Mary's Magnificat

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he who is mighty has done great things for me
and Holy is His name.

Mary, Mother of God, Queen of the Apostles

Isn’t it strange that those seeking equality with men and in the process, seeking the priesthood for women, miss the glorious elevation of all women as found in the Catholic Church through Mary, the Mother of the Church? God does not leave woman in the Garden where she is blamed for the downfall of the human race into sin and suffering but brings forth Mary, full of grace, the Mother of God. She is not hidden behind her Son in false humility but comes forth, proclaiming at Lourdes, "I am the Immaculate Conception.” Mary is "Queen of the Apostles" but does not claim apostolic powers for herself. She possesses something else and something more. Mary’s Magnificat is our song and our prayer, if we women would but realize it.

My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
For He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden,
For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name. . . .

Mary At the Door of the New Year

“Mary At the Door of the New Year” is posted on my website at http://www.concordiaministries.net/. It touched my heart and reminded me of my growing affection for my mother Mary. When I came into the Catholic Church from a Protestant one, she seemed very distant. Now, years later, I realize she has surrounded my heart and made herself a home, even with so little encouragement from me it seems. I am so grateful, and on this new year’s day, I thank Jesus for giving his mother to me.

Love & Prayers,
Little Scribe

Prayer of Consecration

"There are times when our own perplexities and suffering, or those of ones we love are so painful to carry that we find ourselves wordless before God. Such poverty can be a great blessing as it reveals to us our need for him, but it is also a moment of invitation to surrender. At such times a prayer of consecration is probaly the most suitable prayer we can say or formulate, simply handing everything over to God and Mary with trust. Or in situations of impending natural disaster, those involved in war or other life threatening situations, pray for them, pray for yourself in this prayer this morning." Poor Clare Colettines

Holy Mary
My Queen and Sovereign Lady
I give you myself
trusting on your fidelity and protection.
I surrender myself entirely
to your motherly tenderness
my body, my soul
all that I am, all that I possess,
for the whole of this day,
for every moment of my life
and especially at the hour of my death.
I entrust to you once more
all my hopes. all my consolations
all my anxieties, all my troubles.
my life, my dying breath,
so that by your prayer and merits,
I may have in all I do, one only goal,
your good pleasure and the holy will of your son.
Pere Raphael (17th century)

Our Lady of Betania - Maria Esperanza

August 7th is the 4th anniversary of the death of Maria Esperanza. She was the primary visionary of the apparitions at Betania, Venezuela. For more information, see Medjugorje USA.

From the Beginning

From the beginning, and before the world,
was I created, and unto the world to come I shall not cease to be,
and in the holy dwelling place I have ministered before him.

Sirach 24:9

Pentecost Novena

from Poor Clare Colettine Nun

Today we begin the great Pentecost Novena, the nine days of prayerful preparation for the Feast of the Holy Spirit. In the company of Mary, with the waiting Church, let us pray for this blessing !!!

Come Holy Spirit !
Come through Mary!
Come through the Church !
Come Spirit of life,
Spirit of Love,
Come breath of my God.
Fill me, change me,
heal me, create a new heart within me !
Warm me, transform me,
into the person you want me to be!
Come Holy Spirit, hover over the waters of my inner chaos
as you did before the creation of the world !!!
Bring me wholeness and holiness,
for your glory.
Come Holy Spirit ,
through your WORD,
Help me like Mary to ponder
all you have said in my heart.
Come Holy Spirit !!!!

Our God is a God of Joy

by Poor Clare Colettine Nun

Our God is a God of joy !!! Our God is a God who saves, who rescues us from darkness and sin! The joy of the Lord is our strength !

Our prayer - our service of God - our honouring Mary should give birth to joy within us . . .that deep sense within of belonging, both to Mary and our Mother the Church.

At this morning prayer at Prime of the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary we read.

. . .jucundos facias suae interesse commemorationi.

(Of Mary) we may find joy in taking part in her commemoration.

For wherever Mary is, in whatever way we honour her, are reminded of her, we are always brought to the reality of the Incarnation and that her yes bought Christ into the world. The deeper we submerge our hearts into the word of God, the deeper will be our joy !! So let us offer our hour this morning with joy !

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Go to Boston Catholic Journal for teachings and meditation on The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Today is the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas. For audio, click here.

John Paul II’s Prayer to Our Lady of Guadalupe

O Immaculate Virgin, Mother of the true God and Mother of the Church!, who from this place reveal your clemency and your pity to all those who ask for your protection, hear the prayer that we address to you with filial trust, and present it to your Son Jesus, our sole Redeemer.

Mother of Mercy, Teacher of hidden and silent sacrifice, to you, who come to meet us sinners, we dedicate on this day all our being and all our love. We also dedicate to you our life, our work, our joys, our infirmities and our sorrows. Grant peace, justice and prosperity to our peoples; for we entrust to your care all that we have and all that we are, our Lady and Mother. We wish to be entirely yours and to walk with you along the way of complete faithfulness to Jesus Christ in His Church; hold us always with your loving hand.

Virgin of Guadalupe, Mother of the Americas, we pray to you for all the Bishops, that they may lead the faithful along paths of intense Christian life, of love and humble service of God and souls. Contemplate this immense harvest, and intercede with the Lord that He may instill a hunger for holiness in the whole people of God, and grant abundant vocations of priests and religious, strong in the faith and zealous dispensers of God’s mysteries.

Grant to our homes the grace of loving and respecting life in its beginnings, with the same love with which you conceived in your womb the life of the Son of God. Blessed Virgin Mary, protect our families, so that they may always be united, and bless the upbringing of our children.

Our hope, look upon us with compassion, teach us to go continually to Jesus and, if we fall, help us to rise again, to return to Him, by means of the confession of our faults and sins in the Sacrament of Penance, which gives peace to the soul.

We beg you to grant us a great love for all the holy Sacraments, which are, as it were, the signs that your Son left us on earth.

Thus, Most Holy Mother, with the peace of God in our conscience, with our hearts free from evil and hatred, we will be able to bring to all true joy and true peace, which come to us from your son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns for ever and ever.

Amen.

His Holiness John Paul II
Mexico, January 1979. Visiting Her Basilica during his first foreign trip as Pope.

Mary, Our Advent Hope

"SALVE REGINA, Mater misericordiae.
Vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve."

On the threshold of Advent many of us begin to experience a sense of anticipation and excitement as we look forward in expectation to the happiness and joy that we hope Christmas and its festivities will bring to us and our families.

The reality, however, is that for many of us --- and for reasons that seem to multiply with our years --- it may well come to us not as a road to the fulfillment of our dreams (and so often our illusions), but as an avenue through a Vale of Tears. Even our joy, however brief, whispers somehow that it is the harbinger of sorrow. We find this echoed in the beautifully written Catholic hymn, Salve Regina, in which our voices are raised to the Queen of Heaven to whom "we cry, poor banished children of Eve, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears"--- or more literally, "to thee we breathe out (suspiramus) our sighs...!"

"Ad te Suspiramus, gementes et flentes ..."

Sometimes the pain within us swells up like a bitter-sweet anthem, as painful in its beauty as it is sorrowful in its sound ... and the last note uttered is ever a protracted sigh. At such times, we can do only this, breathe out our sighs to God and to His Holy Mother. And in the quiet of that shallow breath, how often we empty our souls of all hope...

"in hac lacrimarum valle."

But Mary is our Advent hope ... whose heel, even now, is on that serpentine sorrow! She is our Mother in our motherlessness, our Queen in our broken servitude to sin, and she is our hope in the looming despair which would crush under both: our sin and our sorrow.

Yes, even the joy of anticipation in Advent so often comes to us commingled with sorrow. The festooned lights of our frail hope span the gulf of our grief and we are led to a passing; a passing within ourselves through a passing of all things. We are sojourners only, pilgrims withal, and exiles in longing. It is the fabric of our being --- as long as it is a being-apart-from-God. In Advent, then, we come to a twilight, and know not whether it precedes the dawn or the dark. How obscure is this valley, as fraught with hope as it is with impending despair!

But there is one who dwelt in this twilight before us.

How little she, too, understood, comprehended, perceived! How anxious her heart upon the threshold of the impossible; how obscure the way through which God would become man, and how meekly she questioned, even as she did not doubt, what was proffered by God! ... "How can this be?"

She knows our twilight, our consternation, our fear. "How can this be?", we ask of the promises of God --- "how can this be?" ... that this valley of tears will lead us to the summit of Paradise? That our sins without number will be numbered no more? Will the salt of our tears become the salt of the earth? And will this dust of the earth be raised up unto God? "Quomodo fiet istud?" "How can this be?"

Et Verbum caro factum est!", we affirm with our lips, embrace with our hearts each Sunday at Mass: "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us!" The Light came into this world, not in the day, but in the darkness!

It is Mary, then, whom we first find in this valley, "The Woman" who preceded not God, but "The Man" Whom God assumed in His Son. Mary ... the paradigm of the possible, in all that is impossible to man, but is possible to God.

Yes, Mary is the Mother of hope!

"Et Iesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exsilium ostende.

O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria."

"And after this our exile, show unto us the Blessed fruit of thy womb Jesus, O Compassionate , O Holy, O sweet Virgin Mary."

Pray with Mary this Advent; not simply to her ... but with her, for her heart's desire is precisely what you ask of God: to lead you through this vale of tears that, at Christmas, she herself may show you, in the manger of your own poverty, the fruit of all hope, "the blessed fruit of her womb, Jesus."

I humbly offer this reflection to you with sincere prayers for a blessed and fruitful Advent --- especially for all who still dwell in a darkness.

A Poor Clare Consecrated and Cloistered Nun

Boston Catholic Journal

Audio file:
learn the Salve Regina in Latin

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy!
Our life, our sweetness, and our hope!
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve,
to thee do we send up our sighs,
mourning and weeping in this valley, of tears.
Turn, then, most gracious advocate,
thine eyes of mercy toward us;
and after this our exile show unto us the
blessed fruit of thy womb Jesus;
O clement, O loving, O sweet virgin Mary.

V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God

R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Our Lady's Message from Medjugore, November 25, 2007

“Dear children! Today, when you celebrate Christ, the King of all
that is created, I desire for Him to be the King of your lives. Only through giving, little children, can you comprehend the gift of Jesus´ sacrifice on the Cross for each of you. Little children, give time to God that He may transform you and fill you with His grace, so that you may be a grace for others. For you, little children, I am a gift of grace and love, which comes from God for this peaceless world. Thank you for having responded to my call.”