One Minute Reflection – 2 July– “The Month of the Most Precious Blood” – The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary – Song 2:8-14; Luke 1:39-47 – – Scripture search here: https://www.drbo.org/
“ And how have I deserved that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?” – Luke 1:43
REFLECTION – “Most blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb” … For all ages will call thee blessed, as thou said (Lk 1:48). The daughters of Jerusalem, that is to say, the Church, saw thee and proclaimed thy happiness … For thou art the royal throne near which the Angels stood contemplating their Master and Creator, Who was seated on it (Dan 7:9). Thou hast become the spiritual Eden, more sacred and more divine than the former one. The earthly Adam lived in the former, in thou lives the Lord Who came from Heaven (1 Cor 15:47). Noah’s ark was a prefiguration of thee, it saved the seed of the second creation, for thou gave birth to Christ, the world’s Salvation, Who submerged sin and pacified the floods.
It was thou whom the burning bush described ahead of time, whom the tables depicted, on which God wrote (Ex 31:18) which the Ark of the Covenant told about; it is thou whom the golden urn, the candelabra, … and Aaron’s staff which blossomed (Num 17:23) clearly prefigured. … I almost left out Jacob’s ladder. Just as Jacob saw Heaven united with the earth by means of the two ends of the ladder and the Angels descending and ascending and as the One who is really the strong and invincible One engaged in a symbolic struggle with him, thus thou, thyself, became the mediator and ladder, by which God came down to us and took upon Himself the weakness of our substance, embracing it and closely uniting it to Himself.” – St John Damascene (675-749) Monk, Theologian, Father and Doctor of the Church – Added by Pope Leo XIII in 1883 (1st Sermon on the Death and Assumption).
PRAYER – Bestow upon Thy servants, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the gift of heavenly grace that as the child-bearing of the Blessed Virgin marked the beginning of our salvation, so may the solemn Feast of her Visitation bring us an increase of peace.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 