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Archive for the ‘Mary’ Category
Our Lady of Guadalupe
December 12, 2009The 13th Day
October 13, 2009“In a world torn apart by persecution, war and oppression, three children were chosen to offer a message of hope. Based on the memoirs of Sister Lucia Santos and independent eye-witness accounts, The 13th Day dramatizes the incredible true story of three shepherd children from the village of Fatima in Portugal who experienced six apparitions with a Lady from Heaven between May and October 1917, which culminated in the final prophesied miracle.
The lady, who later revealed herself to be the Blessed Virgin Mary, gave a secret to the children told in three parts, from a harrowing vision of hell, to prophetic warnings of future events including the advent and timing of the Second World War, the spread of communism, and the attempted assassination of the Pope.
Stylistically beautiful and technically innovative, writer-directors Ian and Dominic Higgins use state-of-the-art digital effects to create stunning images of the visions and the final miracle that have never before been fully realized on screen. This film was shot on location in Portugal and in England.”
– from the trailer
For more information on The 13th Day visit www.The13thDayMovie.com
Real Men Pray the Rosary (and Women too!)
October 7, 2009
On a dusty road in Ireland’s countryside, back in the early years of the 20th century, a man was walking, communing with nature and with God. His fingers whispered through the beads, offering a prayer to the One through the soft repetition of words found in scripture…. “Our Father, Who is in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name….” “Hail Mary, full of grace…” He was stopped by British soldiers. The beads he prayed upon were nearly forced down his throat in an act of bestial bigotry. That man was my great grandfather, William.
I can still recall nights when my own father, William, would fall asleep in the chair holding his beads, stressing to us the importance of faith, of the rosary, of meditation on the Passion of Our Lord, and on the mysteries of the Gospels encapsulated in every set of “mysteries.”
Every action teaches, every reaction reinforces something for good or ill. Every move of the hand, every slip of the tongue. All the more reason then to train the tongue, and to mold the mind on the pattern of a higher love. That’s the goal of the Rosary….
Today we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. For the Catholic, the rosary is the soundtrack of the Gospel, the music of the meditation on the Word of God that keeps us tethered as it were by a string of beads to the life of Jesus and the life Mary in Scripture. May we take a hold of that life-line today, singing again the Song of Mary on the dusty roads we walk… “My soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit finds joy in God my Savior!”
I Love This Nun
August 4, 2009
I’m sure you’ve had times in your life when you stumbled onto something great, something refreshing, amazing, ennobling, uplifting; something even today you keep going back to for solace or inspiration…. and you don’t even remember how you found it in the first place.
One of those treasures for me is Alba’s Pizza in Browns Mills, NJ. Just kidding. It’s the poems of Jessica Powers, aka Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit. Give yourself a coffee break and soak your weary soul in this one. This is what it’s all about! This is why we are here, why we exist! Our souls like mirrors are made to reflect the One, the Only, the Love that shaped the universe. Here’s my objective for the day…. reflection, reflection, reflection…. Enjoy…
The Pool of God
There was nothing in the Virgin’s soul
that belonged to the Virgin –
no word, no thought, no image, no intent.
She was a pure, transparent pool reflecting
God, only God.
She held His burnished day; she held His night
of planet-glow or shade inscrutable.
God was her sky and she who mirrored Him
became His firmament.
When I so much as turn my thoughts toward her
my spirit is enisled in her repose.
And when I gaze into her selfless depths
an anguish in me grows
to hold such blueness and to hold such fire.
I pray to hollow out my earth and be
filled with these waters of transparency.
I think that one could die of this desire,
seeing oneself dry earth or stubborn sod.
Oh, to become a pure pool like the Virgin,
water that lost the semblances of water
and was a sky like God.
– Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit (Jessica Powers)
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The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers
ICS Publications 2131 Lincoln Road, NE Washington, DC 20002-1199
Peter versus Mary
June 29, 2009
Does the Church believe that men are better than women? Why can’t women be priests? When is the Vatican going to break free of this outdated patriarchal system of “government” and get with the times?
Hmmm. On this feast day of Sts. Peter and Paul, the rocks on which the Church was built, I wonder if in certain circles, these questions aren’t stirred up again with new ardor.
The mystics tell us that there are two dimensions to life, two movements of the heart, two approaches to reality and spirituality. They are as big and as cosmic as Earth and Sky, Sun and Moon, Masculine and Feminine. They are the Petrine Way and the Marian Way.
Many of us tend to plod along in our faith journey following the Petrine Way; named after St. Peter, impetuous, lovable, “open mouth insert foot” Peter. It is active, leaps ahead, goes, grabs, speaks with passion and is a very productive way, no doubt. Generally speaking, it has masculine characteristics. To get closer to God, I’m going to “do” this or that…. get involved in a group, knock on doors, do the stations every day, read the entire Bible in a year, etc. It springs forth from us, from our initiative.
There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s the active branch of the Active/Contemplative paradigm that makes up the Christian Way of life. In the Martha and Mary gospel story, this is Martha.
But it is not the only way to live in the Spirit that God has poured into our hearts. In fact, the primordial way, the first way, the fundamental posture for those who thirst for the Holy Spirit is the Marian Way, modelled after Mary, the Mother of Jesus. This in fact, is the “better part” that Martha’s sister chose, and Jesus said it shall not be taken from her.
This Way is receptive, it waits, receives, is still. It listens to Words and contemplates the Word. By no means, incidentally, is it to be confused with passivity. This is (paradoxically) an active listening, and eager expectation that the Gift of God should be done unto me, should be given unto me! This Way leads to our being filled with God. Mother Teresa knew this well. She said only the heart that is empty can be filled. The receptive heart is empty of agendas, aggressive opining, over analyzing. It is essentially feminine.
And the saints and mystics say that in relation to God we are all of us feminine…
Guys, this is NOT an affront to our manhood. It simply means that God is Creator, we are creature. It means God (Who is neither male or female) is essentially “masculine” – He initiates, He gives, He impregnates, and we respond, we receive, we are filled with the seed of His Divine Life.
So who’s “better” – man or woman? Well, no answer really. Both are creatures equal in dignity, called to respond, receive, conceive the Divine Life. But at the same time, Peter’s shining moments did come to him when he was essentially “receptive” – when he stopped talking and started taking in what God was saying to him.
Jesus said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter said in reply, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
It seems clear that in that moment, Peter “looked up” – he opened his mind and heart and received that Word from the Father. This was Peter’s Marian moment. Perhaps this is why Pope John Paul II called Mary the icon of all humanity, and called for a rediscovery of the “feminine genius” in our times…. our overly productive, aggressively masculine times. Why he called woman God’s masterpiece.
Just some thoughts to shed light on more questions. We need both ways, but the foundation lies in the feminine. Let’s ponder this one some more today. Am I first a receiver of God’s gifts? Or do always make the first move, on my own, from my own strength, my own agenda?
“Only those who have learned to remain with Jesus, are ready to be sent by Him to evangelize.”– Pope John Paul II
The Power of a Word
March 25, 2009Who is God’s Mommy?
January 1, 2009
When we were young and questions rolled from our lips in long, curling arabesques about the earth and sky and our own origins, we may have once asked about one of the greatest mysteries – the mystery of God’s origin.
“Who is God’s mommy?” the child whispers. And an answer may have come quite confidently; “God doesn’t have a mommy. He always was…”
For most of us, that response may have…
a) perplexed us,
b) sparked another question, or
c) opened a wide road that seemingly had no end, and even now we may still be walking it.
The answer, of course, is true….. and false. The infinite God certainly had no beginning. That would merely point to One greater than He, and that One would be God. We discover through philosophy (our reaching up), and through Revelation (His pouring down) that God is pure Spirit, the fullness of all Being, and source of all that has being. He is not bound in time and space, nor is He made in it. He makes it, lets it be. But in His love, the Author of all things chose to step into His own story, into time and space, and became one of us!
On January 1st, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. To some, this title of Mary is an enigma. How can the immortal God have a mortal mother? Did God have a beginning? Again, the answer is no, and yes. God loves paradoxes. St. Paul says in the second reading for this great Solemnity that when the fullness of time had come, “God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” (Gal 4:4-7)
To some, it’s scandalous to think that the Transcendent One should come into our world of flesh and bone and blood at all. But the Incarnation of Jesus, the Word of God becoming flesh, has shown us a great wonder, and cured us of a great wound: the wonder is that everything is holy now, for He has graced the world of air and water and earth with His presence; the wound was in our thinking that the two were ever really separate.
So God is born of an earthly woman, and cared for by an earthly father. Why? His actions, as always, are teachers. God seeks to reawaken us to the beauty of the family. The family has from the beginning been part of His plan to make us whole, to show us Who He is, to give us a place to grow and to know and to love Him through others. St. Paul continues, “God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” This is the scandalous love of God, that we use such an intimate Aramaic phrase (literally daddy) to address Him! Even more, we honor the humble virgin Mary as His own Mother, and through adoption, as ours!
Mary’s motherhood of Jesus, Who is One with the Father, is a mystery that can only be known and lived in the heart. The paradox seems like a contradiction to the mind, but in the heart paradoxes fit. As the readings for this feast continue, we hear from Luke, who is believed to have taken much of his infancy narrative right from the lips of Mary herself. We find her taking with her gentle hands this great paradox of being the Mother of God and placing it in the sanctuary of her soul. Luke writes “And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” And so should we.
We need to return as well to a deeper appreciation of the family. Mother, Father, Son, Daughter. These are the titles of all of us. Each of us bears one of these names. These titles point with fingers of flesh and bone straight up and into the Transcendent Mystery of God Who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God, as Pope John Paul II has said, in His deepest identity is not a solitude, but a family! Our first steps on this road of self-discovery begin in the home; in that little pool of life that is our family. It’s a communion of souls, always three (like a micro Trinity) or more, but it’s sometimes splintered into fragments because of sin or circumstance, or both. In its pure form, it might resemble an upside down triangle; a man and a woman whose love rises up from a single point of contact, and forms a new plane of existence, and supports that new line with their lines outstretched in a selfless gift of love.
Imagine a world of families like the Family that is God?
“As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.” – Pope John Paul II
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, pray for us and form us into true sons and daughters of God! May our families reflect the inner life of the Trinity, and glow with the warmth of your home at Nazareth.
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This post is featured on a new online journal called The Publican of Philadelphia. You can visit it here now!
Lovely Lady Dressed in Blue
December 8, 2008
Lovely Lady dressed in blue
Teach me how to pray!
God was just your little boy,
Tell me what to say!
Did you lift Him up, sometimes,
Gently on your knee?
Did you sing to Him the way
Mother does to me? Did you hold His hand at night?
Did you ever try telling stories of the world?
O! And did He cry? Do you really think He cares
If I tell Him things little things that happen?
And do the Angels’ wings make a noise?
And can He hear me if I speak low?
Does He understand me now?
Tell me, for you know.
Lovely Lady dressed in blue
Teach me how to pray!
God was just your little boy,
And you know the way.
– Mary Dixon Thayer
This prayer-poem was made famous in the 1950s by Bishop Fulton Sheen. Let’s sing it from the heart today on this great feast of Mary’s Immaculate Conception!
All Shall Be Well
August 15, 2008
Today, Catholics throughout the world celebrate a feast and sing a
hymn of praise for the gift and beauty of the human body. This is a
feast of hope in the resurrection of the body, and our eyes are gazing
in wonder at the beauty of a human body: the Ark of the Covenant, the
New Eve, the Mother of Mankind, the Woman clothed with the Son. Mary.
We revel in the beauty of her body, not as the world does, with a
beauty only skin deep; we see the big picture, not parts but the
whole. Like a crystal that shines throughout, it's the body "capax
Dei" – capable of the Divine. The body as a temple, God's dwelling
place, open to Grace, now glorified and divinized!
Mary is taken up into glory today. And why should this seem so
unlikely, this mystery that seems not to appear in the Bible? Isn't it
in fact the Song that suffuses the entire Bible? This song is the
original music, the song of life, the Song of Songs, and the score
that sin tore apart and twisted. But we still in this valley of tears
remember the melody. Mary's Assumption into Heaven is God's symphony
for sinners.
And so we gaze in wonder, and reflect on the fact that for us too, by
His Grace, what has fallen shall be raised up, what went sour shall be
sweet again, what was broken will be repaired in us. And not by our
merit, or by Mary's alone. In the end it is all and always the Son who
supplies the Light in this darkness.
As we pray for the healing of our unborn child, I relish this feast of
the Assumption even more. We're asking for a miracle, for God can heal
all of our wounds, weakness, cancer, acrania, disease, decay, and
deformity even now, today. In this moment He can make all things new.
He did it before and if He so wills it He can do it again. So I pray
He pours His redemptive and healing power into the womb and bring
forth life! Through the hands of Mother Mary, like a channel of grace
from God, through the prayers of Pope John Paul II, Apostle of the
Human Person, and all in the Name of Jesus… let it be done unto us
according to His Word. Mary, Mother of the Unborn, pray for us.
New Podcast Up
April 11, 2008
Finally back in action after a little “technical difficulty,” this week’s podcast centers on Elizabeth Ficocelli’s new book “Lourdes: Font of Faith, Hope & Charity”
“A fascinating look at Lourdes, one of the world’s most popular Marian places of pilgrimage. Includes the history of the apparitions to Bernadette Soubirous, the response of the Church, the advent of cures and pilgrimage, and Lourdes today as a powerful center for physical, spiritual, and emotional healing. Featuring interviews with the Bishop, Medical Director, and other key personnel of the Sanctuary. Foreword by Fr. Benedict Groeschel, nationally acclaimed scholar, theologian, author, speaker and host of “Sunday Night Live with Father Benedict Groeschel” on EWTN.”
Visit Elizabeth’s website here and for the book by Joan Carroll Cruzon, “Incorruptibles,” mentioned in this podcast, visit Amazon here.
The Heart of Things 