One Minute Reflection – 24 September – “The Month of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Holy Cross” – Our Lady of Ransom – Sirach 24:14-16, Luke 11:27-28
“Blessed is the womb that bore you” – Luke 11:27
REFLECTION – “This woman will be the Mother of God, the door to Light, source of Life; she will reduce to oblivion the judgement that weighed on Eve. “The rich among the people seek the face” of this woman, “the kings of the nations shall pay her homage” they shall “ offer gifts”…, yet the glory of the Mother of God is an interior glory: the fruit of her womb.
O woman, so worthy of love, thrice happy, “blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Daughter of David the king and Mother of God, King of the universe, masterpiece in whom the Creator rejoices…: you are to be nature’s full achievement. For you, life is not yours; you were not born for yourself alone but your life is to be God’s. You came into the world for Him, you will serve for the salvation of all people, fulfilling God’s design established from the beginning: the Incarnation of the Word and our own divinisation. Your whole desire is to feed on the words of God, to be strengthened by their sap, like “a green olive tree in the house of God,” “like a tree planted by running water,” you are the “tree of life” who “yielded its fruit in due season”…
He Who is Infinite, Limitless, came to dwell in your womb; God, the Child Jesus, was nourished by your milk. You are the ever virginal Doorway of God; your hands hold your God; your lap is a throne raised up above the Cherubim… You are the wedding chamber of the Spirit, the “city of the living God, gladdened by the runlets of the stream”, that is to say, the waves of the Spirit’s gifts. You are “all fair, the Beloved” of God.” – St John Damascene (675-749) Monk, Theologian, Father and Doctor of the Church (Homily on the Nativity of the Virgin, # 9 ; SC 80) [ ( Biblical references : Ps 44[45],13; 71[72],11.10; Mt 2,11; Lk 1,42; Is 62,5; Ps 51[52],10; 1,3; cf Gn 2,9, Rv 22,2; cf Ez 44,2; Ps 79[80],2; cf Sg 1,4; Ps 45[46],5; Sg 4,7]. Link to searchable Sacred Scripture here: https://www.drbo.org/
PRAYER – O God, Who for the deliverance of Christians from the power of the pagans, graciously willed to enrich Thy Church by a new religious offspring through the most glorious Mother of Thy Son; grant, we beseech Thee, that by the merits and intercession of her, whom we piously venerate, as the founder of so great a work, we may be delivered from all our sins and from the captivity of the devil. Through Jesus Christ, Thy Son our Lord, Who lives and reigns with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen (Collect).
AnaStpaul 