed even from your beloved spouse, Saint Joseph, the important fact that you were the chosen Mother of God, and you awaited God's good pleasure to reveal the great mystery to him.

In your humility you refused praise, giving all the praise and glory to God. When your cousin Saint Elizabeth greeted you as blessed among women, you answered, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior because he has regarded the lowliness of his handmaid" (Luke 1, 46). You humbled yourself so deeply because you knew that of and by yourself you were nothing and had nothing. Therefore, you gave your praise to the Creator and Giver of every good and perfect gift.

In your humility you wished to serve others rather than to be served. You visited the house of Zachary to serve your cousin Elizabeth for three months. Later in the public life of Jesus, you sought no attention. At one time when you wanted to speak with Jesus, your humility forbade you to enter the house where He was preaching until you were asked to do so.

In your humility you gladly suffered contempt with Jesus. We do not find you in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, when your divine Son was received with so much honor by the people. But we do find you standing beneath the cross on Calvary, when your Son was derided and mocked. You did not shrink from the disgrace of being recognized as the Mother of one condemned to die a shameful death.

3. Mary, Mother of God, teach me to be truly humble. Since I sincerely love you, I want to follow your example; this is the greatest honor I can pay you. For my proud nature, humility is most difficult to practise. But I can never be your true child if I am not humble. You invite none to come to you but the lowly of spirit. It is under the mantle of humility that you will protect me. Clothe me with your own humility.

Teach me the real kind of ambition, that is, greatness in God's eyes. Only childlike humility entitles me to the first place in God's estimation and consequently, in heaven also. The degree of childlike humility I have attained in life will be the degree of my greatness in heaven. Help me to see that humility is nothing more nor less than a just and equal judgment of myself, my talents, my opportunities and the use I make of them.

Humility is not belittling myself, but taking the place which rightly belongs to me, not a higher place, nor a lower, but the true and just place where God wants me. For if I have any ability, any worth or goodness, the glory is not mine, but God's. Without God I can do nothing. All that I am or have. He has given me. This is truly your spirit, as you expressed it at the Visitation: "Behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed: because he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name" (Luke 1, 48).

Mary, My Mother, I beg you for this humility which is so necessary for me that without it I cannot enter God's kingdom, as Jesus reminded His disciples, "Unless you turn and become like little children, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 18, 3). I beg you for this humility which is loved both by God and men for in it lies som