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!

First Friday, Our Lady of the Rosary--and of Guadalupe

Today is the First Friday of the month so my husband and I will attend Noon Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception here in Wichita, followed by a Holy (Half) Hour after Mass and Benediction. Today is also the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary, which commemorates the Battle of Lepanto. Earlier this year, I had the great experience of hearing Christopher Check tell the story of the Battle of Lepanto--and then recite from memory G.K. Chesterton's great poem of "Don John of Austria/ . . . riding to the sea" (he only faltered once!).

Check cited a little known fact and includes it in this telling of the story at Catholic Answers:

Gianandrea Doria carried on his galley a gift from the king of Spain, an image that is now displayed in the Doria chapel in the cathedral in Genoa. Exactly forty years before the battle of Lepanto, the Blessed Virgin appeared to a peasant boy leaving a miraculous image of herself on his smock. The bishop of the region immediately commissioned an artist to paint five copies of the image, and he touched each one to the original. Our Lady of Guadalupe was present at Lepanto.

He also provides this timeline for the feast:

• In thanksgiving for the victory at Lepanto on the first Sunday of October 1571, Pope St. Pius V ordered that a commemoration of the Rosary should be made on that day.
• At the request of the Dominican Order, in 1573 Pope Gregory XIII allowed the feast to be kept in all churches with an altar dedicated to the Holy Rosary.
• In 1671, the observance of the feast was extended by Pope Clement X to the whole of Spain.
• Pope Clement XI extended the feast to the universal Church after the important victory over the Turks gained by Prince Eugene on August 6, 1716, the feast of our Lady of the Snows, at Peterwardein in Hungary.

Carl Kemme, our Bishop, has asked all the parishes in our diocese to pray the Rosary tomorrow, according to our Catholic Advance newspaper:

Bishop Carl A. Kemme has invited the faithful of the Diocese of Wichita to gather for a rosary to celebrate the Memorial of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary.

The bishop has asked that they gather at 9 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 8, in their churches or chapels, wherever the Blessed Sacrament is reserved, to pray five decades of the rosary. Bishop Kemme will lead a rosary at that time in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Wichita.

Praying a daily rosary brings us innumerable graces to live our faith more fully, Bishop Kemme wrote in a letter to his priests and others in the diocese, and helps “to battle the temptations of the devil and to grow in sanctity.”

The bishop said he is hopeful that the diocese comes together to pray the rosary for the intercession for our country this election year.

Our home parish, Blessed Sacrament, is complying of course and we plan to be there.

The image above shows God the Father painting the portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe. When then Secretary of Saint Hillary Clinton visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, she asked who painted it, according to this Catholic News Agency story from 2009:

Msgr. Monroy took Mrs. Clinton to the famous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which had been previously lowered from its usual altar for the occasion.

After observing it for a while, Mrs. Clinton asked “who painted it?” to which Msgr. Monroy responded “God!”