On St. Pius V, Dearest Mother Mary

Today's St. Pius V, and also First Saturday.

I found the meditation, from Alone with God, today on Mother Mary, Our All-Powerful Intercessor very beautiful. Here's it: O Mother Dearest, Mother Fairest!

Alone with God
By Father J. Heyrman, S.J.

Saturday, Third Week after Easter

OUR ALL-POWERFUL INTERCESSOR

1. During the Month of May, a mighty wave of devotion seems to sweep over the entire Church. Not only in countries where Christ has reigned for centuries, but also in lands where the name of Jesus was preached only yesterday, whole cities and villages are astir to proclaim their love for, and their confidence in, the Mother of their Saviour, who is their own Mother. Remember Lourdes, and Fatima, and Loreto, and so many other hallowed sanctuaries in every part of the world, where Christians gather to honour the Queen of heaven.

2. Petition: O God, may we dearly love our Mother, and place our trust in her intercession.

May she be Queen, wherever Christ is King.

I. Close to Our Mother

Really and truly Mary is Mother of God. This is her most glorious title. We may call her “Queen of heaven and earth”, and thus proclaim that she has been raised high above all other creatures; but that title does not express how closely she has approached the Deity. She is the master-piece of God’s creative power: in Mary the Divinity has, in a mysterious and most incomprehensible manner, established contact with our world of matter. Through Mary the Word of God became One of our race. At the Council of Ephesus, in the first part of the fifth century, after mature deliberation and fervent prayer, the Church defined that “the Holy”, that was born of Mary, is true God as well as true Man, (after the Arian Heresy as in an earlier post) and that, therefore, Mary is indeed the Mother of God.

Still, notwithstanding this supreme dignity bestowed on her, Mary remains human, a mere human being, just as we are: and by the will of Jesus, expressed by His dying lips on the cross, she is our Mother. This double truth – that Mary is Mother of God, and Mother of all believers, the Christian professes when he has recourse to “our Blessed Lady”, Our Mother! “Behold thy mother”: these words were spoken by Jesus to all those who were to believe in Him. “All of you are her children,” He seems to say, “love her, place your trust in her, as little children love and trust their mother.”

Children love both their father and mother; and they know by instinct that through their mother, they readily find a way to the heart of their father. For the mother is closest to the children, and at the same time closest to the father. She stands between the father and the children, not as though she would usurp the father’s place in the affection of the children, nor as though love for their mother would make the children forget the father.

The father is delighted to grant every request, made by the mother in the children’s name, for thus he tastes a double pleasure: he is glad to pay homage to her power with him, and he is delighted to give happiness to his children, who are as well her children.

However different these purely human relations may be from those that obtain in the divine and supernatural order, yet the comparison is right and guaranteed by God Himself. One day St. Gertrude felt a scruple about her immense love for Mary. Was she not preferring the Mother, a mere human being, above the Son, who is God? Jesus Himself enlightened and consoled her. “Be not anxious, my daughter. Thine is the way I want things: when thou payest honour to my Mother, thou payest honour to me.”

II. Mary’s Power

The Gospel itself tells us how incomprehensibly far Mary’s power reaches. At her request, and because she was insistent, Jesus performed His first miracle. At a wedding feast, in order to spare poor people a painful humiliation, she obtains that Jesus should change a decision He had taken – that is a human way of putting it. Theologians and exegetes are faced here with one or two knotty problems, but the fact remains: Mary prayed, she insisted, she won! And that, even though “His Hour was not yet come”.

To scripture scholars, “His Hour” signifies the hour of His death and of His triumph over death, the hour also when, just as at Cana, Jesus solemnly addressed His mother as “Woman”, and appointed her Mother of all the living, thus making her play a part in the great work of salvation.

The History of the Church, the progressive development of the Christian doctrine of Mary’s motherhood, the lives of all the Saints, and the daily experience of all those who invoke her, bear witness to her power, now that she is enthroned in heaven in the glory of her divine Son.

III. What Do They Ask?

Why are children drawn to their mother? Because with her they are always welcome, because to her they can unburden themselves of whatever is in their hearts, because from her they may ask everything: the very little ones ask for sweets, the older ones want counsel; those that are in trouble seek solace; those who are in need crave for help. As long as she is on earth, they carry all their troubles to her, and all their needs. A Mother’s blessing is God’s blessing.

Mary is our heavenly Mother, most powerful, most bountiful, most merciful. Into her Heart we pour all our desires, all our needs of body and soul.

Little Thérèse of Lisieux, with the child like simplicity that was so natural to her, said, shortly before her death, “I would love to die a beautiful death. I have prayed for that favour from our Lady. You know, it is not the same thing to ask something from our Lady and to ask it from our Lord. She knows so well what to do with my requests, which of them she should passion to Jesus, and which she should keep back.” And so we pray that “by the glorious intercession of the Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, we may enjoy perpetual health of soul and body.” But when we ask her for the conversion of sinners, the spread of God’s kingdom, peace among nations, the sanctification of priests and of all those that are consecrated to God, then she “passes on” our prayers to Jesus, because we ask what is most pleasing to her Son.

As from the Father we ask all things “through Christ our Lord, His Son”, so from Jesus we ask all things through Mary, our Lady, His Mother and our Mother! Above all we ask her that “after this our exile she show unto us the blessed Fruit of her womb, Jesus.”

Prayer:

Still as on we journey,
Help our weak endeavour,
Till with thee and
Jesus
We rejoice for ever.
- Ave Maris Stella

Jesus, Mary, I Love Thee; Save Souls!

Regina Caeli, Laetare, Alleluia!