The Queenship of Mary
On this, the octave day of the Assumption of Mary, we celebrate another great Marian feast, that of the Queenship of Mary. The Queenship of Mary has been celebrated ever since Pope Pius XII instituted this celebration in 1954. But the feast itself is rooted in Sacred Scripture. In the Old Testament, the mothers of the king had great influence in court. Certainly this would be the case between Mary and Jesus; we know that Mary’s intercession is a powerful force for our good. The Queenship of Mary, though, is most properly understood as a sharing in the Kingship of Christ the King. St. Paul speaks of the crown that awaited him after a long life, filled with fighting the good fight. And we know that that same crown - the crown that comes from Christ himself - awaits all who believe in Jesus and live lives of faith.
The origin of Mary’s crown, I think, can be seen at the very end of today’s Gospel reading. Having heard the overwhelming news from the angel Gabriel, Mary responds in faith: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Her faith, a faith that responded to the Lord’s call even though the details were not clear, is the kind of faith we’re all called to model. The kind of faith that responds to God’s movement with childlike trust in his providence. Mary models that kind of response for us, and perhaps her reward is a model of what we can hope to receive. Just as she responded in faith and was rewarded with a crown of glory, so we too can hope to have the same crown if we live the kind of faith she did.
And that’s the goal of our spiritual lives, brothers and sisters. We are to discern God’s call and respond with faith that leaves the details to God alone. Mary is always the model for us. She paves the way to living the Gospel as we are all called to do. But Mary is also the intercessor for us. She knew the difficulties and the sorrows that taking up the cross of the Gospel means for us, so we can depend on her intercession to help us through it. So on this feast day of her crowning, may we all look at our own calls in this life, and respond with the fiat: “Let it be done for me according to your word.”
Sphere: Related ContentSs. Joachim and Ann
Joachim and Ann—whether these are their real names or not—represent that entire quiet series of generations who faithfully perform their duties, practice their faith and establish an atmosphere for the coming of the Messiah, but remain obscure.
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This feast of Joachim and Ann helps me to remember with great fondness my own grandparents, now gone home to the Father. They were a big part of passing on the faith to me, and I am so grateful for that. Ss. Joachim and Ann, grandparents of Jesus, pray for us. |
Christian Unity in the Office of Readings
From today's Office of Readings
I was delighted to hear of your love of God, so well-ordered and devout, and so I decided to address you in the faith of Jesus Christ. Honoured as I am with a name of the greatest splendour, though I am still in chains I sing with the praises of the churches, and pray that they be united with the flesh and the spirit of Jesus Christ, who is our eternal life; a union in faith and love, to which nothing must be preferred; and above all a union with Jesus and the Father, for if in him we endure all the power of the prince of this world, and escape unharmed, we shall make our way to God. (From the beginning of the Letter to the Magnesians by St. Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and doctor).
Today's Office of Readings really hit me. I have been praying a lot about unity: in the world, in our communities, and in our families. This all probably stems from preparing wedding homilies and other talks. But it's been on my mind a lot lately. Unity in the Church is so important. It's something for which Jesus often prayed, and something that has been the concern of the Church ever since the apostles went out to make the Church happen. I am praying a lot that where I have tendencies against unity, I will seek repentance and healing. May we all at least be unified in our desire for unity.
Sphere: Related ContentThursday of the Fifteenth Week of Ordinary Time
“Our souls are restless until they rest in you.” It was St. Augustine who said that, and I think those words are pretty timeless. I was listening to the radio in the car yesterday, and heard a little news report on the happiness of people who used all the latest technological gadgets. A new survey is out which looked at the relative happiness of 180 of the world’s nations. Those countries who used more of the latest tech toys and gadgets didn’t do so well: Germany takes 81st place, Japan is number 95, and the U.S. comes in at number 150. The happiest nation on the planet, according to the survey, is the tiny South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, where one would be hard pressed to find an iPod or a TiVo player.
Yet our hearts do seem to covet all this kind of stuff. And not just stuff, but prestige, high paying jobs, and big houses. But, our hearts are made for just one thing: unity with God, and nothing short of that unity will settle our restlessness. Isaiah echoes that sentiment in today’s first reading:
My soul yearns for you in the night,
yes, my spirit within me keeps vigil for you;
When your judgment dawns upon the earth,
the world’s inhabitants learn justice.
O LORD, you mete out peace to us,
for it is you who have accomplished all we have done.
When we truly find happiness, we have to know that it is God who has accomplished it. We get some glimpses of that in this life, you know. I was looking at some pictures taken at my ordination yesterday. You won’t be surprised to know that my ordination was the happiest day of my life. And it was because God made it that way. Maybe you feel the same way about your own wedding day, or the birth of your children, or some occasion like that. It is truly God who has accomplished all we have done and has given our restless hearts true happiness.
So maybe it’s time we put down our iPods and turned off the TiVo and come to the Lord, all of us who labor and are burdened. May we all look to God who longs to give us rest, our God whose yoke is easy, and whose burden is light.
Sphere: Related ContentGreat birthday!
How bad can a birthday be when:
- You get to start the day by presiding at Mass?
- The daily Mass crowd offers a prayer for you in the Prayers of the Faithful and sings “Happy Birthday” to you at the end? (Yeah, I know it’s not liturgical, but they were free to “go in peace” at that point, so it doesn’t count.)
- You give the staff a special indult to have birthday cake for breakfast and they do!
- You have lunch with a friend?
- You get to hear a confession for a person who hasn’t been to the sacrament in years?
- You end the day with dinner with your family?
Yeah, it was a great birthday. Best one ever! I love being a priest: Praise God!
Sphere: Related ContentThursday of the 14th Week of Ordinary Time: Freely Give
Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.
There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but there is free grace. And today Jesus reminds us that free grace is exactly what we have been given. It's good on occasion to stop and take an account of all the grace in our lives. We all have problems at any given time in our lives, but we have to stop and take a look at the many graces that outnumber and overtake them all.
There is an ancient Jewish prayer called the Dayenu prayer. In it, the pray-er is enumerating how blessed he or she is, and noting that God did not have to go to all the lengths he does to bless us. The prayer is based on Jewish history and it goes like this:
How many levels of favors has the Omnipresent One bestowed upon us:
If He had brought us out from Egypt, and had not carried out judgments against them-Dayenu, it would have been enough!
If He had carried out judgments against them, and not against their idols-Dayenu, it would have been enough!
If He had destroyed their idols, and had not smitten their firstborn-Dayenu, it would have been enough!
If He had smitten their firstborn, and had not given us their wealth-Dayenu, it would have been enough!
If He had given us their wealth, and had not split the sea for us-Dayenu, it would have been enough!
The prayer goes on like this for a while, but you get the idea. The Israelites were delivered from the slavery of Egypt to the grace of the present time, and they never forget that. We could all write our own Dayenu prayer, I think. In fact, if you would like to do a little homework today, that would be it! The reason to stop and recite our dayenus and number our graces is not simply to feel superior, or even to be thankful (although being thankful is good, too!). The real reason, and the reason Jesus gives us in today's Gospel, is that, knowing hour graced we are, we can go out and be grace to others.
As you go, make this proclamation:
'The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.'
Cure the sick, raise the dead,
cleanse the lepers, drive out demons.
Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.
Grace is a great gift to us, but it's never meant only for us. As much as we have been given grace, we're expected to be sharers of that grace with others. The grace in our lives never decreases as we share it; in fact, it grows all the more.
Without cost your have received; without cost you are to give.
myCatholic.com
Are you using myCatholic.com as your start page yet? If not, you definitely should. This is a wonderful service of Sacred Heart Media, which is a great replacement for my Yahoo!, in my opinion.
You can cusomize your feeds, and the look and feel of the page for your interests. It has lots of feeds for Catholic and Christian news and concerns, and allows you to add feeds that you like via RSS. It's completely free, and also ad-free, which I love.
Also, their service is outstanding. With Yahoo!, you'll never get a human to answer your question. I had a problem adding my own feed via RSS to my myCatholic start page, and they went above and beyond the call of duty, finding the problem in a plugin for Wordpress. This obviously was more than they had to do, but they were wonderful about it. So yeah, you need to be using myCatholic for your start page.
Give it a try. You'll wonder what you did without it.
Sphere: Related ContentPhotoblog
After some messing around with making this work, I’ve started a photoblog. Now, I won’t be winning any awards with this one; it’s just a place for me to take some pictures, to learn a little about photography (rather little, actually), and to have some fun. Want to see it? Go to not quite the beatific vision.
Sphere: Related ContentWordPress
I have been very impressed with the Wordpress program for blogging. It beats b2evo out hands down. I spent at least an hour every day with b2evo just cleaning up spam. With Wordpress, I am able to catch it all with Akismet, and just delete it with one click of the mouse. Takes maybe a minute a day.
Which means I should be able to blog more. But things are a bit busy for me these days. I will have an update on all the exciting and emotional stuff very soon.
Sphere: Related ContentGoodbye b2evolution, Hello Wordpress!
Well, I finally had enough of spending all my time managing the spam on the b2evolution blog, so I switched it all over to Wordpress today. Here's hoping this works better! In the meantime, please be patient with any glitches!
St. Isidore, patron saint of computer geeks, pray for us!
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