Virgo Potens

2 of 2 Month of the The Seven Dolors of Mary / The Sorrowful Mother ~ September 19th A thought of her heart, a word uttered by her with the desire to relieve the mildest of human embarrassments — the thought and the word were foreknown from all eternity, and from all eternity the hour was set forward at which Jesus should begin the public preaching of the Kingdom of God. Nothing so great has ever been said, or ever will be said, upon the might of her intercession as the gospel story of the miracle of Cana. It was the hour of Mary’s power. The Virgin had all power over the heart of her Son. She had done His will too utterly for Him to refuse to do hers — Voluntatem timentium se foctet (Ps. cxliv, 19) —the Lord will do the will of them that fear him with the loving fear of a child for its father. And in fact Jesus speaks: ‘Fill the water-pots with water. And they filled them to the brim. And he said to them: Draw out now, and carry to the chief steward of the feast. . . This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.’ It was to the intervention of the Virgin that they owed their belief in Him thus early. Mary was close to her Son in the bond of love. But at the same time, the suffering of separation, which had lain in her heart from the day the Child had slipped away from her in Jerusalem, began to grow and did not cease its growing from the moment when His public life opened. That suffering held supreme tests in store for her. ~ Charles Journet, Our Lady of Sorrows. Tr. F.J. Sheed. (1939)

1 of 2 Month of the The Seven Dolors of Mary / The Sorrowful Mother ~ September 19th But at the same moment, by a secret illumination with which He filled her heart, He willed her to know that from all eternity the hour of His public ministry had been advanced because of the humble prayer she had just uttered. There is profound tenderness, an infinite delicacy of love half-hidden under the mystery, restraint and even, as some readers feel, coldness of the words recorded by St. John. Marvellous, too, the power of the Virgin’s prayer. (continued)

2 of 2 Month of the The Seven Dolors of Mary / The Sorrowful Mother ~ September 18th It reads as though Jesus was quite clearly refusing the implied but unspoken request of His Mother. He did it with great gentleness and He gave her His reason — that the hour for the inauguration of His public life of preaching and miracles was not yet come. The meaning seems perfectly clear: Mary must trust in Him without reserve, must leave the whole matter entirely in His hands: and so, indeed, she had done from the beginning. But here what seemed so clear is suddenly cast into darker mystery. Jesus had just told His Mother that His hour was not yet come, and she acted as if He had said the reverse. She seemed to take the miracle for granted. ‘His mother said to the waiters: Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye.’ Here is the key to the mystery. If there had not been the prayer of Mary, the hour fixed from all eternity for the inauguration of Jesus’ public ministry would have come later, and Jesus, who was to accredit the message He bore to men by signs and wonders, would have awaited some other occasion to manifest Himself — would have made a paralytic walk, or given sight to a blind man, or cleansed a leper. This is what Jesus Himself was affirming when He told His Mother that in this sense His hour was not yet come. ~ Charles Journet, Our Lady of Sorrows. Tr. F.J. Sheed. (1939)

1 of 2 Month of the The Seven Dolors of Mary / The Sorrowful Mother ~ September 18th He called her Woman, as at the hour when He was nailed to the cross (John xix, 26), a word of reverence — for He was speaking to her as God, in regard to a solemn matter, one that went beyond the framework of family relations, for it touched upon the destiny of the Kingdom of God. (continued)

2 of 2 Month of the The Seven Dolors of Mary / The Sorrowful Mother ~ September 17th Thus the Church can repeat them. In the mass Salve sancta Parens (of which the gospel is taken from this same passage of St. Luke) she joins them to those of Our Lord. She repeats them at the Communion, when Christ enters into us to communicate to us sacramentally a little of that love which on the day of the Incarnation he communicated to the Virgin in such abundance: ‘Blessed is the womb of the Virgin Mary which bore the Son of the eternal Father!’ By setting down here, in a more perfect light, the acclamation of the unknown woman, the Church continues to fulfil through the ages the Virgin’s prophecy: ‘Behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed’ (Luke i, 48). A sword should pierce her soul and all generations should call her blessed — blessed because in the likeness of her Son, she bore suffering and desolation in their fullness. Is the interpretation we have given of the passages of scripture concerning the Blessed Virgin necessarily the true one? Is it certain that Jesus, under the external semblance of repulsing His Mother’s tenderness, was actually binding her to Him still closer by an interior love and associating her with Himself in the work of redemption? An episode which took place at the beginning of His public life but which we have held in reserve till now, seems to put the matter beyond question. It is the episode at Cana (John ii, i-i i). There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. And the wine failing, those who were giving the feast were ashamed. Jesus’ mother saw this and said to her son: ‘They have no wine.’ Verbally, this was a mere statement of fact. Actually she was asking for a miracle. Then came our Lord’s mysterious answer: ‘Woman, what is it to me and to thee? My hour is not yet come.’. The literal translation is as we have given it — What is it to me and to thee? The bearing of this phrase, used to this day by the Arabs in Palestine, is roughly expressed by the words ‘Leave it to me’. The whole meaning depends upon the tone in which the phrase is uttered — they might signify impatience or rebuke or indifference. In the present instance, all three of these possible implications are negatived by the event. But they can also bear within them great tenderness, signifying: ‘Do not be disturbed, I have seen all, all is well, leave it to me.’ And it was thus that Jesus spoke to his Mother. ~ Charles Journet, Our Lady of Sorrows. Tr. F.J. Sheed. (1939)

1 of 2 Month of the The Seven Dolors of Mary / The Sorrowful Mother ~ September 17th Yet how magnificent these privileges become once we grasp that they are the efficacious sign, the instrument, of the highest graces. Our Lady’s motherhood according to the flesh, with all the agony and renunciation it demanded, becomes immeasurably more splendid when we know it as the cause of the purest love ever granted to a creature. Completed by Jesus’ answer, the words of the great-hearted woman of Galilee begin to reveal the fullness of their meaning. (continued)

NOVENA to La DIVINA PASTORA The Divine Shepherdess of Souls September 16th ~ September 24th Begins today, September 16th, at Christus Regnat ~ https://t.me/RexUniversi

2 of 2 Month of the The Seven Dolors of Mary / The Sorrowful Mother ~ September 16th Such an honour was accorded this woman great of heart, whose name is unknown and whose memory lives for ever. She had glorified Mary. But had she realized what Mary was? Had she realized that Mary’s true glory was not to be the Mother of Jesus but to be a Mother worthy of Jesus? Had she realized that motherhood according to the flesh was for Mary but the sacrament of an ineffable grace whereby she was made to participate — in a manner altogether unique — in the communicable sanctity of the Saviour, which is the very foundation of the Kingdom of spiritual relations? Did she realize that the pain of visible separation from her Son, a pain that grew every moment, was demanded of her in order that she might be the first member of the new spiritual family, that she might be Mother according to grace of all men? How could she have realized all this or any of it? So that Jesus proceeded to illumine her heart and unbare to her the most hidden glories of Mary. He corrected her faith, by giving it a new direction towards the great Kingdom of those who hear the word of God and keep it, of whom Mary is Queen — for she had, from the first day, kept and pondered in her heart the message that the Angel had announced to the shepherds (Luke ii, 19), and the words the Child Himself had said at Jerusalem (Luke ii, 51). All this is in our Lord’s answer to the nameless woman: ‘Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it’ (Luke xi, 28). ‘Yea rather.’ It is as though Jesus made no comment upon what she had said to the praise of Mary. He did not deny it. But He would not leave it simply at that, she must go beyond it. He took hold of the faith that was coming to life in her and turned it firmly towards those spiritual realities which she barely glimpsed and of which the natural privileges of Mary were but the outward sacrament. ~ Charles Journet, Our Lady of Sorrows. Tr. F.J. Sheed. (1939)

2 of 2 Month of the The Seven Dolors of Mary / The Sorrowful Mother ~ September 16th Such an honour was accorded this woman great of heart, whose name is unknown and whose memory lives for ever. She had glorified Mary. But had she realized what Mary was? Had she realized that Mary’s true glory was not to be the Mother of Jesus but to be a Mother worthy of Jesus? Had she realized that motherhood according to the flesh was for Mary but the sacrament of an ineffable grace whereby she was made to participate — in a manner altogether unique — in the communicable sanctity of the Saviour, which is the very foundation of the Kingdom of spiritual relations? Did she realize that the pain of visible separation from her Son, a pain that grew every moment, was demanded of her in order that she might be the first member of the new spiritual family, that she might be Mother according to grace of all men? How could she have realized all this or any of it? So that Jesus proceeded to illumine her heart and unbare to her the most hidden glories of Mary. He corrected her faith, by giving it a new direction towards the great Kingdom of those who hear the word of God and keep it, of whom Mary is Queen — for she had, from the first day, kept and pondered in her heart the message that the Angel had announced to the shepherds (Luke ii, 19), and the words the Child Himself had said at Jerusalem (Luke ii, 51). All this is in our Lord’s answer to the nameless woman: ‘Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it’ (Luke xi, 28). ‘Yea rather.’ It is as though Jesus made no comment upon what she had said to the praise of Mary. He did not deny it. But He would not leave it simply at that, she must go beyond it. He took hold of the faith that was coming to life in her and turned it firmly towards those spiritual realities which she barely glimpsed and of which the natural privileges of Mary were but the outward sacrament. ~ Charles Journet, Our Lady of Sorrows. Tr. F.J. Sheed. (1939)

1 of 2 Month of the The Seven Dolors of Mary / The Sorrowful Mother ~ September 16th Here the mystery is again upon us. If the woman had simply defended Jesus, perhaps he would have publicly praised and glorified her. But she had spoken of the Mother of Jesus. She had envied her who had had the glory of cradling Him and loving Him with the love that mothers have for their sons. And upon this point Jesus would tolerate no misunderstanding. Those who range themselves with His Mother merit to be treated by Him in some sense as He treated His Mother. They merit the realization that the sacrifice of the purest maternal tenderness has been demanded, and offered, for the foundation of the nobler Kingdom of spiritual relationships. They merit to be associated with some part of the mystery of separation. (continued)

Our Lady, deliverer of slaves, pray for us. 200 Days, once a day. Pius X, January 31, 1906. PRAYER to OUR LADY of RANSOM For the Release of Our Nations and Our Citizens from the Stranglehold of Satan May be said as a Novena September 15th ~ September 23rd Begins today at Christus Regnat ~ https://t.me/RexUniversi

2 of 2 Month of the The Seven Dolors of Mary / The Sorrowful Mother ~ September 15th Later, when He told them that He was the Son of the blessed God, He was once more treated by the Jews as a blasphemer and condemned to death (Mark xv, 61-64). Once more —this time by Pilate’s soldiers —he was thought to be mad. They stripped him and put a scarlet cloak about him; platting a crown of thorns they put it upon His head and a reed in His right hand; and bowing the knee before Him, they mocked Him saying Hail, King of the Jews (Matt, xxvi, 28-9). But the Mother of Jesus made no move to draw near Him. She knew the bitter forms that the sorrow of separation must assume. The gospel of St. Luke contains, in the parallel passage, the same teaching (Luke xi, 17-28). St. Luke likewise gives us the reply that Jesus made when He was accused of casting out devils by Beelzebub. ‘If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his Kingdom stand? St. Luke gives us further the parable of the unclean spirit which, being cast out of a man, walked through places without water, seeking rest; and not finding takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself and returns to the place whence he came out, so that the last state of that man is worse than the first. The unclean spirit is Satan who, formerly cast out of the house of Israel and finding it occupied by Christ, essays to return and bring the Jews down to a level lower than the pagans. The Jews understood the parable. Their hatred grew with their understanding. They became menacing. It was then that a woman lifted up her voice in behalf of Jesus. It has been observed that women are bolder in taking the part of those who are insulted, their heart urges them and they speak out what they feel. There is an example of this in the life of St. Benedict—Joseph Labre. One day in Rome he was attacked by eight or ten men who struck him, kicked him, flung him to the ground, spat upon him. A woman who was passing by, alone as she was, came to his rescue with an extraordinary air of authority; and as they sought to excuse themselves on the ground that he was mad and might therefore be mocked, she answered, ‘It is you who are mad, and he is a saint’. That word on behalf of the saint of poverty was the direct echo, across the space of the years, of another voice which seventeen centuries earlier had been uplifted in Galilee to defend the King of poverty against His enemies. ‘As he spoke these things’, says the gospel, ‘a certain woman from the crowd, lifting up her voice, said to him: blessed is the womb that bore thee and the paps that gave thee suck.’ How enviable was the lot of that woman, to whom it was given to defend Jesus. Surely He, in His turn, would one day proclaim her Blessed. ~ Charles Journet, Our Lady of Sorrows. Tr. F.J. Sheed. (1939)

1 of 2 Month of the The Seven Dolors of Mary / The Sorrowful Mother ~ September 15th From that time the Virgin never again came to offer her Son consolation against insult or martyrdom. She remained afar off. She knew that such a loneliness He needed for the world’s redemption. She troubled Him no more. (continued)

2 of 2 Month of the The Seven Dolors of Mary / The Sorrowful Mother ~ September 14th What that mystery is, He proceeds to show: ‘and looking round about on them who sat about Him, he saith. Behold my mother and my brethren. For whosoever shall do the will of God, he is my brother and my sister and my mother’. Beyond the bonds of natural relationship appear the bonds of a new relationship, spiritual and outshining the first as the sun outshines the light of tapers. Natural relationship is not denied. The bonds that bind husband and wife, parents and children, master and servant, still remain. Indeed they are immeasurably ennobled (Ephesians v, 21—vi, 9). But above them are the bonds that bind the children of the Kingdom in a mysterious, more intimate kinship; and these are more precious and more profoundly interior to us, are beyond the power of time and relate us to each other by what is closest in us to God. Because this is so, the bonds of natural relationship become illicit and must be trampled under foot whenever they so act upon us as to weaken the spiritual relationship: ‘If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple’ (Luke xiv, 26). The saints are in no delusion as to what our Lord means, as we shall see. Can it then have been that our Lord’s kinsfolk had come to Capharnaum to dissuade Him from preaching — that, under the impulse of too earthly an affection, they were trying to deflect Him from the mission, entrusted Him by His father in heaven, of founding the Kingdom? It may be that His brethren were thus uncomprehending. But not His Mother. She knew too well that such a Son must be about His Father’s business. She had come only to share the ignoring of sarcasm and blasphemy, and to be with Him visibly when the attack was visibly massing against Him. Why then the harshness of His word? Why should He thus refuse the gesture of her love? It was of necessity that something in itself lawful, something incomparably pure and holy and delicate should be thus eternally broken. The Virgin’s sacrifice could never be the renunciation of sin, for she had no sin; it could only be the renunciation of things holy for the sake of things holier. A physical tenderness that was holy had to be denied in order that men might know how they must treat physical tenderness that was not holy. It was of necessity that what was sinless in the Virgin should bear affliction and that the rightful desire of her heart to bring visible consolation to her Son should be cast aside in order that she might perfectly resemble her Son and that she might suffer in the likeness of Him who was to suffer and die in desolation. Thus, like to her Son and better than any who should come after her, she was to do ‘the will of God’; more fully than any who should come after her, she was to be to her Son a brother and a sister and a mother; more fully than any who should come after her, she was to enter into the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of spiritual relationships. And of that Kingdom she was to be the Queen. The word of Jesus that called upon her to sacrifice the natural manifestation of her love was harsh only to the ear. Even more powerfully than the harsh words he was later to address to the Canaanite woman, His word to His mother wrought in her soul those mighty increases of divine charity by which she could consent to renunciations ever more total. ~ Charles Journet, Our Lady of Sorrows. Tr. F.J. Sheed. (1939)

1 of 2 Month of the The Seven Dolors of Mary / The Sorrowful Mother ~ September 14th It was a moving moment, but Jesus was not moved. He had been bearing the harshness of His enemies; yet the moment He meets tenderness, the moment he becomes for His Mother an object of compassion, in that moment He seems to grow harsh Himself. It almost seemed that He scarcely deigned to notice that poor maternal love that was offered to Him, that frail refuge that she would have made for Him. ‘And answering them, He said: Who is my mother and my brethren?’ In that place these words seem hard, even cruel. What is the mystery contained within them? (continued)

2 of 2 Month of the The Seven Dolors of Mary / The Sorrowful Mother ~ September 13th But if with her own eyes she sees her son mocked, beaten, spit upon, what is there that can lighten her suffering? In such a moment she will ask one favour only, to be allowed to be near her son to protect him with her tenderness. This favour our Lady was not granted. And it was her Son who refused it. The episode is in the third chapter of St. Mark’s gospel. Jesus had chosen his apostles. He had driven out demons and had begun to preach the Kingdom of God. Crowds thronged about Him. He entered a house. The crowd gathered there likewise, so that they could not even take their food. ‘And when His friends had heard of it, they went out to lay hold on Him. For it was said: He is become mad. And the scribes who were come down from Jerusalem said: ‘He hath Beelzebub and by the prince of devils he casteth out devils.’ Thus the scribes looked upon Jesus as one possessed; but many thought He was merely mad. ‘They said,’ or, ‘it was said: He is become mad.’ Who said this? Not His relations, presumably. Certainly not His Mother. But His relations and still more His Mother were anxious. They knew that He was alone, exposed to the ill-will of the people and the hatred of the scribes. For that cause they came. Poor Mother! She knew the bite of a new sort of suffering. Up till now it had not occurred to her that the salvation of the world required that her Son, who was Wisdom Incarnate, should be treated like a madman and that He in whom the word of God dwelt ineffably should be accused of being possessed by Beelzebub. These insults, these blasphemies were a new note in her heart’s agony. She knew that her Son felt them likewise and that His heart was bleeding under them. For she knew that within the house, where the scribes had come, He sought to justify Himself before them: ‘How can Satan cast out Satan? And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.’ He was alone against them all. She longed to enter, to take Him away with her, to show Him that her heart at least was faithful, to strain Him to her breast if He would allow her. ‘His Mother and his brethren came. And standing without sent unto Him, calling Him. And the multitude sat about Him. And they say to Him: behold thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee.’ ~ Charles Journet, Our Lady of Sorrows. Tr. F.J. Sheed. (1939)

1 of 2 Month of the The Seven Dolors of Mary / The Sorrowful Mother ~ September 13th GROWTH OF THE SORROW OF SEPARATION When death comes to take away a child there is heartbreak. But when the mother can have pride in her son, when she hears that he died in a desperate attack or for a noble cause, she finds consolation in the praises that wreathe his memory. Her sorrow is not an unmixed grieving. (continued)

Sayings of the Saints "O Name of the Mother of God, thou art my love." ~ St. Bonaventure St. Bonaventure, pray for us.

2 of 2 Month of the The Seven Dolors of Mary / The Sorrowful Mother ~ September 12th From now on her road lay clear in the illumination that had come to her. But it is one thing to see the road, another to tread it to the end. If her Son, for all that He was the Son of God, had to learn obedience upon the Cross by the things which He suffered (Heb. v, 8), so likewise she had day by day to come to the experimental knowledge of the grief of separation. At the end of her life, when she came to recall for the first Christians the memories she had stored in her heart as they are preserved by St. Luke in the Gospel of the Infancy, she had become divinely expert in sorrow and she could say in truth that ‘in those first happy times she had not comprehended all that was implied by the nature and mission of her Son’, and by her own sublime mission as co-redemptrix. The temporary disappearance of Jesus, and still more the words by which he explained it, were equivalent to a second sorrowful prophecy, which amplified that of Simeon and every day revealed more and more of the fullness of its meaning. ~ Charles Journet, Our Lady of Sorrows. Tr. F.J. Sheed. (1939)

1 of 2 Month of the The Seven Dolors of Mary / The Sorrowful Mother ~ September 12th Thus the third sorrow, for which the first two were a preparation, was the sorrow of the gradual breaking of the visible bonds which bound her ineffably to her Son. And this sorrow as she saw and as she willed — with a will torn and anguished like that wherewith Jesus accepted the will of His Father— was to be a sorrow that should pierce deeper into her heart all the days of her life; and of this sorrow she was to die. Thus she bore her sufferings in silence and the power of her love, pressing them close to her heart. (continued)