"O Come, O Come Emmanuel" - MaryAnne Muglia

Just had to share one of my all time favorite Advent  hymns performed in a breathtaking and majestic manner. Close you eyes and enjoy!

A Simple Reflection on Mary's Fiat

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

[I am recycling this simple reflection which got lost amid an earlier and lengthier post.]

In today’s Gospel (Luke 1:26-38) we hear the angel Gabriel’s familiar greeting to our heavenly Mother Mary: “Hail full of grace”. We repeat that salutation every time we pray the “Hail Mary”.  As a result, we sometimes forget the significance of those words and the rest of this Scripture passage.

When told by the angel that she, a virgin, would conceive the God-man, she asked him: “How can that be?” His reply – she would conceive not naturally but by the power of the Holy Spirit - was all Mary needed to hear. Without further hesitation, she said “let it be done to me according to they word”.

How often have we said “How can this be?” in response to promptings we have received – some no doubt from the Holy Spirit? Today’s Gospel should be an unmistakable reminder that, like Mary,  we must also say “Yes” to whatever God asks of us, knowing and trusting He will give us whatever assistance is necessary to fulfill His request.

Mary’s “fiat” changed the eternal fate of mankind. In a similar but lesser way, God will use our “Yes” to His invitations to change the hearts and souls of those known to Him.

But remember: He will not use us, if we say “No” to Him.

 

Pray that we may never let our selfishness and fear deprive us of the privilege of being part of God’s perfect plan.

Mary Our Mother

(Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament)

"Reflect on the fact that though our sins put Christ on the cross, His Mother loves us!"
 

(From God, A Woman and The Way by Rev. M. Raymond, OCSO)

St. Martin de Porres and My Sister

(Statue of St. Martin de Porres at St. Vicnert Ferrer Parish, NYC)

Today we Dominicans celebrate the memorial of St. Martin de Porres (1579-1639) – one of three Dominican saints who walked the streets of Lima, Peru in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - St. Rose of Lima and St. John Macias being the other two.

St. John XXIII canonized St. Martin on May 6, 1962.

There are a number of reasons why I have a great fondness for St. Martin de Porres.

He was a simple, humble and holy layman who initially refused the Dominican habit, not feeling worthy to wear it. After serving his Dominican brothers for nine years, as an act of obedience, he made his Solemn vows as a lay Dominican brother.

Rosary Reflection - Its Beauty

"The entire Rosary has the beauty of reproducing the theological thoughts concerning Mary, they are reproduced in the entire dialectic of truth and deduction. Marian theology and the Rosary are two poems that are united into one, two hymns forming one hymn, two magnificent temples, two cathedrals of thought and piety, that come together as one...

Here in the Rosary, piety speaks in the language of theologians. Here meditation rises to the heights attained by scholars. Here prayer dwells where the scholars are brought to a halt.

Marian theology and the Rosary are therefore similar to two temples having at the same height their pinnacles and spires. The people of God in the Church have found the Rosary, its Book of Psalms. The clergy have the Divine Office, the people have the Rosary. Like The Divine Comedy, the Rosary is a trilogy: it recalls the joys, sorrows, and triumphs of Jesus and in perfect symmetry, for each part it has five chants, and each chant in turn is an episode. 

The Rosary could very well be called the poem of human redemption. The Rosary is a poem that takes its lively but simplistic hues from the pure palette of the Gospel; while at the same time it draws its logical ties, its harmonious responses, its entire intimate dialectic from the highest theology."

                         

  (Blessed Bartolo Longo)

Rosary Reflection - Receive a Never-Fading Crown of Glory

"If you say the Rosary faithfully until death, I do assure you that, in spite of the gravity of your sins 'you shall receive a never-fading crown of glory'. Even if you are on the brink of damnation, even if you have one foot in hell, even if you have sold your soul to the devil as sorcerers do who practice black magic, and even if you are a heretic as obstinate as a devil, sooner or later you will be converted and will amend your life and save your soul, if - and mark well what I say - if you say the Rosary devoutly every day until death for the purpose of knowing the truth and obtaining contrition and pardon for your sins."

(St. Louis Marie de Montfort)

Rosary Reflection - Rosary Is The Book of The Blind

(Photo©Michael Seagriff)

"The rosary is the book of the blind, where souls see and there enact the greatest drama of love the world has ever known; it is the book of the simple, which initiates them into mysteries and knowledge more satisfying than the education of other men; it is the book of the aged, whose eyes close upon the shadow of this world, and open on the substance of the next.  The power of the rosary is beyond description."    

               (Venerable Fulton J. Sheen)