Tag: mayreflectionbljohnhenrynewman

Posted in CATHOLIC DEVOTIONS of the Month, MARIAN DEVOTIONS, MARIAN QUOTES, MARIAN TITLES, MORNING Prayers, QUOTES of the SAINTS, The BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

Marian Thought for the Day – 8 May – “Mary’s Month!” – Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Eastertide

Posted on by AnaStpaul

Marian Thought for the Day – 8 May – “Mary’s Month!” – Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Eastertide

Mary is the “Rosa Mystica,” the Mystical Rose
Blessed John Henry Newman (1801-1890)

HOW did Mary become the Rosa Mystica, the choice, delicate, perfect flower of God’s spiritual creation?   It was by being born, nurtured and sheltered in the mystical garden or Paradise of God.   Scripture makes use of the figure of a garden, when it would speak of heaven and its blessed inhabitants.   A garden is a spot of ground set apart for trees and plants, all good, all various, for things that are sweet to the taste or fragrant in scent, or beautiful to look upon, or useful for nourishment;  and accordingly in its spiritual sense, it means the home of blessed spirits and holy souls dwelling there together, souls with both the flowers and the fruits upon them, which by the careful husbandry of God, they have come to bear, flowers and fruits of grace, flowers more beautiful and more fragrant than those of any garden, fruits more delicious and exquisite than can be matured by earthly husbandman.

All that God has made speaks of its Maker;, the mountains speak of His eternity;, the sun of His immensity and the winds of His Almightiness.   In like manner flowers and fruits speak of His sanctity, His love and His providence;  and such as are flowers and fruits, such must be the place where they are found.   That is to say, since they are found in a garden, therefore a garden has also excellences which speak of God because it is their home.   For instance, it would be out of place if we found beautiful flowers on the mountain-crag, or rich fruit in the sandy desert.   As then by flowers and fruits are meant, in a mystical sense, the gifts and graces of the Holy Ghost, so by a garden is meant mystically, a place of spiritual repose, stillness, peace, refreshment and delight.

Thus our first parents were placed in “a garden of pleasure” shaded by trees, “fair to behold and pleasant to eat of,” with the Tree of Life in the midst and a river to water the ground.   Thus our Lord, speaking from the cross to the penitent robber, calls the blessed place, the heaven to which He was taking him, “paradise,” or a garden of pleasure. Therefore St John, in the Apocalypse, speaks of heaven, the palace of God, as a garden or paradise, in which was the Tree of Life giving forth its fruits every month.

Such was the garden in which the Mystical Rose, the Immaculate Mary, was sheltered and nursed to be the Mother of the All Holy God, from her birth to her espousals to St Joseph, a term of thirteen years.   For three years of it, she was in the arms of her holy mother, St Anne and then for ten years she lived in the temple of God.   In those blessed gardens, as they may be called, she lived by herself, continually visited by the dew of God’s grace and growing up a more and more heavenly flower, till at the end of that period she was meet for the inhabitation in her of the Most Holy.   This was the outcome of the Immaculate Conception.   Excepting her, the fairest rose in the paradise of God has had upon it blight and has had the risk of canker-worm and locust.   All but Mary;  she from the first was perfect in her sweetness and her beautifulness and at length, when the angel Gabriel had to come to her, he found her “full of grace,” which had, from her good use of it, accumulated in her, from the first moment of her being.

Mary, Rosa Mystica, Pray for us!mary - rosa mystica - pray for us - 8 may 2018

Posted in CATHOLIC DEVOTIONS of the Month, MARIAN DEVOTIONS, MARIAN QUOTES, MARIAN TITLES, MORNING Prayers, The BLESSED VIRGIN MARY, Thomas a Kempis, Uncategorized

Marian Thought for the Day – 4 May – Mary’s Month! – Friday of the Fifth Week of Eastertide

Posted on by AnaStpaul

Marian Thought for the Day – 4 May – Mary’s Month! – Friday of the Fifth Week of Eastertide

Mary is the “Virgo Prædicanda,” the Virgin who is to be Proclaimed
Blessed John Henry Newman (1801-1890)

MARY is the Virgo Prædicanda, that is, the Virgin who to be proclaimed, to be heralded, literally, to be preached.

We are accustomed to preach abroad that which is wonderful, strange, rare, novel, important.   Thus, when our Lord was coming, St John the Baptist preached Him;  then, the Apostles went into the wide world and preached Christ.   What is the highest, the rarest, the choicest prerogative of Mary?   It is that she was without sin.   When a woman in the crowd cried out to our Lord, “Blessed is the womb that bare Thee!” He answered, “More blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.”   Those words were fulfilled in Mary.   She was filled with grace in order to be the Mother of God.   But it was a higher gift than her maternity to be thus sanctified and thus pure.   Our Lord indeed would not have become her son unless He had first sanctified her but still, the greater blessedness was to have that perfect sanctification.   This then is why she is the Virgo Prædicanda; she is deserving to be preached abroad because she never committed any sin, even the least;  because sin had no part in her;  because, through the fullness of God’s grace, she never thought a thought, or spoke a word, or did an action, which was displeasing, which was not most pleasing, to Almighty God;  because in her was displayed the greatest triumph over the enemy of souls.

Wherefore, when all seemed lost, in order to show what He could do for us all by dying for us;  in order to show what human nature, His work, was capable of becoming;  to show how utterly He could bring to naught the utmost efforts, the most concentrated malice of the foe and reverse all the consequences of the Fall, our Lord began, even before His coming, to do His most wonderful act of redemption, in the person of her who was to be His Mother.   By the merit of that Blood which was to be shed, He interposed to hinder her incurring the sin of Adam, before He had made on the Cross atonement for it. And therefore it is that we preach her who is the subject of this wonderful grace.

But she was the Virgo Prædicanda for another reason.   When, why, what things do we preach?   We preach what is not known, that it may become known.   And hence the Apostles are said in Scripture to “preach Christ.”   To whom?   To those who knew Him not—to the heathen world.   Not to those who knew Him but to those who did not know Him.

Preaching is a gradual work, first one lesson, then another.   Thus were the heathen brought into the Church gradually.   And in like manner, the preaching of Mary to the children of the Church and the devotion paid to her by them, has grown, grown gradually, with successive ages.   Not so much preached about her in early times as in later.   First she was preached as the Virgin of Virgins—then as the Mother of God—then as glorious in her Assumption—then as the Advocate of sinners—then as Immaculate in her Conception.   And this last has been the special preaching of the present century and thus that which was earliest in her own history is the latest in the Church’s recognition of her.

Mary Immaculate, Pray for us!mary immaculate - pray for us - 4 mary 2018.jpg