How strongly Jesus reminded me of this: "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it remain on the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me. . Not all the affection you pour out upon countless other souls lessens your love for me. Your redemption was the very masterpiece of Christ's redeeming wisdom. Jesus was a Son to you and a sword to you: a Son on your breast, a sword in your heart. Mary, My Mother, your intercession is all-powerful. 3. As mentioned in previous posts, this is an ongoing display of our Holy Card Collection. Mary, Mother of God, the joyful mysteries of your Holy Rosary remind me of the mysteries in which the Word was made flesh and you, the inviolate Virgin and Mother, performed your maternal duties with holy joy. 3. Your life with Jesus was one of the purest, most fervent, most perfect emotions of love to God, whom you sheltered within yourself. He promised that my prayers would be heard when He said, "Ask, and it shall be given you" (Matt. Scarcely had you greeted your aged cousin, when mother and son felt at once the sanctifying effects of your loving presence. . It impels my mind to self-exaltation, because I am proud. But Gabriel comforted you, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God." The holier a person is and the greater the intimacy of his union with God, the greater also is the power of his prayers. Forgetting yourself completely, you were most intimately united with God. Our Lady appeared to a young girl named Bernadette Soubirous in the year 1858, and the rest as they say is history! As Co-Redemptrix, you must finish your work by applying the grace of redemption to each individual soul, for only then the redemption is achieved. And so it is even now in heaven. It is true, you are a creature, and, therefore, far beneath the Supreme Being. Help me to love God with my whole mindso that my mind may be habitually occupied with God and that I may value His good pleasure above everything elseabove my convenience, above all earthly treasures, above all knowledge and friendship, above health and life. Love and Peace, may be spread among men. You must have willed your Son's death, because, hard as it was to make this sacrifice, it would have been quite impossible for your will to be the least separated from His. The holy couple offered you to God by the ministry of the priest in charge, who invoked the blessing of God upon you and your parents. Mary, My Mother, the Heart of Jesus was a generous Heart, symbolized by the wound in His side from which came forth the last drops of His Heart's Blood shed for us, and by which w e can reach the treasures of that Divine Heart. 2. We can certainly call you "Suppliant Omnipotence.". Joseph was a virgin for your sake, that a Virgin Son might be born of a virginal marriage. Foundation of the Abbey of Dunes, Flanders, in honor of the Blessed Virgin (1128) 3. This doctrine was received in the early Church and handed down by the Fathers who praised you with extraordinary titles and most important writings. Feast, January 23 (Triduum, January 20-22). our lady of sorrows feast day. 18, 3). I am your merciful mother, the merciful mother of all of you who live united in . Mary, My Mother, in all infirmities of body and soul, you are a sure refuge and relief. Help me to imitate your virtues that I may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. In order to free yourself from legal uncleanness and to give us an example of obedience to God's law, you submitted to the ceremony of the purification and made the offering demanded of the poortwo pigeons or turtledoves. Mary, Mother of God, you are the mother of the Judge: you are also the Mother of the sinners. These chains are chains of salvation for me, and they will make me enjoy in death that blessed peace which will be-the beginning of my eternal peace and rest. I come to you with confidence, knowing that through you all glory, honor and holiness given to the human race from the first Adam to the last ages has been granted, is being granted and will be granted to apostles, prophets, martyrs and all the just. Here I will demonstrate, I will exhibit, I will give all my love, my compassion, my help and my protection to the people. You did it for me - denvercatholic.org GLADE PARK, Colorado (Catholic Online) - The feast dedicated to "Our Lady of the Rosary" was instituted by Pope Pius V. It was to commemorate the anniversary of the defeat of the Turkish fleet at the battle of Lepanto on the first Sunday in October 1571. Through you my own goal becomes more real, more attainable, for the lessons of your life are the doors to eternal peace and happiness. You were troubled not at the appearance of the angel, but at what he said. The Lord being your portion, you renounced all elsethe honors, the pleasures, and the rewards of marriageand joyously chose the life of a virgin. And when the days of my earthly pilgrimage are over, according to God's holy will, grant that my soul may obtain the glory of heaven, through the merits of Christ and through your intercession. How well your name gives expression to your position and your mission in lifeyour divine Motherhood In virtue of this privilege, you reflect as a spotless mirror the eternal Light of the Word, which is first poured into you and illuminates you. Through prayer may grace fill my soul with the life of God and transform me into a living image of Jesus, just as you were. You offered Him on the altar of the Crossthe future Eucharistic Christin perfect adoration to the insulted majesty of God, in thanksgiving for all the blessings showered on mankind; in reparation for our sins and in petition for sinners. It is through your prayers that God inspires me to receive It and grants me the grace to receive It worthily. A Blessed Feast of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal - Fatima Infirmities of the body, patiently endured, may become the occasion of great merit. You are the holiest of women, the Virgin-Mother thrice holy, because you are holy of the Father, holy of the Son, holy of the Holy Spirit of Love. Your humility was rewarded with the greatest privilege ever given to a creature. I know that He wants you ever to be my Mother of Perpetual Help so that the graces He has merited for me may effect the salvation of my soul. Mary, Mother of God, you are the Virgin most pure because you are full of grace. 1. Mary, My Mother, I rejoice with you in the joyful expectation of your little Son. Who would not love you and endeavor to imitate you, most beautiful and immaculate Mother of God? On October 12, 1945, Pope Pius XII, decreed Our Lady of Guadalupe to be "Patroness of all the Americas." . Jesus proclaimed your motherhood from the cross by entrusting you to John and John to you when He said, "Woman behold thy sonSon, behold thy Mother.". I admire the holiness of their lives and the nobility of their family. This was your spiritual Motherhood. Just as the patriarchs in Limbo had beheld your birth as the breaking of that dawn which announced to them their near deliverance, so, too, your Assumption, together with the Ascension of Jesus, became for mortal man a sure pledge of resurrection and immortality. How wondrous you are in your humility. Just as in my tenderest years I learned to love God at my mother's knee, so now I desire to learn to love my Eucharistic God, as it were, at your knee, for I firmly believe that you are the shortest and surest way to the Heart of the Eucharistic Christ. Mary, My Mother, you were laying the foundation of that hidden life in which by the practice of the highest virtues, you were to reach that sublime degree of holiness to which you were predestined as Mother of the Son of God and Mother of all the souls for whom He was to die. Your willingness to suffer and to bear your cross in imitation of His own resignation to the will of God, made you especially dear to Him. Unceasingly praying for sinners, you stand before your Son. They spoke of you as His Virgin Mother and of the part you would play in the Redemption of mankind. You were the first to offer to the Eternal Father His Divine Son as the Victim for the world's Redemption. Your kingdom, like His, is a kingdom of imperishable glory, because yours is a throne of clemency, mercy and pardon. In 1482 the feast was added to the Missal under the title of "Our Lady of Compassion." Pope Benedict XIII added it to the Roman Calendar in 1727 on the Friday before Palm Sunday. You lighten our sufferings, you obtain for us bodily health when it is conducive to our salvation and you help the soul to conquer its spiritual enemies; Teach me to be more earnest about seeking health of soul: to overcome my ruling passion, to free myself from the occasions of sin. Blessed are they who observe his decrees, who seek him with all their heart. It is Mary's selfless act of letting her son be sacrificed for our salvation that makes her the Queen of martyrs. How often am I confused in the problems of life. 3. 2. All that I am or have. I already know of your great love for me for the sake of your Son who entrusted the care of my soul to you. Mary, My Mother, you and good St. Joseph were married to become the models of family life. As the heart of a mother triumphs over the just anger of a father in an earthly family so your Heart will triumph by averting the force of God's justice upon this sinful world. Mother you are and that doubly in the terms of our Catholic belief: human Mother of Jesus, supernatural Mother of every Christian. 1. Mary, My Mother, your mediation is in reality one with that of Jesus, who had seen fit to give Himself to us only through you. You formed His lips, to teach us. Though it was out of sheer goodness that God decreed to give us His very Son in the Blessed Sacrament, I believe that your prayers had much to do with the carrying out of that plan; for you, too, must have prayed, "Give us this day our daily bread." You brought forth Jesus, your First-born, without pain; but in giving birth to your second-born, what agony did you not have to endure? 1. Our Lady of Sorrows: Compassion Unlimited. . 2. 3. Filled with grief, you saw how the disciples removed the nails from the Redeemer's hands and feet, extracted the thorns from His head, and took Him down from the cross. Even when I forget you and begin to complain in my sufferings and crosses, you try to console me. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.". April 16 - 23,2023. The crucifixion was not only the sacrifice for sin, it was also the new birth of mankind to the spiritual life, lost by the sin of Adam. Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, I see you in Bethlehem lovingly pressing to your heart your Child, your God, the future Eucharistic Christ. Why do we call Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows"? The last beat of His Heart was to be one with yours just as the first had been. The Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows grew in popularity in the 12th century, although under various titles. 2. His Heart is a loving Heart, and that love is symbolized by the flames which St. Margaret Mary saw coming forth from it. Jesus exhausted His love for man also. I feel myself consumed by original sin and its dread consequences. Eve was unbelieving and disobedient; you were believing and obedient. It is true that we could go directly to God and ask Him for His grace without your help, but God has not willed it so. As I gaze upon youthe ideal of perfection and sanctity, may a similar longing for God and complete dedication of myself to Him awaken in my soul. Mary, Mother of God, you are the Virgin most pure because you are the holiest of God's creatures. The new birth of mankind was completed on Calvary. Save me, a poor sinner who confidently invokes your intercession, through the graces merited for me on the cross by the precious Blood of your Son. Mother Mary - Our Lady of Compassion September 15th Feast Day Liturgical Color: White The feast day of Our Lady of Compassion is every 15th of September. I shall realize that God, in His infinite wisdom will make all things work together unto my good. You beheld Him suspended by iron nails. Bishop Robert J. McClory. Our Lady of Perpetual Help - Catholic News Agency But that my devotion may be acceptable and my homage pleasing, let me endeavor to maintain within my soul, as much as possible the spotlessness of your purity and try to walk in your footsteps humbly and gently. In this I see God's plan that in the Kingdom of Jesus all graces should go through your hands and Heart. 1. Through your all powerful prayers, obtain for me not only God's forgiveness, but also the grace to amend my life and to save my soul. To all of us your Immaculate Heart after that of Jesus is most loving and most merciful. December 12, 2021: "Our Lady of Guadalupe came to be the Mother of the Americas, to announce the new birth of Jesus Christ among the peoples and nations of the New World. Your divine maternity is great also because this privilege is the reason for your other privilegesyour Immaculate Conception, miraculous virginity, fullness of grace, Assumption and the spiritual maternity of all mankind. No one has found or received such grace as you. Mary, Mother of God, your dear parents, St. Joachim and St. Anne, rejoiced at your birth. 3. But though your soul was filled with grief, you bravely stood beneath the cross. Mother Mary - Our Lady of Compassion - Feast Day. God had exalted you above all creatures. R. Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord! Grant that all these, men and women alike, may be freed from sin, to repose on His Heart of merciful love. I cannot even imagine the heavenly beauty that adorned your innocent soul as you were being prepared by the Eternal Father to be the Mother of His Divine Son and the Spouse of the Holy Spirit. As your prayer brought about His birth as the Sun of Justice, so also your request decided His rise and shining in His public life. The Holy Spirit dwells in you as in a temple. Through love you consecrated yourself with all your powers to God as the highest form of beauty and goodness. Coming from the Latin words cum and patior, compassion means to suffer. The Calendar section will present a particular feast for Our Lady for each day of the year. Eve was the mother of the dead, for all of us, her children, were doomed to enter this world under sentence of death, the slaves and children of Satan. 3. The Sanctuary in 1906. I unite myself with your heart so that everything I have to do or suffer may become a pure sacrifice of love in the sight of God. He saw sin and its terrible effects in God's kingdom and in souls; He saw the sufferings of His Church and His own and your sufferings. Prayer to Our Lady of Sorrows | Salt + Light Media As you were the Mother of Jesus in the Incarnation, when He assumed a physical Body, so also you are the Mother of Jesus in His Mystical Body, and of all those who, as members of that Body, are the brothers and sisters of Christ by Divine adoption. Teach me to imitate your prudence and listen to your counsel in all walks of life. You so loved the world as to give your only Son for our redemption. But all graces come through you. Mary, My Mother, you always lived under the divine influence of the Holy Spirit and in the closest possible union with Him. we celebrated the feast of the Triumph of the Cross. Mary, Mother of God, your sorrows are not merely the sorrows of an earthly mother grieving over the death of an only child. You could not of yourself provide the protection and training the Child needed. As you led an interior life and centered all your thoughts and life upon the Word Incarnate in your womb, so help me to lead an interior, supernatural life, always guided and directed by supernatural principles, having always supernatural intentions and performing supernatural actions. Your charity for the souls redeemed by the precious blood of your divine Son is so great that you ask mercy for those who flee to you for refuge, with all the earnest tenderness of a mother pleading for her only child. How I long to repeat It unceasingly so as to spread its fame, to carry that fame to every shore, to imprint it on every mind. Pray to Jesus, the Divine Word and Eternal Wisdom, who is "the life that is the light of men" (John 1, 4), that through you He may teach me His divine wisdom. Down through the ages numberless people have recovered health of body and of spirit through your intercession! I want to be devoted to you by giving myself entirely to you and through you to God. Holy Cards will continue to be added as our collections align with Feast Days of the Saints in our collection. His role in our salvation is absolutely necessary. Don Luis de VelascoII, when he was Viceroy of New Spain, had as his confessor a Dominican, Fray Cristobal de Ortega, who also acted as his financial adviser. God reserves to Himself the dispensing of justice to all creatures. He had to crown the gift of His love with the grand gift of you, His Mother. When still a child you consecrated yourself entirely to God, the Love of chaste souls; and afterwards you would rather be deprived of the great dignity of Divine Motherhood than to lose your virginity. Do not be afraid Mary, for you have found, not taken, grace, as Lucifer tried to take it. Mary, My Mother, what joy for you never to have been, even for a single instant, in the state of enmity toward God! You love me with a love that is greater than the love of my own mother; you love me with the very love with which you love Jesus, since all your children form but one body with Him. In so doing I simply imitate God who gave Himself and His Son to us through you. May I have more of their love for you so that I may experience more of their joy in being devoted to you. You are a Mediatrix in union with Christ from whom your mediation draws all its power. You saw His virginal flesh torn open again when the soldiers pitilessly stripped Him of His garments. The object of these feasts is the spiritual martyrdom of the Mother of God and her compassion with the sufferings of her Divine Son. At the very beginning of His public ministry, you observed the hatred and jealousy of His enemies and the false accusations which would bring about His death. By offering your Divine Son on Calvary you brought me forth to a life of grace and thus became my spiritual Mother. Obtain for me the grace to love God with my whole heartso that all the love my heart is capable of may be consecrated to Him, and all other affection subordinated to the love I owe God. No wonder the angels were lost in admiration! Teach me to imitate you by accepting willingly all the suffering which my service of God involves, my struggles against temptation, my difficult acts of virtue, my little penancesin union with the Victim Jesus on the altar out of love for God and mankind. I declare that I undertake them only that I may better promote the honor of God and devotion to you. Mary, My Mother, I wish to offer myself as a sacrifice to God in union with Jesus and through your hands. 11th February: Our Lady of Lourdes and World Day of the Sick Your Child, becoming the King of Martyrs, would make you their Queen. You obtained that grace for me. The Holy Spirit gave you the heart of a bride, all burning with a love pure and ardent. The foundation of this doctrine is to be found in Sacred Scripture where we are taught that God, the Creator of all things, after the sad fall of Adam, addressed the serpent in words which the Church applies to you, "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head" (Gen. 3.15). The Heart of Jesus was a suffering Heart, symbolized by the thorns encircling it, the cross above it, and the gash opened in its side. While you bore the Author of all things in your womb, and your heart was beating quickly with love, adoration and longing, still your face told nothing of this, and no one knew that such marvellous things were taking place in you. Pilgrims approach the grounds of the basilica, in distant view, on the day before the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. If you receive me under your care, I shall fear nothing because devotion to you is an unfailing sign of salvation. Here on earth kings and rulers lay at your feet their crowns, their very selves. 2. 2. 3. 3. You said Yes so that we might live. Through your prayers and the prayers of your holy parents may I learn to know and love you more and ever remain your faithful child. Like the injured man in the parable of the good Samaritan, the lady lacked proper clothing, "looked beaten" and abandoned, and came across as "half-dead.". Pray for more lay apostles, who in every walk of life will defend the rights of God, proclaim His Truth and preach His holy Will by word and example. But who can describe the matchless purity and beauty of your soul? The Expectation Of The Blessed Virgin Mary, Feast, December 18 (Triduum, December 15-17 or until Christmas). You "found grace with God" to restore salvation to all men. Your life, like that of your Divine Son, was a daily crucifixion and martyrdom, but on Good Friday that crucifixion reached its climax. OUR LADY OF SORROWS Feast day- September 15, 2022. The story of Our Lady of Guadalupe - Vatican News Being the new Eve who was to be the Mother of the new Adam you were, by the eternal decree of God and by the merits of Christ, withdrawn from the general law of original sin. Queen of the Holy Rosary, in times past, when the enemies of the Church sought to break its unity, you came to the aid of your suffering children. May these graces become most fruitful in my soul till I become like you, another Christ. Saints Having carried within you Jesus Christ, the Son of God, you share, as no one else does, in your divine Son's holiness and purity. It marks seven particularly sorrowful events in Mary's life, focussing on her experience of them - whereas on the actual days, the focus is on Jesus experience. As cooperator with your Son in that work of redemption, you also acquired the right to reign with Him. 1, 20). After the most holy and adorable Name of Jesus, there is no name more glorious and more powerful than yours. I look to you, Mother of Mercy. I need not see you appear, as you did to so many others. It is truly the will of God that all graces should come to us through you. As in Heaven the Divine Word is like the Father, so on earth the Son, according to the flesh, is like you His Mother. This is your role of universal Dispenser of all graces. Mary, Mother of God, your name means Lady and Queen. Their children also belong to God, for they are His gift. Having once given us Jesus Christ by you, God does not change His way of helping us. You have such a desire to save sinners that you look for them in order to help them. You are Queen of the universe, not by force, but by the power of love. You saw in the cross an altar, in your Son a Priest, and in His Blood the price of our Redemption. Penance and reparation is the one sure way of winning God's love and blessing for a misguided and sinful world. And Mary said: "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior. As the seed of the serpent includes all those descendants of the first man and woman who by their sinful lives bear within them the traits of the devil, so, too, the seed of the Woman includes all who in the course of ages will take their stand with your Son, Jesus Christ, in His ceaseless conflict with the enemy of God. Thus my soul in sanctifying grace is always, in a spiritual manner, like your womba sanctuary of the living God! You beheld His arms and feet roughly extended on the hard wood of the cross. Since God was born of you, you are the Mother of God. Your Heart, Blessed Mother, is always conformable to Our Lord's will. You receive all graces through Jesus Christ, because you pray and ask for them in the Name of Jesus Christ. Through your prayers all graces have come to the apostle and to the souls converted or sanctified. It was an answer which had scarcely fallen from your lips, before It drew the only-begotten Son of God from the bosom of His Eternal Father, to become Man in your most pure womb! Mary, My Mother, I unite myself with you in the spirit in which you offered yourself as a sacrifice of love during your lifetime. You are the immaculate Virgin whom the Holy Spirit willed to make His bride and in whom He would work the tremendous miracle of the Incarnation. The saints tell me that it is the foundation and guard of all virtues, since without humility a soul can possess no other virtue. For He was everything to you, and all else was nothing without Him. In you He reposed for nine months, with His whole divinity and humanity. He took to Himself our human flesh and became man in order that He might give Himself up for us to the death of the cross. The Church teaches that final perseverance in good and a happy death are graces so great that no one can obtain them by his own merits or without special help from God. How many afflicted hearts are consoled in you! He is King and you are Queen of all hearts. 2. In your six apparitions at Fatima you made repeated demands for penance and reparation. The early writers of the Church already speak of you as a second Eve, who fulfilled in the restoration of mankind a role closely corresponding to that of Eve in the ruin of our race. I have but to ask for them for the salvation of my soul. Mary, My Mother, pray that the love of God above all things and detachment from the world and its false pleasures, may also make my soul the temple of the living God. You see me, smile on me, listen to me, stretch your arms out to me, because you hear my prayer and, like a mother, you are anxious to help your child. You were dressed in your finest clothes and surrounded by your friends as you joined the procession by the light of lamps and the sound of music. We can lose our divine adoption, but you can never lose your divine maternity. You could also hold your own celebration of Our Lady by inviting friends and family to your home for a traditional Mexican meal.