Queen of May 2013: Ora pro nobis, Sancta Dei Genitrix!

Fr. Claudio Monteverdi
Vespro della beata Vergine ("Sonata sopra Sancta Maria")

God the Father wishes Mary to be the mother of his children until the end of time and so he says to her, "Dwell in Jacob", that is to say, take up your abode permanently in my children, in my holy ones represented by Jacob, and not in the children of the devil and sinners represented by Esau. 

Just as in natural and bodily generation there is a father and a mother, so in the supernatural and spiritual generation there is a father who is God and a mother who is Mary. All true children of God have God for their father and Mary for their mother; anyone who does not have Mary for his mother, does not have God for his father. This is why the reprobate, such as heretics and schismatics, who hate, despise or ignore the Blessed Virgin, do not have God for their father though they arrogantly claim they have, because they do not have Mary for their mother. Indeed if they had her for their mother they would love and honor her as good and true children naturally love and honor the mother who gave them life. 

An infallible and unmistakable sign by which we can distinguish a heretic, a man of false doctrine, an enemy of God, from one of God's true friends is that the heretic and the hardened sinner show nothing but contempt and indifference for Our Lady. He endeavors by word and example, openly or insidiously - sometimes under specious pretexts - to belittle the love and veneration shown to her. God the Father has not told Mary to dwell in them because they are, alas, other Esaus.

Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort

Treatise on True Devotion

Consecrating yourself to Jesus through Mary, mobile style

As someone who has gone through St. Louis de Montfort's Consecration to Jesus through Mary, I can attest to the merits of the exercise, and am pleased to bring you a new way of doing so fitting for many in our generation.

A Catholic web development firm, has mobilized the 33-day Marian consecration that progresses through emptying of self, to understanding of self, to understanding the Blessed Mother, and finally to understanding Jesus Christ.

Because this consecration is so powerful and active in the lives of many Catholics, they developed a free app for this consecration, placing mobile accessibility in the hands of every iPhone, iPad and Smartphone user.

You may find the app here: http://www.myconsecration.org/app.html. It is also available in the iTunes store.

And please remember to follow @RorateCaeli on Twitter.

Devotion to Mary: the sure way to Christ

Orlando di Lasso
Alma Redemptoris Mater

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Jesus, our Savior, true God and true man, must be the ultimate end of all our other devotions; otherwise they would be false and misleading. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and end of everything. "We labor," says St. Paul, "only to make all men perfect in Jesus Christ."

A new Doctor of the Church?

The semi-official daily of the Church in France, La Croix, reported yesterday that the procedure for the proclamation of Saint John of Avila Doctor of the Church is all but completed.

The move was first proposed by the Spanish episcopate. After a favorable opinion of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the matter was considered by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints which, on May 3, also approved the proclamation. The proclamation is now under the final consideration of the Holy Father, who could issue the announcement during "World Youth Day", in Madrid (Aug. 2011).

La Croix also mentions that "there are no other causes of doctors of the Church under analysis", and that the "cause of Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort is 'suspended'."

[Tip: Le Salon Beige]

Ora pro nobis, Sancta Dei Genitrix!

Claudio Monteverdi
Vespro della beata Vergine (XI. Sonata sopra Sancta Maria)

God the Father wishes Mary to be the mother of his children until the end of time and so he says to her, "Dwell in Jacob", that is to say, take up your abode permanently in my children, in my holy ones represented by Jacob, and not in the children of the devil and sinners represented by Esau. 

Just as in natural and bodily generation there is a father and a mother, so in the supernatural and spiritual generation there is a father who is God and a mother who is Mary. All true children of God have God for their father and Mary for their mother; anyone who does not have Mary for his mother, does not have God for his father. This is why the reprobate, such as heretics and schismatics, who hate, despise or ignore the Blessed Virgin,

My heart is inditing of a good matter

Qui audit me non confundetur, et qui operantur in me non peccabunt. Qui elucidant me vitam æternam habebunt. (from the Lesson for the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary - Ecclesiasticus xxiv, 30-31: "He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin. They that explain me shall have life everlasting.")

Mary is the Virgin most faithful who by her fidelity to God makes good the losses caused by Eve's unfaithfulness. She obtains fidelity to God and final perseverance for those who commit themselves to her. ... It was to Mary that the saints who attained salvation most firmly anchored themselves as did others who wanted to ensure their perseverance in holiness.

Blessed, indeed, are those Christians who bind themselves faithfully and completely to her as to a secure anchor! The violent storms of the world will not make them founder or carry away their heavenly riches. Blessed are those who enter into her as into another Noah's ark! The flood waters of sin which engulf so many will not harm them because, as the Church makes Mary say in the words of divine Wisdom, "Those who work by me" -for their salvation - "shall not sin." Blessed are the unfaithful children of unhappy Eve who commit themselves to Mary, the ever-faithful Virgin and Mother who never wavers in her fidelity and never goes back on her trust. She always loves those who love her, not only with deep affection, but with a love that is active and generous. By an abundant outpouring of grace she keeps them from relaxing their effort in the practice of virtue or falling by the wayside through loss of divine grace.

Moved by pure love, this good Mother always accepts whatever is given her in trust, and, once she accepts something, she binds herself in justice by a contract of trusteeship to keep it safe. Is not someone to whom I entrust the sum of a thousand francs obliged to keep it safe for me so that if it were lost through his negligence he would be responsible for it in strict justice? But nothing we entrust to the faithful Virgin will ever be lost through her negligence. Heaven and earth would pass away sooner than Mary would neglect or betray those who trusted in her.

...

Do not leave your gold and silver in your own safes which have already been broken into and rifled many times by the evil one. They are too small, too flimsy and too old to contain such great and priceless possessions. Do not put pure and clear water from the spring into vessels fouled and infected by sin. ... Chosen souls, although you may already understand me, I shall express myself still more clearly. Do not commit the gold of your charity, the silver of your purity to a threadbare sack or a battered old chest, or the waters of heavenly grace or the wines of your merits and virtues to a tainted and fetid cask, such as you are. Otherwise you will be robbed by thieving devils who are on the look-out day and night waiting for a favourable opportunity to plunder. If you do so all those pure gifts from God will be spoiled by the unwholesome presence of self-love, inordinate self-reliance, and self-will.

Pour into the bosom and heart of Mary all your precious possessions, all your graces and virtues. She is a spiritual vessel, a vessel of honor, a singular vessel of devotion. Ever since God personally hid himself with all his perfections in this vessel, it has become completely spiritual, and the spiritual abode of all spiritual souls. It has become honorable and has been the throne of honor for the greatest saints in heaven. It has become outstanding in devotion and the home of those renowned for gentleness, grace and virtue. Moreover, it has become as rich as a house of gold, as strong as a tower of David and as pure as a tower of ivory.

Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort
True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin

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Recess for a few days; relevant news may be posted at any time.

The Holy Spirit and the Blessed Virgin: the summit of love

Let me remind you again of the dependence shown by the three divine Persons on our Blessed Lady. Theirs is the example which fully justifies our dependence on her. The Father gave and still gives his Son only through her. He raises children for himself only through her. He dispenses his graces to us only through her. God the Son was prepared for mankind in general by her alone. Mary, in union with the Holy Spirit, still conceives him and brings him forth daily. It is through her alone that the Son distributes his merits and virtues. The Holy Spirit formed Jesus only through her, and he forms the members of the Mystical Body and dispenses his gifts and his favours through her.

Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort
True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin

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The Chapel of the Holy Rosary in the Conventual Church of the Dominicans in the historic city center of Puebla de los Ángeles, Mexico, one of the most majestic works of Catholic art in the Americas, is crowned by a simple, innocent figure: a dove. Surrounding it, a message to all visitors: Spiritus Domini requiescet super Eam.

She (...eam) is the Woman whose life was surrounded by the joy of the Holy Spirit from (Immaculate) Conception to Assumption, the one whose mystical union with the Paraclete was so intense that she had to be present in the miraculous day of Pentecost as a Spiritual Teacher, as the one who, by her example, by her own self, could show to those privileged pillars of the Church the Glory of the Risen Son through the action of the Consoling Spirit.

In this last week of May, the week of the Feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin (which will not be liturgically celebrated, due to the privileged Octave of Pentecost), let us remember the intimate union of the Holy Ghost and the Blessed Virgin, in the powerful words of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, which are always worth repeating:

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Who is the Father? What is His personal life like? It consists in begetting, eternally because He begets His Son from the beginning and forever.

Who is the Son? He is the Begotten-One, because from the beginning and for all eternity He is begotten by the Father.

And Who is the Holy Spirit? The flowering of the love of the Father and the Son. If the fruit of created is a created conception, then the fruit of Divine love, that prototype of all created love, is necessarily a Divine "conception." The Holy Spirit is, therefore, the "uncreated, eternal conception," the prototype of all the conceptions that multiply life throughout the whole universe.

The Father begets; the Son is begotten; the Spirit is the "conception" that springs from their love; there we have the intimate life of the Three Persons by which They can be distinguished from one another. But They are united in the Oneness of Their Nature, of Their Divine existence. The Spirit is, then, this thrice holy "conception," this infinitely holy Immaculate Conception . . .

The creature most completely filled with this love, filled with God Himself, was the Immaculata, who never contacted the slightest stain of sin, who never departed in the least from God's will. United to the Holy Spirit as His spouse, she is one with God in an incomparably more perfect way than can be predicated of any other creature.

What sort of Union is this? It is above all an interior union, a union of her essence with the "essence" of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in her; lives in her. This was true from the first instance of her existence. It was always true and it will always be true.

And in what does this life of the Spirit in Mary consist? He Himself is uncreated Love in her; the Love of the Father and of the Son, the Love by which God loves Himself, the very love of the Most Holy Trinity. She is a fruitful Love, a "Conception." Among creatures made in God's image, the union brought about by married love is the most intimate of all. In a much more precise, more interior, more essential manner, the Holy Spirit lives in the soul of the Immaculata, in the depths of her very being. He makes her fruitful, from the very first instance of her existence, all during her life, and for all eternity.

This eternal "Immaculate Conception" [which is the Holy Spirit] produces in an immaculate manner Divine life itself in the womb or depths of Mary's soul, making her the Immaculate Conception, the human Immaculate Conception. And the virginal womb of Mary's body is kept sacred for Him; there He conceives in time the human life of the Man-God.

And so the return to God [which is love], that is to say the equal and contrary reaction, follows a different path from that found in creation. The path of creation goes from the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit; this return trail goes from the Spirit through the Son back to the Father; in other words, by the Spirit the Son becomes incarnate in the womb of the Immaculata; and through this Son love returns to the Father.

And she, the Immaculata, grafted into the Love of the Blessed Trinity, becomes from the first moment of her existence and forever afterwards the "complement of the Blessed Trinity." In the Holy Spirit's union with Mary we observe more than the love of two beings... . . . . in this union Heaven and earth are joined; all of Heaven with the earth, the totality of eternal love with the totality of created love. It is truly the summit of love.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe