Anticipating Elizabeth

We want to make our heart like a monstrance, exposing Jesus to all we meet.  Mary, the first monstrance, showed her Son to the Shepherds, the Magi, to all.  Before Jesus was born, Mary brought Him to Elizabeth who rejoiced in Whom she saw.  Elizabeth, in turn, became a monstrance herself and sang the first beatitude   and Mary responded with the Magnificat.  Together the two women - each bearing Jesus in her heart  - sang a beautiful canticle of praise to the Lord.  May our own encounters with others reflect the mystery of the Visitation as we bring our Lord to a waiting world.

Therefore, let us say often:

Jesus, let my heart be

the altar where You sacrifice Yourself

the tabernacle where You watch over us

the monstrance where You manifest Yourself to the world.   Amen

~Giuliana Spigone, A.O.

Dare With God!

Mary thus stands before us as a sign of comfort, encouragement and hope. She turns to us, saying: "Have the courage to dare with God! Try it! Do not be afraid of him! Have the courage to risk with faith! Have the courage to risk with goodness! Have the courage to risk with a pure heart! Commit yourselves to God, then you will see that it is precisely by doing so that your life will become broad and light, not boring but filled with infinite surprises, for God's infinite goodness is never depleted!"

-Pope Benedict XVI, Dec. 8, 2006

The Heart of Mary

What was Mary cherishing under the cross but the very Word of God...

Mary lived with her eyes fixed on Christ, treasuring his every word: “She kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2:19; cf. 2:51). The memories of Jesus, impressed upon her heart, were always with her, leading her to reflect on the various moments of her life at her Son's side. In a way those memories were to be the “rosary” which she recited uninterruptedly throughout her earthly life. (John Paul II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 11)

Clothed with the Sun!

In giving birth to the Son of the Most High, everlasting king with the Father and the Holy Spirit, Mary is truly the Mother of God and Spouse of the Holy Spirit, having conceived by his intervention: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy" (Lk 1:35).

Thus Mary, in virtue of being Mother of God and Spouse of the Holy Spirit, is, we might almost say, by right, Queen. Hence, God could not fail to bring her to Heaven in body and soul, and crown her as Queen of the Angels and Saints.

In the Apocalypse, St. John tells us that He saw, in Heaven, "a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars" (Rev 12:1). We believe that Mary is this woman, crowned by God.

(Sister Lucia)

Mary the Sanctuary

Mary is the first altar, and therefore the first sanctuary, where we have been ransomed. We venerate this altar, this sanctuary, the place of our first salvation, and the wonderful temple in which Jesus, for nine months, fulfilled His law of love and devotion to God. Already in the womb of Mary, Jesus offered Himself to His Eternal Father in a spirit of adoration, in a spirit of obedience to His will, in a spirit of love for the Father and for the humanity He came to ransom. He offered himself in a spirit of self-giving, ready to accomplish all that the Father might ask of Him, and ready to give of Himself to poor humanity that they might dispose of Him according to their needs.
(Bishop Giaquinta, Program of Spiritual Life)

Flowers for Mary!

Bring flowers of the rarest
bring blossoms the fairest,
from garden and woodland and hillside and dale;
our full hearts are swelling,
our glad voices telling
the praise of the loveliest flower of the vale!

O Mary we crown thee with blossoms today!
Queen of the Angels and Queen of the May.
O Mary we crown thee with blossoms today,
Queen of the Angels and Queen of the May.

Feminine Genius!

Let us look at the Blessed Virgin's example. In the narrative of the wedding at Cana, John's Gospel offers us a vivid detail of her personality when it tells how, in the busy atmosphere of a wedding feast, she alone realized that the wine was about to run out. And to avoid the spouses' joy becoming embarrassment and awkwardness, she did not hesitate to ask Jesus for his first miracle. This is the "genius" of the woman! May Mary's thoughtful sensitivity, totally feminine and maternal, be the ideal mirror of all true femininity and motherhood!
(The Feminine Genius, John Paul II)