Blessed Virgin Mary: March 2007 Archives

Recently a dear friend here in Rome gave me a booklet by Dr. Philip Boyce, O.C.D., Bishop of Raphoe, Ireland, entitled At Prayer with John Henry Newman. The booklet is available from the International Centre of Newman Friends. The Carmelite bishop calls prayer "the texture of Newman's life." He presents some of Newman's own magnificent prayers. All his life the famous Oxford convert sought to pray in spirit and in truth. When I pray using Cardinal Newman' words, I savour in them the same humility and confidence that I have tasted in the prayers of Saint Aelred, William of St–Thierry, and Saint Claude La Colombière.

I was struck in this prayer by the petition, "soothe me with the beauty of Thy countenance":

O mighty God, strengthen me with Thy strength,
console me with Thy everlasting peace,
soothe me with the beauty of the Thy countenance;
enlighten me with Thy uncreated brightness;
purify me with the fragrance of Thy ineffable holiness.
Bathe me in Thyself, and give me to drink,
as far as mortal man may ask, of the rivers of grace which flow
from the Father and the Son,
the grace of Thy consubstantial, co–eternal Love.

And I find this one very close in spirit to Claude La Colombière's Act of Confidence:

O my God, my whole life has been a course of mercies and blessings shown to one who has been most unworthy of them.
I require no faith, for I have a long experience,
as to Thy providence towards me.
Year after year Thou hast carried me on —
removed dangers from my path —
recovered me, recruited me, refreshed me,
borne with me, directed me, sustained me.
O forsake me not when my strength faileth me.
And Thou never wilt forsake me.
I may securely repose upon Thee.
Sinner as I am, nevertheless, while I am true to Thee,
Thou wilt still and to the end,
be superabundantly true to me.

The booklet's sections on intercessory prayer, on Newman's love for the Roman Breviary, and on his devotion to the Rosary are enlightening and inspiring. In conclusion, Dr. Boyce explains the three kinds of divine presence in which Newman's prayer unfolded: the presence of the indwelling Trinity, the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, and the presence of Christ in Sacred Scripture.

The Bishop of Raphoe describes Newman's life of prayer as "a persevering effort in the weakness and darkness of our human condition." One recognizes there the experience of the author of Lead, Kindly Light.

Today being the liturgical commemoration of the Compassion of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I decided to turn once again to Cardinal Newman for his Litany of the Seven Dolours. Newman was fond of litanies. I am too. They address a persistent need of the heart for a prayer that is rich in images, yet simple and rythmed by repetition. Unlike the excessively didactic and heavy preces given for Lauds and Vespers in the current Liturgia Horarum, litanies in their classic form allow "heart to speak to heart," and foster the actuosa participatio recommended by the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council. Here then, is John Henry Newman's Litany of the Seven Dolours.

Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent
Commemoration of the Sorrowful Compassion of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The Virgin of Sorrows is the Portress of the Holy Mysteries, the Keeper of the Door of Christ’s Pierced Heart, the Mother of our Joy. The last edition of the Missale Romanum, published in 2002, contains two modifications, discreet touches that will leave in the Missal of Paul VI the unmistakable imprint of John Paul II.

The first of these concerns the Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent, the Friday before Palm Sunday. The 2002 edition of the Missal restores the Commemoration of the Compassion of the Virgin Mary formerly celebrated on the Friday of Passion Week, and offers for the Fifth Friday of Lent the following collect:

O God, who during this time
graciously grant to your Church
devoutly to imitate blessed Mary
in contemplation of the Passion of Christ,
grant us, we pray,
through the intercession of the same Virgin,
to cling each day more firmly to your Only-Begotten Son,
and to come at length to the fullness of his grace.

The second touch is in a rubric concerning the chants during the Good Friday adoratio crucis: it suggests that after the traditional chants given in the Missal and the Graduale Romanum the Stabat Mater also be sung in commemoration of the Blessed Virgin’s sorrowful compassion. In this way, a thirteenth century text, presumed to be of Franciscan origin — it is attributed to Jacopone da Todi —takes it place alongside the ancient antiphon Crucem tuam, the Improperia, and the hymn to the Cross of Venantius Fortunatus.

The Stabat Mater is strong medicine for those who, being of a more abstract or cerebral disposition, would approach the Passion of Christ without getting bloodied, without being set ablaze, without feeling a melting in their breast.

In 2005 Good Friday fell on March 25th. This year, the Annunciation of the Lord is transferred to the Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent, formerly known as the Monday of Passiontide. Two years ago, while celebrating Holy Week with the Poor Clares in Barhamsville, Virginia, I reflected on the intersection of the two mysteries. Here is the homily I preached:

“O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
‘For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?’” (Rom 11:33-34).
“None of the rulers of this age understood this;
for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor 2:8).

We find ourselves today at the intersection of two mysteries,
or rather, at the heart of the One Mystery,
indivisible, and yet too rich to be taken in all at once:
Incarnation and Redemption,
Annunciation and Crucifixion,
Conception and Death.

The Western tradition, seeking clarity in distinctions
and respectful of chronos, the ordered time of the universe,
separates, fixing her gaze today on the wood of the Cross,
and promising to return in ten days time
“to a city of Galilee named Nazareth,
to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph
of the house of David” (Lk 1:26-27).

The Eastern tradition, spiraling into kairos,
the ever-present immediacy of the God who is, who was, and is to come,
integrates, even liturgically,
the mysteries of the conceiving Virgin
and of the crucified Fruit of her womb.

One might argue as convincingly from one perspective as from the other,
but we are here not to debate but to contemplate.
The mute prostration at the beginning of this solemn liturgy,
— all of humanity flung down before the face of God in the person of the priest —
was an act of utter and unconditional surrender to the Mystery,
not to the Mystery as we see it,
poor myopic creatures, straining to transcend our limited perceptions,
but to the Mystery as it is
in its cruciform “breadth and length and height and depth” (cf. Eph 3:18),
and in “the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:19).

Cousin Mary P., this one is for you! Maria Elena Vidal has a splendid entry on the shrine of Our Lady of Knock in Ireland. She links to an article by John O'Connell.

As a small boy, I heard about Knock from my Grandmother Margaret Kirby (1900–1993). Her Aunt Mary had gone to Knock on pilgrimage and sent her a little bottle of blessed water from the shrine. Grandma told me what she knew about the apparitions.

Years later, in 1988, I went to Knock together with my parents and my brother Terence. I was able to celebrate Holy Mass on the site of the apparitions.

The apparition at Knock is unusual in that the Blessed Virgin remained silent. She spoke no message and uttered no warning; she asked for nothing. Our Lady was silent and, at the same time, intensely present to the Immolated Lamb upon the altar, and to the people who watched the apparition. The silence of the Mother of God speaks to my own understanding of actuosa participatio (actual participation) in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. There is a silent inward cleaving to the Mystery of the Eucharist that precedes and perfects all other forms of participation in the Holy Sacrifice.

The silence of Our Lady at Knock reminds me of a splendid page in John Paul II's Orientalis Lumen:

One draws close to this presence [of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit] above all by letting oneself be taught an adoring silence, for at the culmination of the knowledge and experience of God is his absolute transcendence. This is reached through the prayerful assimilation of scripture and the liturgy more than by systematic meditation.

This is what man needs today; he is often unable to be silent for fear of meeting himself, of feeling the emptiness that asks itself about meaning; man who deafens himself with noise. All, believers and non - believers alike, need to learn a silence that allows the Other to speak when and how he wishes, and allows us to understand his words.

The presence at Knock of Saint Joseph and of Saint John the Evangelist is especially significant to me. They are the two men chosen by God to share most intimately in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Saint Joseph obeyed the word of the Angel of the Lord: "Joseph, son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her, is of the Holy Ghost" (Mt 1:20). Saint John, for his part, obeyed the word of the crucified Jesus: "Behold thy mother." "And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own" (Jn 19:27).

Praying the Rosary of the Seven Dolours, one discovers the role of Saint Joseph in the life of the Blessed Virgin by meditating the first three mysteries: 1) the Prophecy of Simeon, 2) the Flight into Egypt, 3) and the Disappearance of the Boy Jesus. In the last four mysteries, Saint John is present: 4) the Encounter of the Blessed Virgin with Jesus bearing His Cross, 5) the Death of Jesus on the Cross, 6) the Descent of the Body of Jesus from the Cross, 7) the Burial of Jesus. It is reasonable to assume that the Beloved Disciple accompanied the Blessed Virgin along the via crucis; he stood with her at the foot of the Cross, witnessed the removal of Jesus' lifeless body from the Cross and His burial.

Saint Joseph and Saint John entered in the silence of Blessed Virgin. One cannot live in the company of Mary without being drawn into her silence, that is, into the ceaseless prayer of her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, and into the Sacrifice of the Lamb renewed in an unbloody manner on the altars of the world.

Second Wednesday of Lent

Jeremiah 18: 18-20
Psalm 30: 4-5, 13, 14-15
Matthew 20: 17-28

The Sorrowful Passion of the Lord

“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem” (Mt 20:17). The whole drama of the Paschal Triduum appears today before our eyes and sounds in our ears. “The Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day” (Mt 20:18). The liturgy invites us to “go up to Jerusalem” (Mt 20:17), to follow Our Lord along the via dolorosa, the way of sorrows, the way of the Cross.

Prayer With Loud Cries and Tears

In the First Reading, the prophet Jeremiah, tracked and persecuted, is an image of the suffering Christ. The intentions of the prophet’s enemies are clear: “Come, let us smite him with the tongue, and let us heed not any of his words” (Jer 18:18). Jeremiah raises his voice in prayer: “Give heed to me, O Lord, and hearken to my plea. . . . Remember how I stood before thee to speak good for them, to turn away thy wrath from them” (Jer 18:20). In the prayer of Jeremiah we hear the voice of Christ in his Passion. The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard for his godly fear” (Heb 5:7).

Recordare, Virgo Mater Dei

In the liturgy of the Church — and, therefore, under the influence of the Holy Spirit — Jeremiah’s prayer became the Offertory Antiphon of the Mass of the Compassion of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the Friday of Passion Week, and again on September 15th. The Church takes the prophet’s plea and addresses it to the Mother of Sorrows: Recordare, Virgo Mater Dei . . . . “Do not forget us, Virgin Mother of God; speak good things for us there where thou standest in the presence of the Lord, to avert his anger from us” (cf. Jer 18:20).

Over the words, a nobis, “from us,” the Gregorian melody soars higher and higher into the uppermost notes of the first mode and then, peacefully, in a sublime expression of confidence, descends until it comes to rest in silence. The chant melody is a kind of musical icon of the supplication of the Church, and of her reliance on the intercession of the Mother of God.

The Man of Sorrows

One sees in the liturgical use of this text just how the Holy Spirit authorizes us to search out the Scriptures and to find in them, like the treasure hidden in the field, the mystery of the prayer of Christ: a prayer inseparable from that of his Holy Mother, a prayer continued through the ages in the supplications of his Bride, the Church. The original prayer belongs to Jeremiah: innocent and persecuted, he is the figure and the voice of Christ, the “man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” (Is 53:3).

The New Eve

The prayer of Christ, the New Adam, is inseparable from that of his Mother, the New Eve. She enters heart and soul into his priesthood; standing on Calvary, she receives into herself every word of his uttered from the Cross. She enters into his priestly offering and, in so doing, models our own participation in the Sacrifice of the Mass.

Today is the First Saturday of March, an opportunity to draw near to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Cardinal Biffi’s incisive allusions to the Antichrist in his retreat to the Holy Father compel us to pray to the Mother of the Lamb, the Blessed Virgin Mary, asking her to crush the head of the ancient serpent and to turn the eyes of all peoples to the Pierced Side of her Son.

Among the little known figures of holiness of the last century is the Neapolitan priest, Don Dolindo Ruotolo (1882–1970). Don Dolindo — his name means “Sorrow” — suffered cruel persecutions, calumny, and rejection, even from ecclesiastical authorities. Like his contemporary, Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, Don Dolindo endured his trials with confident abandonment to the Father and in union with the Passion of Christ. He referred to himself as “the Madonna’s little old man”; the rosary was at every moment in his hands.

A lover of the Sacred Liturgy, Don Dolindo promoted Gregorian Chant. He was an ardent preacher; he also wrote extensively: commentaries on Sacred Scripture in the spirit of the Fathers of the Church, elevations for priests, meditations, and prayers. Here is my own translation of one of his prayers to the Blessed Virgin. How timely it is!

Come thou, O Mary, reign in the world!
Let new impulses of filial devotion to thee come from the Chair of Peter.
that thy most radiant light may dispel errors.

Come then, and rescue Thy servants, O Blessed One!
Come, and for the new mercy that Thou outpourest upon the world,
be endless glory to the Father,
equal glory to the Son,
and sovereign glory to God the Holy Spirit. Amen.