More from St. John Henry Newman on the BVM

At the end of my post for Newman's Catholic sermon on "The Glories of Mary for the Sake of Her Son", excerpted in Waiting for Christ: Meditations for Christmas and Advent, edited by Christopher O. Blum, I mentioned that Blum had also included another Catholic sermon in that book for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Since today is that feast, I thought it appropriate to highlight "On the Fitness of the Glories of Mary."

Blessed Mary has no chance place in the Divine Dispensation; the Word of God did not merely come to her and go from her; He did not pass through her, as He visits us in Holy Communion. It was no heavenly body which the Eternal Son assumed, fashioned by the angels, and brought down to this lower world: no; He imbibed, He absorbed into His Divine Person, her blood and the substance of her flesh; by becoming man of her, He received her lineaments and features, as the appropriate character in which He was to manifest Himself to mankind. The child is like the parent, and we may well suppose that by His likeness to her was manifested her relationship to Him. Her sanctity comes, not only of her being His mother, but also of His being her son. "If the first fruit be holy," says St. Paul, "the mass also is holy; if the mass be holy, so are the branches." And hence the titles which we are accustomed to give her. He is the Wisdom of God, she therefore is the Seat of Wisdom; His Presence is Heaven, she therefore is the Gate of Heaven; He is infinite Mercy, she then is the Mother of Mercy. She is the Mother of "fair love and fear, and knowledge and holy hope"; is it wonderful then that she has left behind her in the Church below "an odour like cinnamon and balm, and sweetness like to choice myrrh"?

Newman thus hints that Jesus resembled Mary as his one human parent. 

In this sermon he does complete the intimation in the first sermon and affirm her Assumption into Heaven upon her death--more than 100 years before it would be declared a doctrine of the Church. 

He concludes the sermon with a meditation on how Mary's glories and virtues should be guides for our lives as Christians:

Her glories are not only for the sake of her Son, they are for our sakes also. Let us copy her faith, who received God's message by the angel without a doubt; her patience, who endured St. Joseph's surprise without a word; her obedience, who went up to Bethlehem in the winter and bore our Lord in a stable; her meditative spirit, who pondered in her heart what she saw and heard about Him; her fortitude, whose heart the sword went through; her self-surrender, who gave Him up during His ministry and consented to His death. . . .

She will comfort you in your discouragements, solace you in your fatigues, raise you after your falls, reward you for your successes. She will show you her Son, your God and your all. . . . It is the boast of the Catholic Religion, that it has the gift of making the young heart chaste; and why is this, but that it gives us Jesus Christ for our food, and Mary for our nursing Mother? Fulfill this boast in yourselves; prove to the world that you are following no false teaching, vindicate the glory of your Mother Mary, whom the world blasphemes, in the very face of the world, by the simplicity of your own deportment, and the sanctity of your words and deeds. Go to her for the royal heart of innocence. She is the beautiful gift of God, which outshines the fascinations of a bad world, and which no one ever sought in sincerity and was disappointed. She is the personal type and representative image of that spiritual life and renovation in grace, "without which no one shall see God". 

Our pastor at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament here in Wichita, Kansas, included this exhortation in Sunday's bulletin:

P.S. This Thursday is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Please, please, please pray for an end to abortion and the conversion of heart of all who support it, especially in our city. Our Lady of Guadalupe is a powerful intercessor for life (and the protectress of life since she appeared visibly pregnant in her visit to Juan Diego). 

Amen.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!

Saint Juan Diego, pray for us!